How I spent the past months (Patreon)

Hey 💙 as I mentioned in my last post, this one is going to be longer! I hope I won't go into „too much information“ territority too much, but I'll put some trigger warnings just in case: mental health, depression, body issues, medications, and more personal stuff

Soo, where do I start? Maybe the good things first 🌻 I'm feeling much better!!

My physical health has improved. My mental health, too. I think a lot of improvement has to do with my mindset, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), and sweet sweet happy and chill pills. The biggest improvement is that I've started to learn how to *really* accept myself.

With acceptance... a lot of things fall into place. It's getting easier to see my body as it is, not as what I wished it would be. I'm accepting what I can do, without judging myself all the time or wishing I could do „more“, or having thoughts like „I'm not good enough“.

The word „more“ loses its meaning when you stand (or in my case, spin) in front of nothing for a while. When there is nothing you can do, the phrase „not good enough“ doesn't exist. Every little bit is suddenly enough. And as scary as it was, it taught me a lot of things. I was looking for the smallest positive things on those days. Like watching birds with my mom while we had morning coffee on the balcony, or enjoying dinner with my family, or listening to the voice of my partner (yeah yeah i know, that was pretty gay). But, it really helped me, and those things were super precious for me in those moments. They still are, every day, and I hope I can keep this feeling with me for a long time. I know a lot of things will be enough for me from now on. I hope myself is included.

In short, the past months made me incredibly grateful 🌻

Really, it did things to me. The last time I had such a huge shift in mindset it resulted in the prototype of Ghost Lights! Something that changed my entire life. Kicked off by a mixture of gratitude and at the same time feeling some kind of urgency that things need to change, and knowing that this is like a second chance. It felt similar. It'd be stupid not to take this current situation to make things better for myself once again. I feel like I'm just at the beginning of discovering some really important things!

I'm going to try to give you some sort of timeline from where it started, to snailing my way back to where I am now!

In August 2019 I noticed a slight dizziness. I felt exhausted and I noticed a drop of energy. I decided to take a short hiatus for 2 months and I hoped that if I'd take a few weeks rest, it'd be gone. At that time I decided to rewrite the plot of Ghost Lights, to shorten the length, so it would become more doable. It eased my anxiety a little and it was a decision I'm still so glad about.

In January 2020 my dizziness was becoming way too noticeable. I noticed that I had trouble focusing, my vision was blurry, I saw double images, and when I followed things in motion, like my hands when i talked, they left a funky trail behind..... Not great for an artist. It was around that time that I paused my Discord server, because I couldn't follow conversations on screen without problems anymore. I had other weird symptoms, too, and it all worried me.

End of January I went to check-ups and I learned that I had some major deficiency and it had resulted in anemia. I have problems with my stomach since 2013, so that's probably where the deficit comes from. So I thought, wow that sure is something and would explain a lot, and I was hoping the treatment would be successful after a few months. So, I waited. The first few weeks I thought it would get better, but...

Then COVID hit the world and gone was the only thing that kept my mental health in check – the structure of daily life. Seeing doctors came with lots of restrictions. A lot of small things went wrong for me in general and I was getting overwhelmed. My anxiety went through the roof, resulting into too much stress for the body, which made my symptoms worse, and so on...

For a few months I went spiraling (I'm sure a lot of us did in 2020). Physical and mental health kept getting worse. Looking back I know all of those things influenced each other negatively.

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this somewhere in the past, but I guess now is a good time to tell you that I've been struggling with depression (and anxiety) for many years. In 2019 it had started to get a lot worse again, I was trying my hardest to keep it in check, and I thought I had it under control, that I was just a little tired. I didn't notice how it slowly crept back into my life. I used to take two kinds of antidepressants. In 2017, when my mental health seemed stable, my doctor adviced me to slowly try it without them. So I stopped taking one of them in 2017. And I stopped taking the second medication during 2018. …...... Let's just say I dearly regretted it in 2020.

I couldn't bring myself to draw much anymore. I was still hoping that the treatment would succeed. I was hoping my mental health would improve then, too. It was the treatment I had going from January to May, and as you maybe know, it wasn't too successful ;; It helped with some symptoms and my overall stats had improved by that time; but the dizziness, exhaustion, fatigue, and vision problems remained...

