Astarion Headcanons (that you probably won't like) Pt. 1:

Part 2 link

BG3 does an excellent job at depicting SA trauma and the beginning of the healing process/journey. Many of the headcanons I've seen floating around (intentionally or unintentionally) gloss over the uglier side of healing from (prolonged) trauma. I'm not judging anyone for magically healing him, he's fictional after all, but I'd like to make some more ...realistic... headcanons.

Disclaimer: Everyone's healing process looks different, but they tend share commonalities. These headcanons are based on my own experiences. Not everyone who is healing from their trauma will experience what I have or have experienced it like I have.

[Please don't message me with explicit details about your trauma. I am at the point in my healing journey where I can share my experiences, and commiserate with other's similar experiences, but I am unable to support others in a more personal manner at this time. I wish you the best of luck in your healing process/ journey.]

Spoiler warning

Mental illness, SA, & DV Trigger Warnings

These headcanons are based on an Astarion who is still a spawn and romantically involved with a Tav who honestly loves him and isn't abusive or manipulative. Also Cazador is dead and Astarion got to stab him. They also assume that he himself does not turn into Cazador 2.0 or Wish.com Cazador.

He needs a LOT of love and patience. Which, frankly, many people don't have.

He's messy af. If "Damn bitch, you live like this?" was a person it'd be him. C-PTSD is a hell of a drug. I think he wants to be more organized and clean than he is, it's just going to be a looong process for his inside appearance to match his outside appearance. (His appearance may stay mostly the same or drastically change).

---Don't believe me? Just look at the outside of his tent: it's mostly organized and sophisticated, but the inside is messy and he sleeps on a plank of wood with a threadbare stained blanket.

He'll struggle with control issues rooted in his anxiety until he finds a way to channel that energy in to something productive and/or healthy.

---He'll veer between controlling micromanager (aggressive) and door mat (people pleasing/ passive) until he finds his (assertive) middle ground.

Anger issues ahoy! He went through "200 years of shit. PURE SHIT!" and had to dissociate/repress his feelings to 'survive'.

---Stabbing Cazador was cathartic, but it only released the surface level of his repressed rage.

-----An interesting line from the game that I haven't seen enough people talk about: When you tell Astarion to keep his cool when Cazador is goading him, Cazador scoffs and sarcastically asks Tav if they've witnessed his "fits of rage". (Of course a "fit of rage" to Cazador is probably Astaion having a slight frown when Cazador wants him to smile and be a pretty toy to show off.)

He will try to push you away and 'test' you to see if you stay consistent in respecting him and his boundaries. He needs to make sure you don't turn into a Cazador when you two are in an argument. He needs to be sure that his "No" is respected when in a steamy moment after a dry spell.

---This probably won't be as intense as it otherwise would've been because of what you two went through together, but he'll still do it.

-----He probably doesn't realize what he's doing, and when he does he'll shame spiral.

I hope you are prepared to patiently give lots of reassurance and affirmation about the same things over and over again.

---It'll sometimes seem as though he is seeking permission, but if you ever act as though you are giving him permission instead of affirmation/ reassurance he will become very defensive.

He's indecisive but unwilling to listen to your input.

---He went from 200 years of having no control or ability to make his own decisions to suddenly being free, he's going to feel overwhelmed.

-----He'll eventually realize that you have his best interest at heart and that you are not telling him what to do, you're offering suggestions to help him make an informed decision.

There's so much more but I'm tired. He'll eventually heal and live a happy and healthy life, but it'll be a bumpy road to get there.

to: the girls, the gays, the theys, the dads, the sads, the mads, the masses…

ALL WEEKEND LONG: reblogging emotional gemstone posts from the version of me on tumblr in 2012🙂 Reminisce with me lovers. It’s been over 10 years of girlblog.

Live-blogging on tumblr live whenever all weekend, let’s be mutuals, pls let’s chat, pls let’s invite MORE friends.

