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Idiosyncrasea

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I see that, at the time of posting this, there’s still 198 people watching me. Somehow not much of a reduction after the 8 months I’ve been inactive on here. I’ve only been coming on here to gradually go through the list of literally 1,500 people whom I’ve watched, and rewatching various people and groups on my new account. Namely, people who still seemed active recently, whose works still interest me, and who I thought might not mind me watching them (though it's possible I occasionally could've been mistaken). I am fairly comfortable on my new account (relatively new, now 8 months old), and I intend to stay there long-term. Meanwhile, I’m now extremely uncomfortable on this old account. 

8 months ago I’d posted another journal on here, which basically said the same stuff as in that last paragraph, but because it was a panicky mess, I deleted it. Now that I’m more clear headed about this stuff, I want to have one more try at coming clean on here. 

After this journal has been up for one week, I will no longer log onto this account. The last time I'll be on here is the 15th. Even if you're not going to watch my new account, why not unwatch  this one to help tidy your watch list a little. 


Anyhow - content warning, in the rest of the journal, there will be mentions of emotionally abusive family, internet drama, depression and suicidal thoughts. Please note, I only have suicidal thoughts myself, I never want anyone else to resort to suicide, I never intend to push anyone to thinking about it, if I ever do I feel terrible. I know that many people in the world struggle against suicidal thoughts, please keep enduring and seek help, such as from helplines and/or therapists. 

So, one thing is that I’ve recently decided that I'm no longer comfortable with my account being followed by people who seem to be friends of those who showed highly negative opinions of me, and are also in a particular discord server that I'll never name (in which a negative public announcement about me was posted) - unless the friends-of-them talk to me a bit (like even just a brief note) and clearly show that they don’t think I’m a malicious monster who might go on a rampage at any moment. I’ve decided that I’ll otherwise start resorting to softblocking in these situations, starting a week from now. I will keep my newer account's watcher list hidden for at least a few months. 


Also, although the last time was months ago - if anyone sends me any sort of message, pertaining to this situation, that really, really hurts me, I will not answer, and I’ll likely also permanently block you on my active account. 


Basically, I want to say, yes, I acknowledge that I screwed up, and I am not trying to make excuses, I’m just trying to say I’m not malicious, and explain why. Accidentally hurting someone does NOT change the fact that someone was hurt, and I HATE hurting people. But I also hate feeling like people could be having an even worse opinion of me than I’ve had of myself, and uncertain of how far that might be spreading. And I’m also saying basically why I poofed on here, while trying to keep people anonymous

So I will try to speak as minimally as possible about online people involved in this incident, and I will NEVER say their names, and I will do my best to avoid hinting who they are. For this reason, I have stored almost all of my gallery, including everything relevant to people involved in this incident (as well as loads of unrelated stuff), and I have deleted my gift art collection on this account. 

Also, I’ll never lie about who I am on any of my account. Just because I may not immediately go out of my way to immediately tell everyone that I’m the same person on both accounts if I wasn’t going to converse with them, doesn’t mean I expect to fool anyone. And if I do converse with people I talked to on the old account, I will tell them. If I want to avoid people, I will avoid interacting in any way and will likely avoid groups they’re in unless they’re giant groups (and even then, that feels risky). I have moved accounts a handful of times before, years ago, and have been recognized by some people who barely knew me and/or hadn’t seen me in a long time.

So… at the start of this year, a now-ex-friend and I had each been in extremely stressful, long-lasting offline situations, which happened at close to the same time. I’m never going to say or hint what happened to my ex-friend, because I believe that would be violating her privacy. I’ll just say what happened on my end. 

My brother got in trouble, and it reminded my mother of mistakes I made seven years ago. Our mother is very two-faced. Much of the time, she’s very nice and caring. But when stressed, she can get cruel, jumps to conclusions and is determined to play the victim. 

I was sitting in my room, minding my own business when I heard her start screaming at my brother downstairs, on and on, and she kept insulting both him and me, extreme, over-the-top unfair insults. And swearing repeatedly. When she’s mad she tends to repeat things over and over, any way of answering provokes her and ignoring her also provokes her. There were several bouts of this that were spread across at least a month, much more frequent and numerous than usual, and more insult-saturated. I both felt very sorry for my brother, and I felt slapped in the face because I thought that the old issues from years ago had already been cleared up way back. But I’d never been able to fully trust my parents ever again since then, especially not mom, and clearly she didn’t fully trust me (though she shows signs of not fully trusting anyone anyhow). 