In June my depression peaked. I just wanted stuff to be better, or to be over. I started to have dark thoughts, stuff I don't agree with when I'm all there, and stuff I was sure I had left in the past. I was just feeling hopeless for the world and myself. It scares me more than anything else, that kind of thinking.

But hey, luckily for me I got knocked out a few days after! I say luckily because as I said in the beginning, I think all of this was a blessing in disguise – or at least, I decided to see it that way.

On 11th June I woke up and I looked around and the room was spinning. It wasn't just the usual fuzzy and dizzy feeling anymore, it was vertigo. At first I thought I'm imagining things... but it got worse over the weekend. Everything was spinning to the right? And when I blinked it started all over. I think it tried to constantly correct itself every few seconds, which was exhausting.

But it forced my depressed ass to the doctor once more, and in my desperation I asked if I could take antidepressants again. I think I said something like „so that I at least can deal with all of this better.“ And to my surprise he immediately gave them to me. Something I'm really grateful for now. After checking me, he said we need to observe and wait a few weeks to see how the vertigo develops. Waiting and not knowing what's up is shitty, so I wasn't very happy with that. But now I had happy and chill pills! ;; and I've never been so excited to take pills in my life, I swear.

The next three weeks were really hard and I can't remember much to be honest. The first nights were scary, because the vertigo was also there while lying down or when I closed my eyes. Even in my sleep I felt it. Each morning when I woke up, the room was already spinning. It just consumed me?

Even though my other doctor said I should wait, I went to an ENT doctor a week later and he confirmed that my sense of balance was intact, but he told me that if there was an inflammation, it'd need around 2 - 4 weeks to calm down. And then he told me that if it doesn't go away by that time, it could be psychological, or it could be something in my brain or with my nerves. Yeahh, that scared me. I just wanted answers...

I think here is when my mindset started to shift already. Because usually when I felt dizzy I'd just lean back and distract myself with thinking about story dialogues, or imagining scenes with Robin and Noah. Just doing things for the story, for myself. But they were gone, completely. I wasn't able to imagine scenes. I couldn't imagine the characters either. I forgot the dialogues I had repeated countless of times before, I suddenly wasn't sure about the order of scenes anymore. It made me anxious and it made me... angry? It made me feel a lot of things. For example, I was angry that until now I allowed strangers to ruin those things for me sometimes, that I allowed mean comments to make me feel bad about what I do. Even the scenes I was proud of. I only was angry at myself, I wasn't angry at others. Some people will always try to do shit that hurt you - and you can't control that. But I gave them power over the things I love. Made me question my storytelling, made me want to drop the project, made me hate my own decisions for the story sometimes... instead of just enjoying it while I had the chance! And I regretted it. It's hard to explain, because I was a mess ;; But I think experiencing it was a good lesson. It showed me what's important, and what isn't.

End of June I announced my Hiatus and then I just waited.

I also slowly started doing balance training, because I've read that it helps with vertigo and I think it did help. I'm still doing those exercises today!

I cried a lot. I cried a lot on the phone with kan, too. I love them. It helped to just vent and cry at them. I'm thankful to have someone like that in my life. I remember I told them that I want to meet when corona allows us, and that I want to curl myself into their lap, because I knew it would help. They just listened and let me talk nonsense. I remember that I said I miss my boys and I don't want them to be gone forever. I also remember how much difficulty I had pronouncing words, and how long it took for sentences to come out of my mouth, and that I wasn't able to recall simple words. But talking still really helped to calm me down, and kan was there and just was so sweet to me and so patient with me through all of this.

And then the antidepressants started to kick in 🌻 It got easier to deal with it all, just as I hoped, and it helped me to get through the next weeks.

The vertigo stayed for almost 2 months.

In that time I went to different doctors. In early July I had to do a 24h test to see if my blood pressure is stable, and I learned that I have low blood pressure. Middle of July I finally got my head checked with an MRI. I had stayed in that clinic before, in 2014 for two weeks, where they found two small (not dangerous) things in my brain, and some other stuff. I was really scared that those things had changed, or something new would show up with the MRI. On the same day they told me everything is alright, and that they compared it with the images from 2014 and nothing had changed. That was a big relief! I felt myself calm down a lot after that. ;; They also said there's a chance that something is wrong with my eyes because they looked a bit off in the image. Okay, so I also went to see an eye doctor again, and I learned that my eyes are strained because of constant stress. I got new contact lenses, meds, and he said I'd need to avoid stress and drink lots of water. And wait. And come to another check up in October to see if my retina is damaged (it wasn't!)

