I've never considered myself agoraphobic.

But if it's alright with you all, I'd like to overshare on the internet for a bit.

When I was a preteen or early teen, there was a summer I didn't go outside. Now, I've never been an extraverted person, but I rode my razor scooter around my neighborhood with all the other kids. It's not like this was normal for me. The weirdest part, though, is that I don't remember any of it.

Let's go back for a moment.

At the age of about nine, I came home from a long day of school and ate dinner with my family before resigning to my room. Above my childhood bed, right over my pillows, there was a window to our backyard that I would always close the blinds over, fearful that someone would peek in and try to snatch me from my bed. I'd try to get my body curled up close to the wall so if someone was out there, they wouldn't be able to see me. This day when I got to my room, I exhaustedly flopped my upper body onto my mattress, bent at the waist, and awkwardly hunched over the footboard. I closed my eyes for a moment then stood back up. There was light streaming in from the window. I had slept like that for an entire night. The worst part is I didn't even feel well rested. It just felt like I continued to be awake. Have you ever nodded in and out of sleep while traveling, thinking only moments were passing when in reality it's been hours? It was like that, but I didn't even feel I had lost seconds, let alone minutes, let alone hours.

Returning to the lost summer, it might be easier to explain now that I don't remember falling out of consciousness. I only remember jolting awake.

It was the last day of summer (kind of) because it was the day our pool closed. When our neighborhood pool closed, they would have it open early and late on its final day, and they'd ask folks to help them pack up the pool supplies for the next year. I remember every year of it fondly. Until this day. On this day, anxiety took over. I woke up covered in sweat to a strangely dark and quiet house. I could hear low voices. I got up, put shorts on, and poked my head into my parents' room. They were talking to my childhood best friend. She and my other friends had come to ask if I could walk to the pool with them. I felt like I was in a haze. Was this really happening? With the darkness and humidity combined, I felt like I was moving through sludge. After speaking to my friends and parents, still stuck in that dreamlike state, I packed a sandwich to eat on the trip. That gave my brain time to adjust to the situation. I really didn't feel up to it, but I joined them anyways.

My anxiety worsened as I hit puberty. Around my first year of high school, I remember a time when my older brother and dad invited me out to one of my favorite places to eat. It was a place we didn't go to very often since my mom didn't like it, so I got really excited. I happily recited my regular order to them, and returned my attention to whatever the task at hand was (honestly, I was probably just watching Mythbusters or FullMetal Alchemist). They laughed. Of course, they said, I'll have to go with them, or else I won't get any.

Nope. Not happening. My body immediately went into a fight-flight-freeze response. I freaked out. If I went with them, I'd have to talk. I'd have to order the food myself, and the worker would be looking at me, and they'd be judging me, and I'd mess up somehow. Then everyone would make fun of me--my brother and father included. Of course, I couldn't just say that, so we talked in the usual circles. "I don't want to go." "Why don't you want to go?" "I just don't want to." "Well you have to go." "I'm not going." "Why is it such a big deal?" "I don't know! I just don't want to!" "That's not a reason!" "I don't want to talk." "Why don't you want to talk?" and so on and so forth. I didn't know why I had such a strong reaction, I just knew I had to listen to that instinct or else. Or else what, you may ask? I have no idea.

During my recent month-long winter break, I only went outside once. I'm still not quite ready to get into the weeds about my month-long isolation. To be fair, for a week there I was still recovering from covid, but after that... I was just terrified. After so long, stepping foot outside meant admitting defeat, didn't it? It meant finally accepting that it was unhealthy. It meant finally acknowleging how long it had been. People would be able to see it in the way I moved or hear it the way I spoke. Stepping into the sunlight, blinded by it, shrinking away from it like a creature of the night, they would be able to tell I didn't belong. They would know I was wrong. That I was a failure.

My partner is on a trip out of town right now, visiting family. Before she left she was doting on me, anxiously asking if I had everything I needed and if I'd be okay. I was confused by this for a while. Did she think I was incapable of taking care of myself?

Then she left.

Over the first few days on my own I got a lot of chores done, played some video games, and made plans with friends. I cancelled and rescheduled my plans with friends. I cancelled and rescheduled my plans with friends again. I made a plan to run an errand, then found every excuse to put it off another day. I wanted to eat something, but I didn't have groceries. I didn't stock up on enough to eat before my partner left. I asked my friend to walk to the store with me--I made it seem like I was just grabbing a few snacks. After they left, I felt guilty. Why couldn't I have just gone out on my own? Why did I have to rope them into my paranoia?