By that point, I'd been trying to get an entry-level job for more than a year, but apparently it’s just been hard to get jobs in my city lately. I suggested to my brother that if things ever got too much for us, we could pool whatever money we had saved and would hopefully earn, move out and share an apartment until we might be able to afford separate homes. But he said no, despite everything he was apparently still determined to aim directly for his own eventual home. And later on in 2019, I decided I really wanted to aim to go to graphic design college, anyway. 

Anyhow - I think depression can, in a way, be comparable to being prone to bad colds. Obviously more serious than a cold, but anyway - you know, you can't help getting a cold, sometimes you're under the weather. That doesn't necessarily mean you're not interested in being healthy. And when suffering a bad cold, you might not feel up to doing some things that you'd normally love to do. 


However - you still have the responsibility to try to avoid spreading your germs! When having a severe cold, this can be hard, but it is still way better to have tried your best than to not try hard enough. Otherwise that is unfair to people around you. And it is mainly your own responsibility to try to avoid getting sick as much as you can, and to fight it off when you get it. It'll never go away instantly and you may have relapses, but you really should still try your best to combat it. 


And if two people are in deep water, far from shore, struggling not to drown side by side... in some situations, they might be able to help each other. But in other circumstances, being too near each other during this time would hinder their efforts to keep their heads above water. Help is still good, but it's safest, for both yourself and others, to make sure you're only really seeking help from those who are ready to help. I should've been more careful. 

I’m diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and tourette's syndrome. The last one is probably the most problematic. Here is a good article about effects it can have besides just tics: tourette.org/resource/ts-tics-…

I do have some tics, but what’s worse is that my tourettes is proven (with neurofeedback) to disinhibit my emotions - both in feeling them and expressing them. 

I have been getting neurofeedback to treat my tourettes, anxiety and depression for the past four or five years, once a week until, sometime in early-to-mid 2019, it was increased to twice a week. I've been told that this more frequent treatment seems to be noticeably increasing the improvement. I really hope so, I really hate hurting, and I really hate causing hurt in any way, and I want to be better at successfully making people happy more consistently. 


So by this point, I can usually stop myself from showing emotion when I shouldn’t, and from feeling too strongly. It only gets the better of me when I’m very stressed. And with most people, I’ve already had no real issue with because anxiety keeps me from interacting much with most people anyway. I have also been clingy to close friends in the past, and tourettes may have contributed to that, but I never want to let myself get clingy again. And I need to believe I am capable of that. Otherwise I have no hope of finding and holding onto any actual job or any kind of human relationship other than with my parents, brother and one grandma.

Anyway, yeah - if I’m very stressed, I can get defensive, but I’m not a malicious person - I never say or do things with the purpose of hurting people, if I do hurt people then I had another intention, like trying to be understood or responding to a bridge appearing to be burned. I cannot recall ever insulting anyone except by complete accident, or attempting to deflect my mother if she keeps hurling the same insults at me for literally an hour or so. 

I cannot recall ever attempting to insult my ex-friend, only getting defensive, and panicky, and trying to explain myself more than I should’ve, and miscommunication when my mind was too frazzled even for my best efforts to work. Perhaps my mother wore me too thin to communicate well. And with my ex-friend having a lot of stress too, I should’ve just left her completely alone for at least a month. 

And if I feel really bad, I will probably apologize, even if it’s to a person who’s told me that I don’t need to apologize to them. That’s not out of spite, that is tourettes making me apologize automatically. 

I used to hit myself with my fists a lot when I panicked. That was tourettes. I used to bash myself with my words a lot, in anywhere from casual to serious situations. That was also tourettes, at least usually. 

About that last thing. I once tried to tell a person that there are rare occasions when I’d use my verbal self-bashing in self defense. That means RARE occasions, most of the time when I’d bash myself, it’s just out of tourettes. Fueled by self hate, not malice toward anyone. At the rare times when I’d do it in self defense (most cases being with my mother), it was to try to say: I already feel bad about myself so please leave me alone. In those specific cases, it might not have always been tourettes. 

I don’t remember how exactly I phrased it to the person. I was in a severe panic at the time, and again, the worse my panic is, the foggier my memory and general thinking are. So such times are terrible times for me to try to say anything serious, because I could misconstrue things. Here are a few relevant articles:

www.verywellmind.com/anxiety-a…

www.rivier.edu/academics/blog-… 

www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/tamin…

Anyway, bashing oneself with words all the time is very maladaptive, harmful to oneself, and to people who care about you (I grew so used to it I’d forget how much it could hurt people who care, and I’d feel awful), and making people who don’t really care think less of you (and possibly people who do care might start caring less about you too - maybe not all of them but some potentially, anyway. And I’m not saying that of anyone specific, just in general). 