Reblog! JOIN the convo, favorite my stream, get updates when I start a stream! and keep an eye out for us to hang out this weekend 😈

👻

ON RIGHT NOW ON TUMBLR LIVE : FRIDAY NIGHT SCREAM🔪 STREAM 730pm to 9:30pm EST

lets get this bread: Let’s get weird but in an appropriately unhinged way. thanks for your support.

thank you to all who is patient with me

a year is about the time one needs to heal from the smallest wound possible

I know I (was) volunteered, but being left out hurts surprisingly more than usual this week.

i hate feeling empty and not being enough

dude getting an adhd diagnosis and coming to terms with the fact that i'm most likely autistic has actually changed my life so much. pre-diagnosis i had so much anxiety about literally everything, and it was during covid so we were online and having cameras on was required at my school. i remember having panic attacks pretty much every day over people seeing me on camera and i was barely able to function. but now i'm seeing myself heal from that and it's really fucking cool???? like i had an assignment in asl where i had to film myself and it only took like 10 minutes tops??? and that's fucking cool!!! life is getting better guys :)

Sometimes I realize that I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life, and that thought makes my eyes water and my chest hurt. But then I remember that it doesn’t really matter, and I move on with my life.

Y'all anxiety is literally so dumb, like bro, why are you even here? I'm just tryna pick up my chicken nuggets and you're telling me all the bad possible scenarios that could happen BUT I JUST WANT MY CHICKY NUGS

it’s almost like you knew i needed this. things have been… difficult. my mother started dialysis late december, just before christmas, right after i had to rehome my cats, because where i moved i couldn’t bring them, and i couldn’t afford to stay where i was. i miss them so much and my grandmother won’t even talk about taking me to visit them when their new caretaker said i could visit. my birthday is coming up on friday, and all i want is to see them. i miss them so much it physically hurts to think about them. i can’t even look at photos of them. i mean sure, i have stuff to look forward to; my birthday dinner on saturday, my best friend is getting married and i’m a bridesmaid. i just feel like a shell of myself because i lost my fur babies.

Astarion Headcanons (that you probably won't like) Pt. 2:

Part 1 link

Part 3 link

More Astarion headcanons! (that are mostly me projecting but with an Astarion flavored twist.)

BG3 does an excellent job at depicting SA trauma and the beginning of the healing process/journey. Many of the headcanons I've seen floating around (intentionally or unintentionally) gloss over the uglier side of healing from (prolonged) trauma. I'm not judging anyone for magically healing him, he's fictional after all, but I'd like to make some more ...realistic... headcanons.

Disclaimer: Everyone's healing process looks different, but they tend share commonalities. These headcanons are based on my own experiences. Not everyone who is healing from their trauma will experience what I have or have experienced it like I have.

[Please don't message me with explicit details about your trauma. I am at the point in my healing journey where I can share my experiences, and commiserate with other's similar experiences, but I am unable to support others in a more personal manner at this time. I wish you the best of luck in your healing process/ journey.]

Spoiler warning

Mental illness, SA, & DV Trigger Warnings: I cannot stress these enough this post is much more descriptive and potentially triggering than part one was.

These headcanons are based on an Astarion who is still a spawn and romantically involved with a Tav who honestly loves him and isn't abusive or manipulative. Also Cazador is dead and Astarion got to stab him. They also assume that he himself does not turn into Cazador 2.0 or Wish.com Cazador.

I hope you're ready for abrupt mood swings.

--- One minute he's codependent and can't make a decision on his own because he's overwhelmed, the next he's hyper-independent and will take offense at any suggestion you make.

----- Astarion is aware that staying in either of the two extremes is unhealthy and would eventually lead him to acting like Cazador.

^ This ties into point two: You need walk the fine line between patient and understanding while he processes "200 years of Shit. PURE SHIT!". And at the same time you need to be firm in your own boundaries with how you allow him to treat you.

--- He's gone 200 years without autonomy and has no memory of what life was like before Cazador turned him. He has no frame of reference other than romance novels and watching couples interact with each other from afar.

-----TBH the best thing for him is to stay in regular contact with Halsin. The man has the same flavor as trauma as Astarion while also having strong boundaries and open honest/ healthy communication in his relationships. He can unjudgementally help Astarion navigate the pitfalls of his healing journey through first hand experience.

Plus Ultra Catholic levels of guilt.

--- Guilt for what he did while he was a spawn. Guilt for how he started his relationship with you (even after you've told him you forgive him multiple times). Guilt for how he lashes out at the one person who has shown him unconditional love (you). Guilt because he feels like he's dragging you down into his darkness and tainting you. Guilt because he fears he's pulling you down to bring himself up. Guilt for feeling guilty because it doesn't absolve him of his sins and makes healing harder.

