I’m sorry that I have been away for so long.
But here I am, my lovelies! So, pull up a chair and I’ll tell you a tale of where the check I have been for the past eighteen months or so.
The truth of the matter is that 2020 knocked me for six but 2021 was a very, very difficult year. In many ways, I completely shut down. In some ways, it feels like I lost a lot of time while I was overwhelmed with an ugly illness called ‘anxiety’.
I won’t go into massive detail but I will say this: I suffer from health anxiety. It’s an exhausting, all-consuming type of OCD that makes me very, very susceptible to health cares and incredibly sensitive to even the slightest of changes in my body.
In short, around February/March 2021 I almost had a nervous breakdown. I was utterly convinced that I had a heart condition, I was struggling to sleep due to gasps of anxiety – feeling I couldn’t breathe – due to how tense I was, and to top it all my beloved cat, Bella, deteriorated very suddenly and had to be put down.
Altogether, all the above as good as broke me.
I didn’t care about doing anything — my art, writing, everything has fallen by the wayside. The only thing I seemed to have the energy to do was fish in Animal Crossing or hatch eggs in Pokemon Sword on my Switch. I was so demotivated and all desire to do anything artistic or fulfilling was gone from me. Never, ever had I been in such a fragile place. I had anxiety more many, many years and it had worsened after my mother’s death when I was 22. But this was the first time I can honestly say I had fallen into a true and genuine depression.
What made it worse was that my doctor, in a bid to help me medicate it, switch my tablets and the side effects made me feel worse for weeks. At least six before I finally started to feel normal human feelings like wanting to eat. Seriously, even the act of eating felt like a chore… and doing so made me feel sick.
Thankfully, in June 2021 I was able to start therapy. What became clear is that everything had been building up within me for years — this fear that there might be something wrong with me, that I was a prisoner of my own body, and the uncertainty weighed on me since I was a teenager. My mother had numerous health issues, so I developed an obsession with monitoring hers, my father, mine and everyone’s wellbeing. What made it worse, though, was that the thing that ultimately took her life was nothing to do with her health issues. In short, she died of sepsis from a perforated ulcer that no one knew she had. Seems crazy to type it out now, but it’s true. So, learning this also filled me with a massive sense of regret. That I could have prevented her death.
The bottom line is that it took me the rest of 2021 to get to grips with my anxiety, learn the signs that I might be relapsing, and develop workable tools and skills to ensure that I don’t fall through the gap again. I am eternally thankful to my NHS CBT therapist (who I’ll just call J), who was incredibly patient with me.
Needless to say, it has only been within the last few months I have felt ready to really start doing the things I enjoy again.
This includes writing. I have felt incredibly, incredibly guilty for leaving insert whatever work here LOL!!! without any updates – author or otherwise – to explain where the heck I was. I never meant to ghost everyone but I hope this update offers some context as to where I’ve been and why it has been hard to do much of anything.
Especially given the subject matter of works like From Shadows to Stars (You can also find the AO3 version here).
I never wrote this story to upset people, but to challenge myself. I really, really couldn’t be bothered with dealing with the one or two people who’d drop in every now and then to insult me because I dared to attempt to write nuanced fanfic about adultery and the complexities there within. One commenter in particular, (they know who they are if they’re still lurking about), seemed especially keen to make sure they left one or two comments insulting the work or, at some points, me personally, similar to the people on FF.Net (you can read the full story here).
I want to stress that these comments have never really upset me (again, look at the above, I have bigger fish to fry) or made me lose faith in myself, but they’re just annoying. And when you don’t have the mental space to do much, you don’t want to waste what little you do have on people like this. I used to delete the comments but now? I guess if any more appear henceforth I’ll just leave them up and ignore them.
The vast majority of you (99% of you) ARE very kind and supportive and, furthermore, still take time out to comment. I have been humbled to receive a couple of comments during my absence, many of whom seemed resigned to the notion that I was gone and this tale would never be resolved but still wanted me to know how much they appreciated my work.
It is for all of you that I am, 100%, back now. Well, let’s say… buffering at 95%! I’m still getting there.
Obviously, you have this update. I’m working on the next instalments back-to-back. Ancient Truths, a new Byleth chapter, and Before the Storm, the long-awaited Dimitri chapter. I’m not sure which will come out first and it doesn’t matter chronologically which one hits the internet first. Provisionally, I think the Dimitri chapter will be out first, though. UPDATE 04/May/2022: Part 1 of Before the Storm is now out (as of 3rd May 2022) on here and on AO3. Not sure if Part 2 will be done before Ancient Truths. We’ll see.
Hopefully, I won’t need to take another, longer and extended break. But I feel I really do owe those of you who were so kind despite my not being here and explanation if and when that does happen.
With everything else, like The Guardian of Old London Town, give me time. I need to overview everything and see whether I can complete the other projects realistically or whether it’s better to pull it down to start over. I was in the midst of a massive overhaul of that fic but lost the entire thing through circumstances that were totally stupid and mostly my fault for not backing it up in multiple places. I actually lost a few parts of From Shadows to Stars, too, but thankfully I have found each fragment that it didn’t matter as much as with TGoOLT. Grrrr!
Watch this space.
Scarlettpeony Writes 