Next, here are some web pages that talk about suicide prevention: 

tspn.org/myths-about-suicide

www.suicide.org/suicide-myths.…

www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-… 

www.beyondblue.org.au/the-fact… 

www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/su…

www.familyaware.org/debunk-sui… 

www.ospn.ca/index.php/suicide-… 

suicideactionmontreal.org/en/s…

www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/S…

All websites like this that I can ever recall saying all say that it not only can be okay to talk about suicide with suicidal people, but it can even be helpful, or even important, to talk about it with the right sensitivity. And I tried to do that with an ex-friend, multiple times. In addition to trying to assure her that I don’t hate her, and I just struggle against suicidal thoughts that I’d had for years but are no one’s fault and I probably won’t act on, I also told her that I know that she sometimes has these thoughts too, and I cared about her very much and hoped she’d endure, and might contact a helpline if she needed too. I myself had been afraid of contacting a helpline until early that year, finding out from research that not all helplines will tear suicidal people out of their homes against their will (not only an unnerving to me for that in itself, but I also feared that my parents would get upset at me for calling the helpline and maybe my dad’s career would even be harmed). 

Anyway, it turned out that hearing any mention of suicide still hurt this person (at the very least while she was under extreme stress). And any trigger is valid, whether it’s common or uncommon. This mistake of mine is one I feel particularly bad about (horrified, honestly), literally triggering this person... I'd feel awful about triggering anyone... 

And if I grow to feel very unwelcome, very uncomfortable around someone, and it seems like this is unlikely to change, I’ll drift away, and I won’t want close OC connections with these people anymore. I don't think this automatically means that's punishing them, not with the intention of punishing anyway... If I’m not really attached to someone, I can do this quickly, easily and quietly, but the more attached I was to someone, the longer and harder it takes to break my tie to them, and I’ll be more likely to try to make amends (though sometimes I may get a bit too desperate, and rush it too much in panic, and then things become more of a mess. Trying to put out the fire of a bridge that's already starting to burn, thinking oh no oh no why did I start burning my end too, could I have still put out the fire on the other end? Can I put out the fire on both ends now?) And there’s a point when my side of a bond will never fully break, but eventually I have to see that it’s too damaged to ever be repaired. So I gradually go through grief until the wound of loss slowly scabs over. 

In one of the many groups I was in, just one group as far as I know - a public announcement was made about me, by this old username here. As far as I could tell, it basically said I was a big bad wolf to be shunned and avoided. And offering to show screenshots of the drama to anyone who asked (which I worry might have been cherrypicked, maybe). For whatever reason, the group staff weren’t satisfied with just quietly banning me. And it seemed that they might not have noticed, in the journal I had up at the time, that I mentioned I could still be contacted on this account (it was a long and confusing journal after all), so the group staff didn't tell me themselves that I was banned. Although it’s just a small group, this still gave me extreme anxiety. I heard a mention of the annoucnement, I briefly went in the discord to see what exactly it said, and if there was any gossip about me that I could see, and then I left. I never tried to talk to anyone. If I actually wanted to, then I actually would’ve tried to stay in there to actually try to talk. A group staff member later confronted me but wouldn’t show me the screenshots. And I don’t know how far people might be spreading the word… And I still love DA but such an incident opens one’s eyes to how interconnected its social system really is, all the communities that share people, you know… 

Of course, on a new account I’m still recognizable to people who knew me even slightly (and even people who didn't know me might figure it out, such as by looking at my remaining art on here then at my newer account's stuff), but I still feel relatively more comfortable on it. Maybe there’s no actually reason for that, but ehh…

I spent weeks slowly writing this journal, but this stuff is all still very confusing and painful to me, so if it's a weird jumble then I'm sorry... 

Over the past couple of years that I've had my 'sona and my current username, there've been many people who've been amused by both of these things. And that's been nice to see... But, I've been getting more and more of an itch to change both my 'sona and my username. These things do still kind of amuse me, but they've grown kind of uncomfortable to me, since although potoos are hilariously meme-ish creatures, they also look like embodiments of extreme neurosis, which has been very relatable to me for a long time. But I don't want extreme neurosis to be relatable to me anymore. I hope to get less neurotic and look less neurotic, and I'm hoping that changing my 'sona species to a different, somewhat less neurotic-looking animal might help me distance myself from that. And in addition to not really wanting "potoo" in my username anymore, I don't really want "foolery" in my username anymore either. 