Self-esteem issues

--- He was SA'd for 200 years, he was forced into prostitution, he was tortured in every conceivable way, he was made to do reprehensible things and learned to find "joy" in them because he would've lost all of himself and his humanity otherwise.

------ His inner saboteur (who sounds like Cazador and himself simultaneously- adding to his self hate) tells him that he is disgusting, wrong, filthy, a burden, unlovable, undeserving of happiness, a monster.

------- Like everything else these thoughts will become less frequent and easier for him to handle as time goes on. All you can do is love him while he self-flagellates and hates himself. One day he'll see himself as you see him.

^ Tying into all the points above, especially the one right before this one. You're going to feel useless. Most of the time all you can do is demonstrate your love for him and sit there with him while he is bombarded with years of repressed feelings forcing their way out.

--- In the beginning your attempts to help him will frequently seem to have the opposite of their intended effect.

----- It's important that you be honest with him about how you're doing mentally. It does him no favors if you set yourself on fire to keep him warm.

------- You'll be angry on his behalf and can't exact revenge.

--------- That being said you are helping him so much more than you think you are. I cannot express in words how much just being there while Astarion slogs through the painful process of healing will help him.

^ ALL of these will get less intense and easier to deal with in time. He will heal and move on from his horrid past. But, it will involve a lot of trial and error. He will have periods of exponential growth followed by a hard backslide in progress. But he will get there.

I wouldn't say that loving Astarion is hard, but it does involve conscious effort on both his and your parts.

I know it's have been a while since i post anything and I'm so sorry. I wasn't feeling with enough energy and my mind was a freaking mess (is still a mess but that's not the point).

What I'm trying to said is: thank you for still reading and watching my drawings and stories, dosen't Matter if they're AU or original.

I can't promise much but i'll try to post again. And answering my Tumblr mail and my ask me something. If you have being waiting fo my answerd I'm so sorry, I'm trying.

If you want to know anything about my AUs or original story please let me know in my ask me something. Maybe it'll help me to draw and expand the AUs a little more.

I need motivation.

Thanks for reading.

Me, to my brain.

Someone with depression: diagnosed with usually incurable chronic depression

Someone Not A Doctor But Definitely In The Know About Mental Health On Fb: some people are just miserable and depressing on purpose, they’re just behaving this way for fun, they do this for the sake of irritating ✨Me✨, because I can’t handle anyone being #Negative around me or anyone else’s emotions and won’t just stop following those peoples posts anyway, and I hate acknowledging mental health disorders are real! This is for Attention as we all know I mean sorry me and my poor 2 friends I’ve blackmailed into smiling around me and being cheerful when they’re not, but yaa this bad vibe is just for Attention, like all my posts are too bye check out that last selfie I spend 5 hours putting makeup on for to get the attention of 4 likes~ but that’s not the point. You are to blame for staying in an abusive relationship too, and for your PTSD flashbacks liek why don’t you just Stop Thinking! Don’t take drugs though bc I’ll boycott u for bottling it up as wellllll even though I made you feel you had to. You’re making yourself miserable, idc if I have no idea how abuse can work it’s Your fault why don’t you just become homeless to leave an abusive household since you can’t afford to move by yourself somewhere which need 4 working adults to pay rent for a box flat!!! ~ honestly I’m fed up with humans feeling sad in any way too, crying, etc. and naturally having low moods they can’t change due to chemicals in their brain which they have less or more of which are out of their control because well, party pooper, and rather than doing things which keep my own spirits up and just saying I can’t be an emotional support option right now because I have my own things going on I am able to control sharing or not to the degree I want, I’ll just totally lay tf into someone for feeling those things, which is unnecessary and makes people hide how they are from friends for fear of rejection and attack and result in serious damage to future relationships and dynamics because they now have an unhealthy relationship with allowing themselves to feel anything publicly or tell themselves it’s shameful to the point where they can’t cry in front or a partner or share emotions with people they love and maybe even end in death. I’m not going to acknowledge anyone who’s been through anything bad which is keeping them this way and won’t acknowledge they may not of healed yet or be ready as trauma takes a long time to receive from, y’all just a nuisance for not being happy for ✨my✨ sake all of the time. And don’t dare post about it to your own social media, posts that are nothing directly to do with me nor which I’m obligated to read, and lower my mood on purpose when I could just unfollow but I suppose I personally can’t change the situation myself though it’s just a follow button and simply must lacerate your entire being for trying to tell someone, anyone, on your own place of safety, that you’re in desperate need of support from someone which doesn’t have to be me because I want to pretend I’m always happy and never miserable for whatever reason.

