HELLO!

Whenever I join an online community of any type, I know that, eventually, I’ll get overwhelmed and will just disappear. Then the thought of coming back will cross my mind, followed by guilt and embarrassment and anxiety, and that usually results in me avoiding the site and feeling like I don’t belong there anymore, because I left.

That’s sort of what happened with Spacehey, even though I didn’t want it to be the case. I really enjoy this site, and even when I started feeling anxious about some people on the platform, I really wanted to stay.

So… I’m coming back, I guess?

Yes, I’m overwhelmed, that’s still the case. Life hasn’t been super nice to me lately, but some really nice things happened too and I don’t want to discredit the positive impact those things had on me. I don’t want to discredit or invalidate any of my feelings; good things happened, bad things happened, I felt happy, I felt sad. Such is life. I’m allowed to feel all of my feelings, the good and the bad; only then I can move on.

I made some “new” discoveries about myself, and I say “new” in quotation marks because these are things I already knew about myself but I didn’t let myself admit or tried to push away to appease the people around me. I met new people, online of course, who are really supportive and wonderful friends. They have been encouraging me to embrace my silliness and express myself through words, art, everything. I even re-discovered my love for playing pranks and pulling my friends’ legs (funny cause one of them had no idea what “pulling your leg” means, and it was hilarious to see his reaction after we explained it to him).

I feel like I’ve grown a lot, but sadly my fish tank, or pot, or enclosure, is a bit small at the moment. My home life is unstable, uncomfortable, and oppressive. But it’s what I have for now, so I’m doing my best to handle it in whichever way I can and have fun in the meantime.

That’s what has been going on. I left because I was overwhelmed, even though I love the site and the people I’ve met here, I just couldn’t keep up with anything. I still don’t know if I can, but I miss being here and being silly and posting my art.

Speaking of art! I’ve been… trying to make art. I’m taking it slow, letting my burnout heal while satisfying that compulsion to draw and write I’ve felt since I was little. I’m not working on any project in particular, and I draw a lot of cringey shit, but I’m happy with it, and I hope I’ll have the courage to share some of it here. I also no longer have a set style… so yeah…

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

-Lain

PS: STILL ALIVE!