So, if someone would be willing to give me one month of core in return for art, I'd really appreciate that! It's just five dollars, but, well, despite my age, my parents still have control over my money, and I have a hunch that they'd be reluctant to let my buy deviantart core membership... And I'm a bit nervous about asking :'D

I can do either a scene like one of these (with either one or two characters in it):


Or one or two fullbody character drawings without a background, like these:
Sonata by Idiosyncrasea

If you're interested, you can just tell me what character/s you'd like me to draw and in which of these ways, and when I'm done you can send the core (unless you decide to send it before I do the art, but I'm fine with waiting until I'm done!) 
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Well, okay, I have no idea if it's possible for one's mind to be in a natural state that's like being high without ever actually using drugs... but I wonder sometimes. 

Anyway, here is a lengthy assortment of various thoughts; as a warning, I talk about death in some random places, including thoughts about suicidalness near the end (but also thoughts on non-personal death-related stuff like extinction and the savage balance of nature in other places), and I get a bit venty in some places but my main goal is just to write out philosophical-ish thoughts about multiple things. Is it bragging to call ones thoughts philosophical? I don't know, oh well. 

Sometimes I think about how it feels so coincidental that my consciousness happens to be in the specific individual being that it is. How I happened to be born biologically female (and though I’m satisfied enough with identifying as female, I can certainly understand why some people choose to identify as a gender different from the biological sex that they were born as, since societies are generally pretty insistent on foisting gender roles onto people, whether it suits the specific individuals or not)... And how I was born to the parents I was (which I’m also satisfied with, but I find it interesting to imagine how much different my life and traits may have been if I was born to different parents, with how genetics and raising affects how one turns out to be)... And how I ended up with the personality I did (which I’m not entirely satisfied with, though at least that’s one thing that seems relatively easiest to change, even if it can be hard to change)... I even wonder what it would be like to be born as a different species. Anyway, to me, it kind of feels like pressing a randomizer in a game’s character creation generator, except after one press of the randomizer you gotta enter the game with that character, whether you like it or not, and if you want to change anything, you just gotta do your best to change it as much as you can, at whatever point you might be able to after getting into the game.

Also, of all the time periods I could’ve been born in, it’s this one… Not that I’m disappointed, there’s pros and cons for any time period, but, well. It sometimes feels… random?  I also believe that there must be other planets with life on them, and so I also marvel at how my consciousness happens to be in a being on this planet, and not some other planet.


And I also wonder if there alternate realities, parallel universes, could exist, and if so, how many could there be? Infinite? And how much might they differ from one another? Maybe even just a single slight difference, even just one individual’s differing choice, spread across a vast spectrum of parallel realities? If that’s so, maybe the equivelent of myself is the same in some alternate realities and very different in others, ranging across the spectrum, and in some I may not exist at all. Or my consciousness could’ve been in a different person, or even a different species, or even on a different life-bearing planet? But if there are other versions of me in alternate realities, then they still aren’t exactly me, since not only do they differ (even if just slightly), but my consciousness is only in this reality that I’m in. And maybe there’s actually no such thing as parallel universes, I can’t recall hearing any really solid sounding proof.


Sometimes reality seems so surreal to me. Including how coincidental it seems that my consciousness is in the being and the world and the reality that I am in, but also all of reality in general… So I sometimes wonder if it’s possible if reality is somehow some sort of fabrication, and maybe it’s not even entirely real. How, I don’t know. Of course it could really be entirely real and I’m just being silly with overthinking.


Yet another thing I think about is how it’s such a marvel that the planet earth happens to be perfectly positioned and perfectly equipped for life and then happens to develop life, and the whole system of life forms in such perfect balance with all the animals and plants perfectly suited to fitting their roles in the web of life. Even if humans have caused a lot of unbalance in the system (though I actually wonder, if an interventionist god - or gods, or some god-like being/s - exists, and caused nature’s balance to be as death-based as it is, and mass extinctions seem scarily regular-ish through time, then I wonder if maybe, just maybe, humans could’ve been meant to cause the latest mass extinction… but whether or not there is a god - or gods - I kind of hope that the destructiveness of humans was just a very unfortunate coincidence, and that at least some life forms may survive like in the past mass extinctions, even if this current one is probably the biggest one yet...).


