nov 10 2015

morning notes=

 the battle between time-locked alters who STILL love people, and that ONE VICIOUS ALTER who hates everyone??
(it's NOT jezebel and that's the scary thing; the real murderous one is the one who responds to the body name)

remember, ALL alters are born to PROTECT us somehow. NO EXCEPTIONS!

and this makes a heartbreaking amount of sense when you consider that those alters who hate relationships, ALL relationships, only exist because THEY remember the isolated events in our past relationships that caused trauma, pain, or harm.
The ones who love people don't remember those things.

We split too badly. It's a blessing though. This way we can work out those knots without getting terribly confused by the paradoxical "I love them but they did such confusingly scary things" thought that I guess a combined perspective would have?




evening notes=


 trying to get this commission done for celestriakle, of her character mihail. i'm already fond of this character, which is good-- that makes it much much easier to draw someone.
problem is, i'm sick, the family is sick, i have a lot of home responsibilities, i have doctor appointments. i didn't sit down again until 9pm today and now i'm struggling to get my refs together.
every few minutes the phrase runs through my head, "do you even want to be an artist?" and the only response i've ever had is "only because i want to be able to accurately represent what i see in my head." that's IT.
i do NOT want to draw for a living. i do NOT enjoy "art for art's sake" even if that sounds horrible. i first noticed this in high school and i've been choking it back since then. it's not helping anyone.
"you have to want to draw," they say. i never did. why in god's name can't i just ACCEPT THAT.
is it because i'm such a visual thinker? that "not being an artist" feels like i've utterly disregarded the "only real way i will ever have to speak correctly?" like i cannot properly express anything outside of pictures? no, that doesn't feel quite right. it's part of it-- the fact that i think in visuals-- but not the whole thing.

i've been trying to practice anatomy more today but that old stupid fear came RIGHT back, that inability to even look at human bodies, or direct eye contact, because this awful keening childlike fear comes up and begs for it to go away, go away, i don't want this.


but the most relevant thing i read today was this.
"art takes a lot of energy to make. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff."
my "problem?"
that "other stuff" requires 99% of my energy at all times and i value that "other stuff" more than i value making art.
why?
because those are the ONLY THINGS I WOULD EVER WANT TO DRAW.
THAT is the issue.
i am NOT an artist. i am just trying desperately to give more to the things that i am already giving everything to. it's just... it's just me looking for another method of devotion. another act of love. just another way to try, valiantly but perhaps just as clumsily, to speak what i can't speak otherwise.

that's it.

in any case, i NEED to take a break from this art obligation for a while. i am losing so much sleep over this.
i open commissions and then i stay awake all night terrified that someone will buy one because i don't want to draw but i "HAVE to" and i've been doing that since high school.
i promise art trades and i do the same stupid thing, i panic and panic and try and try and ultimately hope i can cancel because god knows i never wanted anything but representation of something i loved and this price isn't worth it, isn't worth it. i can't.
this is the last time i'll ever offer commissions and i'm sorry, but saying that is like i can finally breathe after carrying an entire house up a hill for years. i can finally put the bloody thing down. i'm exhausted.
one more commission. one more art trade. both art half done. god give me strength.
this isn't fair to the clients. THAT'S what upsets me the most: other people are paying the toll for this and that is NOT FAIR and i want it to STOP.

...

there's still a desire to do our own work, fun casual work, to develop our own style, simple and stylized and fluid. i can't deny that. but it's NOT tied to the "i must be an artist" mentality, not at all. i don't want that pressure anymore, don't want that burden. it's not what i want.
so what DO we want?
after having finally shrugged off that label we've been stuck with since childhood, the thing everyone defined us with and yet which we never embraced honestly... now what?
it's that emptiness again, the vast white glowing emptiness that jay talked about. letting go of everything we took on and thought we were, letting go of everything that hurt and ached and made us sick or nervous or otherwise out-of-key... leaving us with just this openness. this total blank slate, almost.
it is exciting, but it is scary too. but it's not a fear scary. does that make sense? it's like... it's just knowing we can go anywhere from here. we have to be responsible.

i have so many picture tabs open for references. good lord. i'm trying too hard.

i'm so tired. i'm sorry. i need sleep.