The next day, I woke up at 3pm. I didn't intend to wake up at 3pm, it just happened. I grabbed some groceries finally.

Today, I had to be honest with myself. I am afriad to go outside. I am afraid to go outside alone. I am afraid to walk around my building alone.

Today, I realized when I'm afraid, I lock down. I shut myself into the smallest possible space I can find. I close off from everything, so nothing can hurt me.

But isolation also hurts me. I have to reach out to people. I have to ask for help when I need it. I have to be honest with myself. I need help.

Whew! What a doozy. To any readers, please don't worry about me. I'm fine. I've got a good support system. I just forget that sometimes!

March 9, 2024

Whew. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to slow down and come back to this site. I know it’s only been a couple weeks, but it feels longer when my life upends itself so dramatically with a change of scenery.

I’ve been back at school for a week or so now, which has been lovely. I missed the city, I missed going outside (more on that another time), and I missed my friends. I didn’t miss school so much, but it’s my last semester before graduation so at the very least it’ll all be over soon. I actually really like a lot of work I’ve made recently, which is promising.

I’ve been making a lot more traditional work lately. For a while, I believed that digital art was simpler, easier, or faster than traditional work… but for me, it really isn’t. Working digitally frustrates me to no end. When I work traditionally, my pencil behaves exactly as I want it to, without having to adjust any settings. When I draw a line, it appears exactly where I meant for it to be. There’s no opportunity for absolute perfection in traditional work. Once you put down a line, it’s there. Even if you erase it, you might’ve indented the paper. You can’t get rid of your artist’s hand. You’re forced to live with your mistakes instead of redrawing something a hundred times, adjusting your stabilization, and trashing the entire piece. When working digitally, I’d often find myself zooming out and realizing how ugly the piece I was working on was. When working traditionally, I’ve only been pleasantly surprised when I return to the studio. It just feels better.

That isn’t to say I don’t like digital art—I LOVE digital art. I just think, for me, I needed to go back to basics to find myself again. I’ve been loving it! It’s also made me think about how I want to make digital art, or how I want to think about it. For example, my weird collages and the button I made for my site—these are things I could only create digitally. I’ve been thinking a lot about this interview with Tony Domenico, the creator of Petscop, and the talk he links to in it, “Stop Drawing Dead Fish”. Of course, I haven’t yet made anything that would count as an Alive Fish™, but I have changed my mindset from, “this digital art piece should look like it was made traditionally” to, “this digital art piece should use its medium as best it can to communicate as clearly as possible”. Thats the key, to me: communication. It’s nothing groundbreaking, obviously, but I think that art exists to communicate.

Over the years I’ve grown increasingly tired of Instagram Art— the kind of thing that exists only to look pretty. I’ve seen enough hyperrealistic lips and eyes to last a lifetime, and enough studies of the same 20 conventionally attractive Pinterest girl portraits with color dodged highlights to fill a museum. I’m sick of the hyper-marketable Webtoon style and the cookie-cutter plagiarized plot lines. I’m sick of art that has nothing to say except “look at me, aren’t I attractive?” I’ve made a lot of art that has nothing to say, mainly for portfolio pieces or to meet a deadline, and I was heavily inspired as a young teen by the artwork I saw that was like this online. I’m still working to break these habits, and sometimes you just want to draw something because it’s pretty, but I’ve been trying to remind myself to ask, “what do I want to say?” before starting.

All this is not to say that art that doesn’t have a clear message isn’t worth anything. I love modern art, for example, which a lot of folks think doesn’t have anything to say. I’m sure some of it doesn’t! I don’t know. I’m not the arbiter of truth or whatever. All I know is that often, when standing in front of a piece, be it Nick Cave, Rothko, or a classmate’s, that I feel the artwork reaching out to me, begging me to make a connection. I’m sure it’s different for everyone, triggered by different things, but I doubt that any art piece, made with intention, is incapable of making someone, somewhere feel something. I probably sound pretentious now, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

Here’s to going outside, making art, and loving people!

January 24, 2024

...is to not have Covid again. Fuck.

