journal 4

I have felt like the last two years have been forfeit due to my mental illness worsening. I'd like to try to work on that. Here are some goals for the new year:

• Get onto a better sleep schedule.

• Attempt to progress artistically instead of regress. I want to center original art, and re-find my love for colors, textures, lines, form.

• Get back into coding; finishing my plan to implement lightbox into gallery pages that do not have them, updating the misc. and links pages, (or consolidating them) and adding new pages when I am inclined to instead of merely sitting on the idea.

• Do all things when I want to do them instead of sitting on the idea. I am often pinned in place by fear and can not do anything.
"How we spend our days is how we spend our lives."

• On the other hand, remember that if something feels wrong to do, it is for a reason. I don't serve myself or others by consistently having the wrong priorities.

• Visit my best friend.

Earlier in December I actually for the first time since this began not only wanted to get better, but felt I may be able to move on, if only I permit myself to. I only felt that grace period because I had hit a rock bottom previously unprecedented and it somewhat snapped me out of it. It's hard to maintain this motivation; to ignore how each year has only gotten worse and to believe that I have the willpower to change it. I have went back and forth between my "End of year letter" being a suicide note or a promise to become a radically different person and solve everything.

I want to say it somewhere and it might as well be here: I want to make 2025 a good year so that afterwards I can call it. I regret not committing in 2023. I regret not committing during any of the times this year that I wanted to.

Regarding art: I can no longer draw without thinking about how I've deteriorated. I've been managing feeling psychologically restructured on top of my creative motivation becoming diminished and warped. I'm ashamed of how I've regressed. I am still disgusted, afraid, and upset at everything I make. There is nothing that is not undercut by this feeling.

I still love drawing despite all of this and I'm going to do it until it's over. Sometimes I don't understand how I can still love it but I do.

It's exasperating to find traces of hope. It's exhausting to feel the way that I do all the time and then, maybe just once or twice a year, *really* want to live, because I want to keep loving art and music and people the best I can, and I want to wake up somewhere new. I want to keep witnessing unfamiliar things grow beloved to me, even and especially when it's scary. I wish I could just stop, but I have to keep pushing for a little bit longer.

I'm really grateful to my parents for taking care of me and my friends for wanting to be around me. You don't know why or how much I appreciate it.

Here's a brighter final verse that I find important to say because I have been grieving a lot:

I hope you keep finding reasons to keep living and making art. I don't care if you think you're someone who doesn't deserve it. You're not a bad person, you're not tainted, and you have nothing to be absolved from. If you need someone to be mad at, I'm fine with being that person. If you need to be forgiven by someone, you're forgiven. We can all carry and dissipate grief together. Please be open minded and kind to each other. ☮🧿🌀

Thanks for being here. Happy new year.

Today is my birthday. I turned 20.

I've been thinking about how we shame people for missing their adolescence or not adjusting to adulthood quickly. "Grow up." It's not wrong to be frustrated when people are immature or irresponsible, obviously, but I'm taking a brief, perhaps selfish moment to say it's difficult closing that chapter of my life.

I'm not saying I'm not still young. I'm saying it's sad to come to grips with the fact my childhood and teenage years are objectively over. I never improved my relationship with my family, I never left my house, I never saw any of my friends for a single day or had the opportunity to meet new ones, I neglected learning to drive and I'm now 20 without a diploma, GED, any job experience, or life experiences at all. I barely expressed myself or experimented because I was afraid. I diminished myself as much as possible, choosing not to talk in real life because I didn't want to subject anyone to it. I wasted a lot of time, against my will and otherwise. And now I simply have to accept that what happened during the last 7 years is not rewritable.

I shouldn't complain. My parents traded a "real life" for me in exchange for being safe. So... I don't know. ^_^

I forgot about this guy on DeviantArt I never dm'd with but I guess tangentially knew, maybe he followed me, anyway one day he sent me a note with just a Youtube link to Winters Love by Animal Collective.