...i guess the other thing i wanted to say though, is, it's hard to plan for a future when you still don't feel like you have one.

remember how, for our entire childhood, we were CONVINCED that we would be dead by age 20 so we never bothered to plan past that? heck i don't think we even planned at ALL.
i wonder if that had anything to do with trauma. probably. did we ever mention that to the therapist?
anyway when we hit 20 and didn't die we were like "well shit now what" and all i know is that "jayce" was born and we attempted suicide in october anyway so technically we did die. go figure. so we're like... 5 years old really, as of two weeks ago. happy birthday to us i suppose.
i know someone (jewel?) 'guessed' at a timeline last month, with 5 year increments. just want to say that's not "canon to life" just because it was written, it's a conjecture. most stuff here is. it's a personal log for heavens sakes. so things get worked out very actively, a lot of what you see is pure wondering, theories, untangling, et cetera.
we really do need to put a solid list together of what IS definite, for reference. i know jay's been wanting to.

but yeah. death still lingers in our minds all day.
back when the mother lied to us and convinced us we were dying for weeks, we became temporarily obsessed with death, leaving reminders everywhere for ourselves. we bought that little grim reaper plush and he's still on our nightstand, but... the surprise was, we didn't view him (or death in general) as a "time is short! get to work!" demand like our family always emphasized. instead we would think, "this life is temporary. one day all of it will be ash. stop taking it so seriously."
i dont know. every night jay has to face that concept head-on, the thought of "we might not wake up tomorrow." every night. he's very much at peace with it because he's not tied to the physical. to him, death is a perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable possibility.
death only becomes a "concern" when we remember that we have a life downstairs too, and we still have no idea how to "correctly" live it.

again, still struggling to plan for a future, because with this mental illness thing, the present kind of eats up all your attention. when you're focused on surviving until tomorrow, you kind of don't even consider what's going to happen a year down the road. it's always been like that for us.
and now, when you're subconsciously always thinking "well there's a pretty good chance now that we won't be here to see age 30, so..."
god part of us really wants to live but ONLY if we can have peace, and love, and light and joy and color and hope... if we can live, pun intended.
we're working for it, at least internally. outside is kind of tricky. but we're doing what we can. right now.

there's a lot to clarify, really. like... life itself feels like a suicide note now, what with the emptiness, what with being so acutely aware of our own mortality.
we look back and see the remnants of those who we were before now... the ones who were blind, foolish, misled, malicious even... those who weren't living their best, those who weren't really accepting love. they left a lot of debris. we're a little anxious about it, we want to clean it all up... jay kind of wants to mega-delete everything instead of picking through it and re-infecting our head (remember how disturbing the attempt to clean out the deviantart stuff was? we just deleted our account instead). i think maybe he should. the only obstacle is the fear of "well maybe we'll need it," like the literal hundreds of "spiritual screencaps" which everyone outside has agreed were only feeding this floating-voice phenomenon. but we're terrified because "what if that's the TRUTH" so i don't know.
anyway i would like to clean up our remnants. clean up our presence here. make things tidy and honest and bright so that if we DO die tomorrow, the people dealing with the wake of our absence won't be totally misled by the junk lying about. that's the problem of being multiple with no clear host-- all that switching over the years makes for one heck of a confusing and paradoxical paper trail.
but all that is gone now. all those timelines are dead. all of them.
did i mention that? how old timelines just keep collapsing and with all the clearer and clearer revisions we're getting, it's getting very hard to remember or comprehend those times?
it's not a bad thing. it's just so strange, to have this sudden whiteness. this sudden absence of all that. our past is being erased, steadily and totally, and we're fine with it, there's just... remnants. awful sticky strings.
jay said something yesterday, to the furious tar-voices, the ones who move like dying bugs and glitch and scream. they keep trying to force the past, all that negativity, back onto us, through sneaky language and thought processes. but jay said "no. that is not part of our story."
i like that. we choose what we want to hold on to now, what we want to be part of our book now. all those old papers... we can let them go. we don't want them. we don't have to keep them.

i think that's the main concern. we want to make it clear to others, after we're gone, and even now, that we let go of all that old stuff. we are something new now. we're building something new and brighter, and it's going to take a LOT of courage, because all those old bridges need to be burnt first. there needs to be no backtracking, no walking back into the flames or the knives. yes that pain led us here. but it's part in this is over now. it's done. let it go. let it go.
we can't go back. can't look back or we'll be a pillar of salt, more calcification. we need to keep walking forwards, with no chains on our feet or our hearts. we can be free now, free to BE, free to actually live, in a future we might actually have... we want one. but all that was before, all that needs to go first. it has no place in where we are going. nothing that dark can survive with all this light around now. and that's good. it's nice to finally have the windows wide open. it's nice to have fresh air and sunshine.
we don't want to ever be scared anymore. we're getting there. step by step, together.


again. like i said. sleep.
we'll talk more tomorrow.