I happen to be agnostic, halfway between atheist and spiritual, sometimes leaning slightly more one way, other times leaning slightly more the other way, but generally not leaning one way particularly more than the other. I don’t believe or disbelieve in any particular religions (though I do tend to imagine some sort of god, or multiple gods, or god like being/s, in some other dimension yet somehow able to view and control this one, being a driving force of whatever started life on this planet, and steering evolution and maybe even having something to do with the various mass extinctions), and I certainly don’t expect anyone else to be agnostic, it seems good to respect what others choose to believe (I just hope that people won’t make the personal choice to use their spiritual beliefs or lack of spiritual beliefs as excuses to be hostile to others… As a chicken, I’d probably not do much about that if I saw it happening besides fleeing and hiding, but yeah).  


Speaking of religion, well… in a way, being vegetarian or vegan feels kind of similar to what being religious must be like. Not in all ways obviously, just a certain aspect: choosing to take on a certain belief system, and shaping various aspects of one’s way of life around this… and then when people who don’t live this way find out that this about you, then some of them will automatically feel threatened, being quick to assume that you want to force them to believe what you believe and live the way you live, and sometimes also assuming that you think you’re morally superior to them, even if you’ve never shown any signs of being this way. I rarely see or hear vegetarians or vegans who are actually really hateful or contemptuous toward people who eat meat… and as far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be a stereotype of everyone who eats meat, since, of course, most people do, and everyone varies a lot. But there are sure some overly negative stereotypes of vegetarians and vegans, and a lot of hate toward vegetarians and vegans. Though at least I’ve never heard of vegetarians or vegans getting physically attacked or murdered because of being this. Seems like probably every category that an individual can be is probably stereotyped and hated by some people, though obviously some groups tend to actually suffer more than other groups. Of course, it’s hard to go into adequate detail on that but probably everyone knows plenty of examples of this stuff anyway.

Over the years I’ve heard a lot about negative stereotypes and effects of them, including ones aimed at some categories that I’m part of: woman, vegetarian/almost-entirely-vegan, woman-attracted-to-women, probably-biromantic-or-bisexual-or-panromantic-or-pansexual, maybe-lesbian, one-quarter-canadian-aboriginal-which-isn’t-enough-to-make-me-feel-like-a-real-native-person-but-apparently-enough-for-indian-status-which-i-find-cool. Anyway, since I’ve heard about so many different negative stereotypes, I suppose that by now I can get a bit too quick to get alarmed by hearing generalizations that sound like they might be stereotypes, even when it’s actually just a benign thing and the people didn’t actually believe a stereotype.


As an example (and not one about anyone specific), it’s very common for various people in general to believe that all, or most, cats are aloof, very independent, and think they’re superior to humans, maybe even thinking that they cats are gods. But I’ve known lots of of cats, family pets and fosters and other shelter cats, and a handful of strays and neighbours' pets. Perhaps some can sometimes be aloof, but most of them aren’t really that aloof, just that cats can commonly be shy or reserved, but they still crave lots of attention even if they’re not always confident about seeking it out, and many their ways of communicating are pretty subtle. And just because they’ll sometimes do their own thing, doesn’t mean they don’t care about you. Many cats can be very clingy, and it’s very common for them to get jealous in various ways. And honestly, even if cats demand a lot from people, I really don’t think that they think they’re superior to us; as pets, they depend on us for a lot of what they need, and they know it, and can easily get paranoid about not getting their needs met. And I wonder if they might think that humans have god-like powers, some that we don’t really have, like some seeming upset at us for the weather as if they might think we’re controlling it.


Anyhow, generalizations like the common ones about cats (or some things about non-cats) do seem like they’re usually not harmful to cats, and usually these things are seen more as a joke than really serious beliefs. Some people may still know that not all cats are like this. So I have to be careful about not letting myself generalize about generalizations, and think that every single one is a negative stereotype when sometimes some aren’t a big deal, and might be used as a joke that people aren’t really taking seriously (so, I could even be at risk of getting unfair)… and I’m kind of hypocritical to freak out about generalizations about literally anything as easily as I do, since although I’ve trained myself out of generalizing about most stuff out of personal preference, I still sometimes generalize about some things, a bit at least (like in some parts of this essay-length thing); it’s hard not to…