Someone with depression: … I said I was struggling today, that is all, in order to feel better instead of bottling it up. Wait, why are you friends on purpose with someone who’s depressed when you feel like this? Perhaps you’re just staying reading all my stuff on purpose to stay angry because you could make a change if you wanted to and mute posts. If every pill tried worked instantly, I’d be cured in a day. If therapy was easy to get in 2 seconds, the potential year long sessions would be over by now. If people weren’t forced to bottle it up unnaturally or get met with anger and manipulation to shut up entirely, we might actually start feeling better. Because no person with depression has once ever only known people that wanted them to be allowed to express the feelings safely rather than bottling it up and hurting themselves more, no matter how many supportive people there are there’s plenty who wish for people with mental health to just stifle it or blackmail them with emotional punishment at their most vulnerable if they do appear less than 100% happy or “atypical” all of the time, and that’s the cold hard truth.

The FB Depresion Doctr: If it’s a sad number 1 song about trauma and pain by Taylor Swift though omggg yaasss queeeeeeEEEEE, gonherr for coming out about it she’ssostrong *cries listening to it every time but it’s ok when they’re sad (it actually is ok I’m just speaking in terms of they think that’s fine only)*

I... have a lot of feelings.

For a long time now, I’ve been considering “dropping everything” and completely reinventing myself.  It’s kind of a cruel thing to do to friends and family so it’s never really gotten very far, but it’s one of those persistent, nagging desires that just hasn’t gone away.  Four or five years ago, I thought about a “partial reinvention” wherein I’d create a pen name and associated identity--real, normal people have those, right?--and use that to get back into writing, which is something I haven’t wanted to do publicly as Xella, because I’ve been Xella on the internet for 24 years now and I don’t necessarily want to have writing that I know won’t be up to a standard I’d like to set associated with myself like that. Plus, having a pen name is a Real Actual Thing that Real Actual People do or have done, so it’s not like it’s weird.

Not that Xella doesn’t fill that same niche in a way (since it’s not my legal name), but you can kinda see where I was going with this.  I spent a lot of time workshopping it and came up with something that I liked, that abbreviated nicely, placed itself well in the theoretical bookshelves of the mind (just so I wouldn’t have to start over again if I ever got good enough for that), that didn’t step on the toes of existing people but still sounded like a real, genuine name that a person could have, and I created an email, twitter, and Ao3 accounts for it, did the set-up to make them all not look like the current wave of tumblr bots, and... nothing.  Just kind of stalled out, realizing that I had no real starting point on writing, and that my lack of ideas was not just limited to visual art.

But it’s been sitting in the back of my brain for the past five years, safely tucked away and keeping me company in the bad times.  If it all goes wrong, this pen name, this other identity, is sitting there waiting to be used, waiting to let me start over and leave all my past mistakes behind. I could begin again, start new, start fresh, not worry about dumb shit that happened in 2003 that hasn’t actually come up since 2007ish and isn’t likely to come up again, not worry about the brand and just be able to do what I want to do.

I’m not really sure why “the brand” keeps coming up for me, but it does.  I’m not a popular artist, despite having gone so hard on trying to become one that I burned myself out on everything.  I’ve never been big and at this point it’s kind of a given that I never will be.  My style is recognizable, but doesn’t have mass appeal, and I wish I was fine with that.  There’s been a lot of uproar in artist circles about AI lately and I absolutely understand where friends and colleagues are coming from when they get upset about it, but AI will never take a job away from me because I don’t have a job to take.  Legality and morality aside, a lot of the “AI vs real artists” examples I see on twitter? I can’t tell which is supposed to be better or which was created vs. generated. I can’t tell which I’m supposed to be siding with. AI can do what I do better than I can do it, and I have spent my entire life getting to the point I’m at. I haven’t even bothered looking at the big “has my art been used to train the AI” lists because I can almost guarantee you that my stuff won’t be there.