I dunno why, since he never explained when I confusedly thanked him and asked if there was a reason for it, and we didn't speak again. So that's my favorite Animal Collective song and the reason I started listening to them.

Kind of similar feeling as to when an anon sent me the lyrics to Dreams by Fleetwood Mac on a particularly joyous day and I wished the end credits would play right then. People kept wordlessly inflicting those moments of closure on me. Appreciated it, though.

Does that ever happen to you? A song plays and you'd be content if everything faded to black right there? Not nihilistic, it's happy...

Hi, I'm back from my trip. I have been for a few days.

It was nice to walk along the coast, wading through dead jellyfish, collecting agates, and seeing colorful starfish and round green anemone huddled together in dark overhangs that dripped into the tide pools below.

Pretty as a postcard, I thought.

My favorite location was those tide pools, where during the walk there the sunrise shone through forested cliffs and cast god-rays above the sand.

At the outmost point of the cliff there were more big black boulders in the ocean, where the birds congregated, and large grey-white waves crashed against them, which I could watch shortly before it would pool at my feet.

We thought it was mysterious that there were more tall rocks beyond the cliff-wall you could peek around at low tide. The entrance became unsurpassable at high tide. If I were alone I would have liked to have gone to that hidden place.

I enjoyed the beach house too. I did not want to leave.



I haven't had a bad time back home, I would even say I'm happy. I've spent most of my time reading Subarashiki Hibi.

By the way I found out that the host of my favorite Naruto webpage that has been active for ages shut down in August. ;_; I actually yelled when I visited my bookmark and it redirected. Futaripocchi...!!!!! It meant so much to me that someone cared to post about it in a heartfelt way for so long, and it must hurt losing a personal website like that... I feel bad for the webmaster.

It huurtssss... well maybe more is archived than I think, and it'll be back someday.

I hope the dregs of Summer are treating you kindly.

had a crazy stress dream where about 4 different horrible things were happening at once and i woke up suffocating in the heat with a headache all across my skull, my joints ached in a way that i thought my limbs would snap off, and my previous wounds stung like they had spontaneously started bleeding again (1 of them did, i found out) and i became worried that dark forces were going to barrage me if i got out of bed to turn the fan on, which is a childish fear i don't have often anymore. so you know the nightmare was good when it reduces you to primal instinct

i felt borderline nauseous when i got up so i ate and took pills and stuff ^_^ i put on soft clothes and exercised and watched naruto as well because it's nice to be gentle... i feel kind of a big sense of apocalyptic dread today but it's a little fun, that's summer in my opinion

i keep thinking about this day the other week where i sat in the field muttering until the blood on my hands and feet attracted flies, and the sweat pooled under my shirt.

i can't go outside right now because it's bad, i feel kind of crazy blocking all the windows in my room but the sunlight is weird as usual and i don't want to look at it because it encourages the dread

there's a lot of good music all the time, and i'm going on vacation next month

Continuing on my Yuasa kick, I finished Ping Pong the Animation last night. I really enjoyed it. (more than Kaiba which I also watched recently, as evidenced here. Kaiba is beautiful, but it's not as catered to me as an individual as Ping Pong is.)

An aversion to the art style is not something I can relate to, as I find the expressive linework extremely resonant and I had to keep pausing to admire how perfect it is. What an incredible adaption of Matsumoto's style to screen. It's the type of creativity that compels my affection to overwhelm me. Kaiba also has this sort of quality to it but I simply prefer realism.

The overall presence of the show reminds me of summers past, which seemed vivid and full of hope. It's a memory-feeling I'm super grateful to have called on again as my resolve has been faltering.

The story and characters are pretty great. The voice acting is also killer. (I don't know what the English dub sounds like.) I would recommend it if you like animation, regardless of if you think sports are interesting. There is a lot of onscreen text so I recommend this subtitle project.

I honestly felt a little stronger watching it. Go see it!