Back to a vegetarianism related thing again, though. Well, my own personal reason for being vegetarian is that my parents and brother and I are uncomfortable about eating meat, and it’s easy for us to avoid eating meat, and by now we’re very used to it. The four of us do happen to strongly believe in almost all animals being sentient (just maybe not jellyfish or amoebas), highly intelligent and emotionally complex, all with differing personalities… However, I do kinda doubt that most animal species think of things like contemplating the existence of some god, or aliens on other planets (though maybe some of the particularly smart ones might, at least; who knows for sure… I don’t know if anyone asked Koko the gorilla or Alex the grey parrot about this sort of stuff, if not then could be nice if someone could find a way of talking with another animal then try asking them about these things)... These are among the firmest beliefs of my close family and I, to the point that it no longer makes sense how there can be such an extremely massive amount of people in the world think animals aren’t sentient…


Anyway, though… I do not - I repeat, I do not - think that my family and I are morally superior to anyone else just because we don’t eat meat, though. I say this since this is a negative stereotypes about vegetarians and vegans that I hear about a lot from tons of people in general. And obviously there’s been lots of people who did tons of really beneficial things and still ate meat. It’s just a personal choice one can make if one’s in a position that makes it possible. And obviously pet cats need to eat meat, and I don’t want to live without cats in my life. I do think it’s technically still natural for people to eat meat, since tons of animals eat other animals, eating meat is an ancient, deep-rooted part of nature, and so of course it would be deep-rooted in human society too. And it’s extremely difficult to avoid using any products that made use of animals in some way, sometimes even probably-impossible. I’ll switch to another topic now; this one is complicated, and I’m no expert on it, and I don’t really want to offend anyone, even if there might already be risk of that…


So… there’s that particular sort of pain in one’s gut that occurs when one is filled with immense sorrow or a certain sort of heightened anxiety, distinct from a stomach-ache from eating too much or a period cramp, and seeming to be the one sort of gut pain that can last longest without letup, hours upon hours (it can last literally all of one’s hours of being awake in a day, while my period cramps tend to only last about half or two thirds of a day at a time, even if they return the next day)… And while it may not make you double over like an intense period cramp, it might be worse than period pain, because even if a period can negatively effect one’s mood, it’s not as bad as the sort of emotions that drive this sort of pain: On one hand there’s desperate hope, but fearing it might be futile since at the same time there’s immense despair and a sense of bleakness.


Sometimes the reason this happens to me is actually benign; it commonly happens to me when I do giftart for someone and then I really hope they’ll like it but I’m not sure if they really will or not. Other times it may happen when some tragic loss has occurred or seems to be about to occur, sometimes out of my control, like death of a loved one such as a cat. Other times it’s when I screwed up something that matters very much to me and though I hope I might manage to fix it, I fear that I might never succeed at this.


Anyway, well, when this physical pain that comes with this sort of emotional pain arises, an interesting thing is how it tends to make me abruptly lose my appetite, when I normally have a healthy appetite. I’ll still eat anyway out of habit, but even if the food still tastes good, it physically sickens me to eat while in this state. Not exactly nauseous, hard to describe how it feels exactly, but basically like my body really doesn’t want any food.


It’s never been too extreme for me to force myself to eat as much as normal, at least, but if something prompted a more extreme version of this reaction - like a person they love dying, so they despair enough to actually not be able to make themselves eat as much as usual, and for many days in a row instead of just one to a few - then that could cause them physical harm... So… what the heck could the biological reason for this be? Is it that one can get so miserable that for awhile, one’s own body is temporarily driven to try to starve itself? Not that I’d let it, but why would there be such a function? Most things in nature seem to have a reason, so if there’s an actual reason for this occurrence, it’s probably dark… Or maybe it’s more like a disfunction, a body being like a machine and then it kinda temporarily breaks in some ways… but then is there a natural purpose for that too? Would nature drive a being with a physically functioning body to want to function less - maybe even at the risk of withering if this went on too long - just because of pain in the mind? I’m very indecisive about whether or not this seems like it ever could’ve worked into nature’s generally harsh, often-morbid system... I’m probably overthinking this, though, and if there was a reason for this when people were still regular animals in nature, well, it’s probably irrelevant in human society now.