There was such a gigantic push in the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s that if you were an artist on the internet, you had to sell yourself. You had to take commissions, have a storefront, make money from your hobby, make it more than a hobby. I spent so much effort, worked so hard trying to create things that people would want and it was absolutely the wrong thing for me to do.  It destroyed the thing I enjoyed and turned it from a thing I was successful at to a thing I had failed at.  Nowadays, that push is still there in the background, but the big thing is views, engagement, social media metrics; even if you don’t turn those metrics around into customers, your art has failed if you don’t get The Numbers.

Which is ridiculous!  It’s absolutely ridiculous, but my brain just won’t internalize that message.  That picture of Alex I reblogged at the start of the year had one note when I RBed it, and that one note was my own RB from here to @xellart.  It’s up to 12 now (4 RBs including my own), thanks to Tev RBing it and some of his folks getting eyes on it, but it sat around dusty for a full year.  It was a little more successful when I originally posted it on twitter, with 18 “engagements” (6 RTs including my own), but most of what I post on twitter just goes there to die; outside of Bash stuff (which is usually RTed by myself, the bash twitter, and anybody whose characters happen to be in the pic, and thus typically blows my non-bash stuff out of the water exponentially) I’m usually lucky to see one other person RT a piece I’ve spent hours on.

I tried for years to convince myself that it was because I was posting WIPs, so people got bored of pics before they were even finished, and that if I didn’t share the joy of creating and progress pics with folks, that they’d like the finished product more.  I don’t really know if I ever managed to convince myself that that’s how it would work, but in reality I think it’s a combination of my style, my content, and my presentation.  As I said earlier, I think my style is recognizable (for the most part), but it definitely doesn’t have mass appeal; the colours aren’t vibrant or poppy, the lines aren’t smooth and elegant or chunky and interesting, and my compositions don’t typically wow the brain.  As much as most of my recent work is technically fanart, it’s not the kind of fanart that has mass appeal; World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons player characters typically fall into the same vein as original characters in that there are a few that garner some attention in various corners of the internet, but by and large the subject matter won’t carry engagement and it falls on the technical aspects of a piece to drive its social media standing.  Then there’s presentation, which in this context is just “how shit looks on the social media sites it gets posted to” and which I have repeatedly failed to take into account (or chosen to overlook) when spending hours/days/weeks/months/years on a piece; my Wall of 60s looks god-awful on both Twitter and Tumblr, because neither website handles images with a ratio of  2:1 or more very well.

For a long time now, I haven’t been enjoying art because I’ve been feeling the crush of those three failure points.  Sometimes (albeit VERY rarely lately) I’ll have an idea for a piece, get excited about it, actually create it, be happy with it, and then... post it to social media to crickets.  And those crickets come rushing in and make me feel that not only was posting it a bad idea but that somehow, the joy of creating retroactively didn’t happen and that if social media doesn’t like it (because if they liked it they would RT/RB it or comment on it or something), then I must also be wrong to have originally liked it myself.  Which, again, is ridiculous!  And I know it’s ridiculous even as I’m thinking and feeling it; you can’t take loved away and you can’t change the way you felt in the past just because you’re looking at it from a different perspective in the future.  But it’s a persistent feeling, and it’s been this way for years at this point, and is why all I had to show for 2022 were two commissions (both friends who specifically sought me out for art, which should also tell my brain/heart something! but we’re not gonna get into that rn lol), the beach bash, my Wall of 60s, and a couple refined sketches from the first couple weeks of January when I was trying to work on a new years resolution to draw more, even if things weren’t fully-realized masterpieces, and was using the art jam discord’s characters as practice (before I hit a huge depression spike and stopped completely, whoops).

It’s factually incorrect to say that there’s nothing I can do about my style; obviously a person’s art style is fluid and can change, and you can mimic others to varying degrees of success, and you can definitely improve (or devolve) in areas like composition, but of the three areas my art has been failing in, this is the area I think will be most difficult to do anything about in the short-term. Content and presentation, though? Those are easier.  Go into art projects knowing where you’ll be putting the final results and make sure you have a plan for display. Posting to Tumblr? most people’s dashes don’t display images wider than 500-700 pixels and taller images can (theoretically) thrive. On Twitter, a single image should be wider than it is tall but not significantly so, and it should be saved as a jpg because pngs will convert to jpgs anyway and you can’t control the quality and transparency is a nightmare and so on.  Content is also easier; if you care about metrics (and unfortunately, apparently I do), make fanart. Real fanart, with canon characters, for series that people are currently into.  Now is probably not the time for Slayers or Homestuck (unless you’re really feeling it), but its descendants are out there, ripe for the picking, and there are always the evergreen fandoms like Sailor Moon or Star Trek or the like.