Next I should probably watch Tekkonkinkreet, if I liked Matsumoto so much.

new moon activities

walk around the woods monologuing all morning until it's too hot to survive

lay on couch eyes closed as if dead and then take a shower

blow-dry my hair too much, braid little sections of it out of boredom, a game of how long i can keep them in without it bothering me. having a layered hairstyle means that breakage just adds to the layers and i don't really notice #lifehack

overhear a distressing phonecall while eating trail mix

put piece of paper that has been showing up in my dreams as an object representing fear for the past 7 months in a drawer finally and then do yoga to try and not think about how stupid it is that i only just now did that

acknowledge how my dreams have been so much worse lately it's as if my unconscious mind were an engine working on making more vivid iterations of the one before, not loving it

my current belief is that if even 1/3rd of a day was happy then the day was good. happiness is the absence of unhappiness

it's the end of pride month and i wanted to talk a bit about transgenderism

I tend to avoid dicussing my gender in any solid way. This may not be an entry I keep up forever because it doesn't feel good to "come clean."

I've noticed lately that I have a decent amount of internalized transphobia. I think it's because of how I was treated when I was a preteen attempting to pass for the first time. I can't quite blame other people for simply acknowledging how I look, (I was a little 90 pound boy with long hair,) but it very quickly dawned on me how difficult it was to elicit the reaction I wanted.

My mother loves me and is very supportive of people like me. Yet she made me feel like I had contracted a disease when I implied that it was something that could happen to her own kids.

I stuffed the length of my hair into a hat every time I went out and people would ask what was under it or pull it off me. I was in a relationship with another boy and I was deeply humiliated when he asked if I was trans. He loved me as well, though when I finally sent a photo of myself, properly and painstakingly positioned so that I looked flat, having my hair hidden, wearing my least clockable clothes, I was still complimented on how I looked "cute, like a femboy."

I remember being criticised by the director of my theater group that I could not walk like a boy, as was my part in the play. I was made to stride across the stage over and over, each time my gait was "wrong", and I'd try again failingly. I don't blame her for doing that but it hurt for it to bluntly be made known that my best was not good enough.

❄

All that is to say is that as I have grown up and my relationship with gender has matured, I prefer being vague; if I don't say I'm anything in particular, people won't necessarily see me as "a girl who is trying to be a boy." Maybe they will even assume I'm a man, and that feels like winning, somehow.

I feel disgusted at myself that the topic of FTM transexuality sometimes makes me embarassed. I can't say that I was a transmedicalist, and I'm certainly not now, but it's as if some of that ideology still prevails in me.

I don't have an issue with my gender or sex when I'm by myself. Even if the feelings mentioned above spawn from self-loathing, I've reached a point where I'm happy as long as I'm in a vacuum. The issue is when I'm forced to consider what other people see me as. Having an outward presentation is an impassable obstacle: I have to choose what to be.

I wish I were cisgender in either direction. Instead I have this gynandromorph brain that simultaneously makes me feel free, and gives me despair. I like being amorphous. I like confusing people. I don't want anything I'm saying to make it sound like I do not believe that being transgender is a beautiful thing. It's just difficult.

Women are incredible and I really want to be one. I'm striving not to be transgender but it's not working.

I'm trying to stop thinking about how appealing HRT is to me and has been for years, because it'd make things harder. I'm unstable on the best of days, so why would I put my loved ones through that, too? I attempt to ignore my physical dysphoria. I accept what I cannot change. I don't even hate my body; someone I love lives here.

I'm not always uncomfortable identifying as a woman. I don't let it sting anymore, because I have to be stronger than that. I feel it creep up when I leave my house once every 6 months and become hyperaware of the fact no one else can identify the nuance I feel inside. The freedom comforts me, and it dissipates in the presence of others.

❄

I'm one of those annoying people who "doesn't do labels" and I don't like any pronouns for myself. I have been trans for a very long time compared to how long I've been alive, and due to how I've been made to feel about identifying that way, I don't feel inclined to grasp hold of any particular identity like "genderfluid" or "genderqueer" because I'm not interested in quantifying it.