So, while still on the topic of death: as I said before, I’m agnostic, and for the most part, that extends to my view of death. I sometimes wonder if there could be life (or at least, one’s awareness as an individual somehow carrying on) after death (in some other dimension maybe, somehow…?) but… now that I think enough to get to this point, I realize I might not be fully balanced between spiritual and atheistic, since for this topic, I lean more toward believing that death is like falling asleep forever and one’s consciousness never existing at all again. Though of course who can know for sure what happens after death while still alive, anyway… I suppose there are near death experiences, I don’t know what exactly I think of those and I’m no expert on that topic either…


Anyhow well… I suppose this belief about death is a reason why, when I get severely depressed, and my sense of self-worth shrivels and is severely distorted by illogicalness disguised as logic…  then the idea of dying is, in a way, appealing (only myself dying though, I don’t want others to die)… And the concept of suicidalness is honestly rather terrifying, and horrifying, one’s survival instinct being almost entirely overridden… Even if it should normally seem obvious that the immense despair probably won’t last forever and steps can be taken to improve the situation, well, sometimes it can feel like the immense pain actually will last forever, and things can seem more futile than they really are… And even if it should be obvious that people and pets really value you and want you to stay alive and in touch with them, well, sometimes it can feel like one is still mostly harmful and that being gone forever from people’s lives would do them more good in the long run and one’s shrivelled self worth causing underestimation of how much it would really hurt them, and also thinking one’s pets would be entirely fine with just other people… And feeling touch-starved, wishing one could have even-just-platonic affectionate touch from some other human being on a regular basis, but rarely getting it, and fearing one might never find someone who could and would do so... And, well, other stuff along these lines, specific details would vary from person to person but probably common for it to feel basically like this, as it is for me.


But it seems very rare for the survival instinct to be entirely overridden, if it ever is - I suspect that even when someone actually attempts suicide, it’s probably usually only almost entirely, like ninety-something-percent but not quite 100%, at least a bit of a grain of wanting to keep living still existing… Well, I’m no expert on that, but that’s how it is for me. Even if someone actually attempts suicide (which I never have and hopefully will never lose so much control and lose so much hope that I get to that point), well, they still may not really want to die, just desperately trying to escape the pain, and I think it’s probably pretty common for people to hope there’s a better way of doing so than suicide but it’s just overwhelming hopelessness that can drive the false idea that that’s the only way? It’s very, very sad that aspects of modern society have caused depression and suicidalness to become so common, I hope that it’ll become less common in the future, and that currently depressed people (including myself) can endure and hopefully get less depressed over time, even if it doesn’t entirely stop…


Anyway, even if there’s always some downsides at any point in life in general, well, there still tends to be upsides too. So, although I don’t fear death quite as much as I did when I was a kid, I still have some fear of it. Because even at my most depressed moments, there’s still part of me that wants to live. Even if some stuff hurts a lot, there’s still plenty to enjoy, all sorts of experiences that are nice to have, and lovely things to learn about like hearing how various people and various different animals being altruistic, often unexpectedly. And all sorts of art that’s moving or amusing or whatnot, and just animals being cute, and so on. And even if I screw up a lot and get deeply frustrated with myself, overwhelmed by how much there is to fix about myself, feeling awful about mistakes, no idea how much harm really might've been done, and scared I might have such poor self control in the future that I repeat them, well, there are still some things I do, and can do, that I can feel happy with myself about, like caring for the family cats and shelter cats, and I guess doing my art is a kinda nice thing as well even if it’s hard to be satisfied with it. And even if I sometimes feel hopeless in an overwhelming number of ways, I can still focus on small happy things, and once I relax I can regain some hope. 

So, well. I'm actually not entirely sure of the point of writing all this, nevermind posting it, and I hope no one's too bothered by me disabling comments on this; if anyone thinks differently on anything, well, although I'm always curious to hear about others' opinions on whatever (it's only natural for everyone to have their own opinions and would probably be boring if everyone thought the exact same way after all), I'm chicken about the risk of public arguments about beliefs, and I usually don't really like to argue at all about opinions on most of these things... I want to try to be respectful of others' opinions in general as much as I can, and if I disagree then I usually prefer to be a silent chicken (I freak myself out a lot if I ever don't for any reason), and I also hope that others will respect my opinions too even if they disagree, and won't try to pressure me to change beliefs of mine that are important to me... I know I'm not an expert on most of these things, and even if you don't disagree but still would like to say something about any of this, I'd probably feel too awkward to discuss more about my own opinions further in public. Maybe could talk about some of these topics in private, like with notes or discord DM, if anyone ever wanted to, just that if it turned argument, I'd probably shy away or prefer a topic change, or I'd just clam up about my own opinions. But anyway... if you actually read this entire thing, thank you for coming to my TED talk. 
Warning, some heavy talk about some cats getting sick, dying and going to die

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There are some things that can get quite hard and painful, especially when piled up and ongoing at the same time, but still seem like normal life to me... Like I keep on getting either mildly sick or mild allergies for half of every day for months, and hard to figure out why exactly. And getting sore 'cause of the posture I'm in a lot and keeping on forgetting to do stretches. And some family drama. And periods being painful. And since my family has had so many cats throughout my life, even cats growing old feels somewhat normalish, still very sad but at least the aging cat is still around (though on the other hand, imagining any family member, including a family cat, actually being gone forever, feels the opposite of normal since the loved one being around is what feels normal). 