See, I had all of these grand plans for my last holiday break ever, but I guess I've never been a very lucky person. Anything that could go wrong, will go wrong is my new rule of thumb. Instead of being able to rest for a few days before getting back to the grind, I'm forced to do nothing but scroll for hours on end. Am I probably doing what I would have done anyway? Most likely. At least for the most part. But I don't know how long it'll be until I can start working again.

My college has this increasingly frustrating attendance policy--especially when combined with the global, life-threatening pandemic--where if you miss any more than three sessions of any class, you fail that class. You'd think the fact that our classes meet once per week would make this easier to work around, but life has other plans. A list of maladies that have plagued me just from the beginning of this last semester:

• Had to go out of town for a convention, came back at midnight in pouring rain, and no one had an umbrella, so we all got soaked... and my laptop was in my bag. :'-]
• Spilled boiling hot coffee on my foot, causing blistering that still hasn't fully healed.
• Kidney infection--an already horrifying condition, made worse since I have pre-existing kidney problems (like, since birth).
• Kindey infection part II because they gave me the wrong kind of medication for an entire week before correcting it.
• Got sick.
• Had a bad reaction to eye drops I was using and basically had constantly dry, red eyes for 2 months.

So anyway, that combined with ADHD meant I wasn't sure how many of my classes I had skipped by the end of the semester, so I just forced myself to attend each one faithfully until break started. Of course, that's when the universe decided to fuck me over again...

I shuffled into my last class of the semester with my head down and beelined for the back corner of the classroom, which was thankfully unoccupied. As it happens, people come in late to class, and one person sits right next to me. That's fine on a normal day, but this girl was obviously incredibly sick. She was hacking up a lung for half of the class, sheepishly trying to curl up into a ball to avoid people's stares. It took me a while to notice, but when I did I figured, "okay, she's masked, and I'm vaccinated, boosted, etc. and all I have to do is just excuse myself to the restroom and find a new seat. It's not her fault she's sick, I just don't want to catch anything..."

Nope. No dice. I was sick in exactly FOUR days, and greeted on the fifth day by my first ever positive Covid test, as well as the worst symptoms I've had since February, 2020 (more on that later).

I was scared as HELL to be sick again. I'm pretty sure I took more than the recommended dose of nearly every cold medication that's out there. I was so out of it by the end of the day that I misread the clock on the microwave in my dorm as saying 1:04am instead of 11:04pm and exasperatedly told my partner to go to sleep, "since it was so late." She seemed confused at the time, but I didn't think anything of it until I woke up later that night at 12:45am. It was only then that I realized I made a mistake. Even in my medicated daze I knew time travel wasn't the most likely explanation.

You may wonder why I said I have Covid again if this is my first ever positive test, and let me explain: In February of 2020, a friend of mine flew up from Virginia to visit me and my partner in NYC for the release of the first Sonic movie on Valentine's Day. We explored a bit with them for a while before making our way to the movie theater, where we thoroughly enjoyed our experience. You can see my partner's review of the movie here.

After that cinematic masterpiece we crashed at my friend's hotel room. I woke up to a pulsing migraine. Chalking it up to sleep deprivation, I started my walk to class. I started my walk to class. I started my walk to class. I started my walk. I started. I--

That's funny... I walked maybe a few feet out of the hotel doors when I nearly dropped to my knees on the pavement. I felt like I was going to faint--and hard. I started to panic. I called my partner, who didn't answer. Probably still asleep--I did my best not to wake them. I called my friend. They picked up. Thank god. I explained what happened while tears welled up in my eyes. Something is very wrong, I thought, I'm not going to make it back up to the room. I begged them to come get me as I turned back towards the hotel lobby. A voice in my head told me my friend wouldn't be able to carry me to the room if I fainted.

She came and got me after I waited in the lobby for a bit, hyperventilating and hoping no one thought I was suspicious (I doubt I looked as concerning as I felt). I passed out as soon as I got up to her room. I don't remember a lot of the time between then and finding out that Covid was a thing, but I know I slept a LOT. Like, a concerning amount.

It took me a few months to realize I probably caught Covid in that theater on Valentine's Day, or was exposed on the subway or something like that. I may have dealt with "Long Covid" symptoms for maybe a year or two after. I struggled a lot with breathlessness and fatigue, but I think I've gotten back to normal since then. As normal as one can get, at least.

Well, at least I'm feeling better now on day four or five of my actual symptoms, but not fully back to normal. I'm being forced to really slow down and rest, though, which is nice. Speaking of--I should probably get some shut-eye.

December 23, 2023