Where Do You Even Start? (Patreon)

This is the first thing I've drawn in 3 weeks?  Something like that.  I've edited images in that time to make my filler comics, but I haven't drawn new things.  I don't know if I can express how alien that is to me.  The last time I didn't draw for longer than this was decades ago.  That time period led to Between Failures.  I wonder if this one will lead to something else too...  Usually I can compartmentalize my emotions enough to work, enough to have something to present.  With this experience, with 4 family disasters happening simultaneously, I finally reached a state where I couldn't.  I feel broken inside.  This stuff has been so relentless.  I'm so worried all the time, and people want to help, but there's nothing anyone can do.  A few people have been remarkably cruel over this.  Cruel in ways I would never expect from people who I would think enjoy my work.  At the same time others have done everything they can to try and help.  It seems like every aspect of life presents these wild extremes now.  

When I drew this image I felt cut off from whatever it is that makes my characters real to me.  Not feeling it made me feel worse than I can express.  I'm sure it's still in me somewhere, but I can't get to it.  When I reach out to it in my head it feels like there's a wall there.  I know I can access a part of it because I can still write the characters, but it feels much more surface level than it should.  Maybe you haven't noticed it, but I do.  I think the problem is that I have had to turn off my emotions as best as I can in order to get through a day & if I let myself slip I get emotional to a degree that I become useless.  So I'm riding the line precariously.  

This is like a nightmare for me.  I've worried about losing my connection to my characters for years & now I'm getting this taste of it & it's a waking terror.  The idea that I could lose it forever makes me shake.  I keep hoping someone will say something to me that will make the worry go away like magic.  It's a pathetic level of desperation, but it's how hope is manifesting in me at the moment.  

I'm going to keep holding on.  Keep hoping that Nina & Carol & everyone are still inside me somewhere patiently waiting for me to come to terms with all of this.  I suppose that's probably why I put Thomas opposite of everyone, because he's the most connected to just being baseline me.  

Anyway, this may go on another week, or even two.  Or it may even out to a degree that I can get my bearings and right myself.  In any case I'm deeply sorry to have failed you all like this.  I should have been more prepared.  Maybe not for becoming a caregiver, but for facing the reality of the human frailty of my family.  I don't know, but on some level I've known this time in my life was coming for many years & I never really figured out what steps to take to mitigate the damage, or how to get there.  So again, I apologize.  

I'll try to get a calm moment to do something to put up here that's more worth the effort as soon as I can. 

I can hear something going wrong in another part of the house so I have ot go now.  Later taters.