Then there's stuff that feels so abnormal it feels surreal, it's hard to accept the full reality of it. Even if it really is technically just other parts of life. Just less familiar and even more painful. Like premature deaths, and the threat of them, seeming so unfair that it's hard to entirely believe that they could be true. And, as I kind of already said in the paragraph before, well, also the concept of death in general... 

The other day we caught one of the stray cats we've been feeding, a black cat we called Obsi (short for Obsidian if I remember right, I think dad named him). We know he's still young because we saw him outside as still clearly a kitten just last spring. He and the other stray who we've been feeding, an older black cat named Frank, would get into fights a lot across the past year, and especially severely in the past few months. Recently Frank disappeared. There was a sale for getting cats fixed plus getting vaccines that was conveniently at this time, my parents had been arguing about whether or not to keep Obsi ever since he was caught, and continued arguing on the way to the vet (my dad for keeping him and my mom against keeping him)... But when they came home they were both very upset, because they found out that Obsi had feline leukemia, and since he'd gotten into fights with Frank so much, Frank definitely had it too. There was no way of knowing which of them might've had it first, but Frank was probably either dead by now, or would be dead soon. And now, although we had a lot of cats already, now we all felt obliged to keep Obsi after all, in the spare room in the basement where he otherwise would've only stayed temporarily, where we used to keep foster kittens (and would now probably only be able to keep foster kittens in until long after Obsi's gone and then really disinfecting that room thoroughly). Our other cats all have vaccinations to protect then from feline leukemia, it would just be Obsi who'd be at risk if he got a cold or something from them. 

It took me a few hours for me to start absorbing more than just the tip of the iceberg. A couple of hours later more of the reality of it struck me, and I got very distraught, too. And even now the full reality of it hasn't fully sunken in. 

We've owned two cats who turned out to have feline leukemia, and we've had foster kittens who've had feline leukemia. But we got to keep these cats and kittens in our homes for months before we found out they had this. Got to know them without heartbreak tainting things. 

My parents said it might be better to know from the start, but I don't know if that's entirely so. Well, I guess in a way it's good, important even, a reason that probably overcomes the downsides: to do one's best to keep him safe from getting other diseases so that he might live longer. So maybe it''s selfish to not want to know this about a pet. But it's not a perfect thing to know since it sure does taint one's feelings about the pet, or at least mine. 

I like to be able to get to know a cat without knowing this cat is doomed to die young, so I could think it will live as long as cats normally live, and then much easier to focus on being happy about being with the cat. Now I'm afraid of getting to know Obsi. Well, I already knew him a bit, seeing him around the yard, but it seems to me that that's not nearly as much familiarity as seeing a cat around in one's house. I'm afraid of talking much about Obsi, because ever since finding this out, well, at least half the time the talk of him ends up gravitating toward the painful, inevitable fact he has leukemia. And even when this isn't mentioned, the knowledge of it, and fear of it being mentioned, is hovering. Thinking of him, it's hard to not think of him as primarily a victim, a tragedy, and wishing one could save him but knowing this is probably not possible. He might live up to a few more years but he's still probably going to die prematurely, it would be very hard to save him from this. I shouldn't be afraid of getting to know this cat more, or of just looking at him again, but I am. So far I have an excuse not to look, because he might have roundworms and so for now, only my parents go into his room to see him and talk to him, to try to gradually start taming him. When he either turns out to not have roundworms or, if he does, gets cured of them, then my brother and I will have to start taking turns at visiting him too. So I will have to get to know him anyway. I hope we can sometimes at least somewhat forget he has this disease, so we can focus on appreciating having him around and learning his personality, and not always defining him mainly by his disease and then always being sad when seeing him and thinking about him. Well I hope I'll be able to still be glad to know him and not just depressed about how his lifespan will be even shorter than a normal cat's...
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