Waiting and gradually starting to do harder things really helped, because the vertigo disappeared slowly over time. I think my balance training helped, too. And medications. And no stress. No social media. Just me enjoying the little things. In August I felt much better and I noticed a lot of improvement with my vision, too. So, I'm still not entirely sure what caused the vertigo in the first place. Probably a mixture of everything I mentioned. But I'm so thankful it's gone. In a weird way it made me grateful to be back to just my usual dizziness again. It helped a lot with accepting it and being happy with what I have.

I spent the rest of the year taking care of myself. I learned CBT skills (I'm still learning!), I exercised, I decluttered my room, I set boundaries, I deleted social media, I unfollowed most accounts, I took care of things I neglected for a long time, I learned many new things about all kinds of topics, played games, watched movies, read books, I let go of people, I made new friends, I started to slowly doodle things again.

Robin and Noah returned to me, too! I was so happy the first time I could recall some of the dialogues again. But, I just let them be for a while longer, knowing they'll be right there when I'm ready. I had a pretty long phase where I had a hard time believing that I'm an artist? It's hard to describe. I just stood beside myself a little bit. Not in a bad way. It was a needed distance from my own work. A pleasant surprise every time I remembered I AM someone who makes a comic, that I'm making a living with my idiot sons and self indulgent ideas, and it's not just a dream or something. A really cool feeling. I also noticed I developed a healthy desinterest in the comic industry (not comics, just the industry). In that phase I spent a lot of time alone, but also I reached out to total strangers online (in a MMO) and talked to them for hours in voice chat. No one knew I'm a comic artist, but people still wanted to spend time with me. I think I really needed that.

And I started journaling, because I wanted to be able to see my progress. I already tracked my habits before, but I didn't really write down my feelings or capture moments. But I was looking through Noah's journal and after that I picked up journaling, too. Noah is journaling because it helps him to capture things and see them for what they are, to figure out things, and to collect puzzle pieces he can put together. I'm doing this now, too. Because my mind often tricks me and it's so good for me to reflect on things regularly, to see if I'm going into the right direction, or not. And writing thoughts down is super helpful. Making sketch notes and decorating my entries is a way to slow down and appreciate the small things. I'm not journaling every day, but pretty often, whenever I feel like it. So in a way, Noah has inspired me to do something good for myself  🦌💕 I can really recommend it.

Okay.... to end this REALLY LONG POST holy shit. I'm „on my way to recovery“. It means that I'm aiming for being as healthy as I possibly can and at the same time accepting that I won't ever be completely healthy. There are things my body does that are out of my control. Knowing that, I can work with my body, not against it. The dizziness remains - I have good days and I have slow days. I call the slow ones „snail days“ 🐌 and I made a long list of easy things I can do when I have a snail day. Things that progress the comic, too. On snail days my thoughts are foggy and I notice my talking is slower than on good days. A slow day is not a bad day though. Just means I have to take it easy! Low blood pressure makes me tired, too, and I still have a prominent white noise filter over my vision, like little snowflakes all over. My mental health has improved so much the past months, but I have to be realistic and I know that on some days it will be harder than on others. I need to take a step back on those days and let all other things rest.

I hope that I can visit my partner in a few weeks (please 🥺)  and stay with them for a longg while. I'm looking forward to it so much. Fingers crossed~

I wanted to share all of this with you, because I'm grateful for you. You're spending time reading the comic and you're even spending money to support me. And just like you don't give up on me and waited for the story to continue, I want to show you that I'm not giving up either, and that I'm more than ready to continue with this story. If Plan A doesn't work, Plan B, or Plan C, or Plan D, E, F....... one of them will. I'll just add panel after panel. Here's one of my favorite quotes which I find super motivating: Little by little, a little becomes a lot.

This post took me hours to write ;; it was difficult sorting through all my emotions. But I think when you're sick, the best you can do is to be transparent with others. Just tell them what's going on. When I need a break, I'll tell you right away. I've seen how much you care about me... not just about the comic. I hope you know how much you helped me the past year. I appreciate you all so much. And I feel safe sharing those things with you. And I feel excited sharing my OCs with you!

Thank you for being here ❤

P.S.: I added some of my journal doodles!