Circling back around: when I was creating all those accounts for my (never-got-off-the-ground) writing project, I didn’t create a tumblr account for it, because that was right when the Tumblr Porn Ban stuff was happening, and everybody was jumping ship.  When the new year rolled over, I spent a lot of time thinking about it again, and decided it was finally time to Do Something With It, even if the Something was not the thing I’d originally intended.  I can talk all day about the Three Areas Where My Art Has Failed but the big fourth area is that I post to @xellart, on Tumblr and Twitter both, with the expectation that People Will See It, and that it will Get The Numbers.  This is obviously patently false, and has never been true (except that one time during the Lik the Bred meme era where Ancillary Justice was super popular and I combined the two), but I constantly set myself up for disappointment on this front, because it’s been 24 years that I’ve been at this, and I spent so much of that time working myself ragged so surely I have enough of a following by now to touch a handful of hearts?  That’s not how it works, but I swear I do it every time.  But, see... this pen name person, this person who is me but is not Xella... they don’t have a following.  They’ve sort of existed on the internet for five years, but also not really.  They’re starting fresh, which is what I’ve always wanted.  There’s no expectation there; any posts they make are literally shouting into the void, which is how I’ve always wanted to treat my personal twitter account anyway (even if it doesn’t actually work out like that most of the time).

So at the start of the year, I finally dusted them off, made them a tumblr, populated it a little bit with some stuff from my dash and my likes so it didn’t look like a bot, and started posting art again.  I haven’t wanted to talk about it because talking about it (here, there, or even in private to select friends) defeats the whole purpose, but I’ve never been great at keeping my mouth shut with my own secrets.  I’m still sitting here hesitating, now that I’m on paragraph eleven of this ridiculous ramble, because if people know, won’t it lose the magic? But given the recognizability of my style and how little I’ve done to try to alter or obscure it, there was always going to be the chance that the dots would connect anyway (even if that chance seems minuscule because there are billions of eyes on the internet but only a handful of them are likely to fall in my orbit, let alone fall there twice) so maybe it’s a moot point, I don’t know.  The point is, they can chuck art into the void and if it’s not “successful,” it doesn’t actually matter because there’s no expectation of success there. There’s not 24 years of building a following or a brand or friendships or anything there; it’s just another anonymous person on tumblr posting things that they like and if other people like it too, so be it.

Anyway it turns out that the whole thing has kind of backfired, because despite having 0 followers and no expectation of anything, the most recent post--which is not even especially good--is Getting The Numbers.  But more than that--SO much more than that--it is Getting The Tags.

I’ve talked a little bit in the past (albeit mostly on twitter, I think) how much tag-commentary means to most artists I know, especially here where we’ve got our own language and system and how much more genuine people tend to be in the tags (because only the OP, whoever they reblogged it from, and that person’s followers are likely to see them).  It’s something I definitely want to do more often myself, but often find myself paralyzed by (which is a rant for another day).  The Tags mean so much more than The Numbers, and I am getting so many warm fuzzies from The Tags on this post, and I am terrified of what that means for the future.  Which, yet again, is an obviously ridiculous emotion to be having about this, because there’s no expectation of anything here, and that ought to include expectations from me, as well.  But can I avoid raising my hopes so high after unexpected success? Will not the next offering automatically fail in relation? How can I avoid seeing things this way? And how in the name of all the gods and everything that’s holy can I ever explain any of this to a therapist in any way that makes sense to them so they can give me actionable advice for once in my misbegotten, miserable life?

(I think I'm also a little taken aback from the sheer volume of response because it confirms my theories about Content; not only was this a piece of art for a popular fandom, it was arguably a piece for a popular ship in a popular fandom.  Well, not even arguably--I absolutely tagged the ship name, because it contained both characters, even though it’s not remotely a romantic piece (to me. evidently this is not a universal experience, though? lmao))

Anyway the more I talk about it the more I get it off my chest but also the more anxious I get about talking about it so I’d better stop there, even though I have Many Other (somewhat-unrelated) Thoughts. They’ll have to wait, I guess.

I went out for 4 or 5 hours yesterday and my social battery is still drained today 🥲