I don't have a conclusion to this.
I don't know what I want you to visualize me as.

That's a lie. I fully know, and I know it's not attainable. If I try to be honest about myself for too long I'll inevitably break the act, which is what I'm doing today. I feel guilty that I don't want to be what I was assigned. Though I suppose wanting to present yourself differently online is a very natural thing.

I'm going to try to live and die as a woman because it'll make it easy for my parents. I know I will fail and I will still visualize myself with broad shoulders, and remember fondly how great it felt to be mistaken for a man, and when I re-enter society I will probably wear mens clothes. I guess what really matters is that when I'm in the ground I won't picture myself as anything at all. That's what I want to be, a part of nature, defined only by nature's rules.


i hope you can be free someday

listening to old nicole dollanganger albums lately and thinking good god man who let me be into these when i was 11 lol i remember sitting at the family computer hover-handing the volume knob because the lyrics in ode to dawn wiener were craayzay

i'm on a forgiveness tour lately extending grace toward people i harshly misjudged because i'm an #adult now and nicole's biggest crime was being cringe on tumblr so idc

my kneejerk reaction is still to look down on her music but what can i say it's kind of good... have had blood brothers and adam (reformatory) on loop the last couple days skull fuck you cold mouth full of blood yes sir



and the production in her newest album sounds good #yes

They came out better than expected.



I almost don't want to use them. I just put them away for now.

I pressed flowers today. It's not prime season for them yet but there's still some things in bloom I thought I'd give an attempt.

For Christmas I received a flower pressing kit, which is composed of two wooden blocks and a bunch of layers of special material, which you bind together with straps. It was satisfying to fasten it as tightly as possible. I don't know how gentle I am supposed to be so I opted for monstrous strength.

Some flowers were slightly wet, like the apple blossoms, so I don't have high hopes for them.

I will update in a few days.

P.S. The kit came with an X-acto knife.
I used it to make this Gregory Horror Show papercraft instead.

It's so beautiful. Please don't ever view my site again.

i said something about photos and then never delivered. so let's do it!

there was a big storm that knocked everyone's power out and caused a lot of damage. (felt a bit like the yokohama kaidashi kikou ova i watched recently where alpha's cafe gets destroyed by the wind... i remember thinking, wow, i'm glad we've never had weather like that. )

i had a childlike mind about it when i went out to check out the aftermath by myself, since there were fallen trees to play on and under, and a huge one broke the neighbour's fence so now i don't have to climb over that spikey rusty thing to get to that part of the woods anymore. that's always the silver lining to this kind of destruction, i get to experience the land in a way i hadn't before. i can go new places, and watch everything grow back a little different.

but yesterday i took a walk with my mom and though i was already depressed about it, the sadness really set in. a few years ago all of this forest was ravaged by wildfire which was (and continues to be) a very difficult thing for the people who live here. for a few seasons i couldn't go outside without getting... i'll just say upset. the fire killed most of the trees + brush and disturbed the pack of the soil, so this storm easily uprooted these weak dying things, and made a mess of them.

it can be hard living in the valley of the shadow of death!


(click to expand)

still, i don't want to be really negative. it hurts and it'll be a lot of work to clean up, and this winter has had no peaceful snow and has been too warm and with too many extreme spikes in weather, the pelting ice and flooding, but...! this is where i live and i will always love this forest even if i must watch it die, and i have, and i will.


haku and zabuza are also present as usual. physical form...??!

that picture is similar to a painting i'm doing right now though i started it before i took that. i like the idea of walking for a long time and someone being contented just to watch your back. ^_^
до свидания~!

new layout :-) it took a while to come up with something i liked as much as the katamari theme. i may still tweak things, is it ok...?

the background is from mushishi, and there's nikaido and kaiman, and zabuza&haku damaged sprites, all these things i like...

the miharu in the bg will be covered soon so let's enjoy the short time that he is here. next time, i will share photos i think.