Hey!
I survived some crisises over the past two years,
and the ongoing bad situation I have been struggling with
has been improving
I am forever seriously grateful for everyone who has been patient with me,
Thank you so much <3
during this whole time, while I haven't been able to keep up with
communicating, he has been there and in contact with me. I couldn't
have gotten through this without him!
The truth is my life entered positions where I was unable to work on art,
and often unable to function much at all - my health was bad, and I was
in an abusive home situation. Two separate computers also failed, which
became a bit of an issue until I could get a new one to draw with.
it might seem simple, but I had zero funds at that point, barely enough
to eat eggs once in a while. Now, it is improving, I am grateful!
For a brief explanation (and for those who knew a little bit about it before
and were wondering what happened)
TL;DR my home life situation was significantly bad, my health spiraled
several times severely, I had to get social services involved which took time,
now i am recovering finally.
What I am doing next:
My focus right now is just catching up on overdue commissions with all my might.
I am also finding ways to keep my art accessible and communications open
to everyone who is a legal adult,
I know there are restrictive laws affecting lots of people now.
Discord is getting strange with their ID Verificiation system being untrustworthy,
and Twitter has become a place which is difficult to view without seeing a lot
of stressful propoganda.
I don't want to promote or use a platform like that to host and share my art,
so I will be deploying a private hosted server and newsletter - as well as keeping
my Patreon more up-to-date. These things come next after I catch up on commissions,
but if you want to stay informed, you can send your email to be added to a list
to receive updates! You can opt out anytime.
Yeah, Patreon will become the main place I will be sharing my art.
What I am doing to try and give back to everyone who supported me:
I can say that everyone who has an overdue commission from me still at this point,
WILL be recieving something extra - I am going to continue into game development
once the commissions are caught up first, and everyone who had a commission overdue
will be receiving lifetime free games from me, any game I release I will provide
for free to everyone who has kept their patreon support for me despite me
not posting in a long time, or who has had an overdue commission. Forever.
Because truly, your support got me through the darkest times in my life,
and your patience and understanding helped me survive and hold out until I could
find a way to resolve the situation. I'm sorry it took so long,
I promise i was doing my best - even when it might have seemed like I just "vanished,"
i was still fighting!
I appreciate your support more than I can describe. I will never forget that!
- And, I seriously am going to dedicate most of my freetime after I catch up,
to game development to release games that I hope will be fun and unique.
I won't be opening many commissions again, when I do it will be
much fewer and less often, really I was taking too many commissions at once before
to try and survive and buy food and medicine, but I was clearly unable to keep up -
I never want it to happen again, so I won't rely on commissions again,
despite it always feels so rewarding to draw others characters..
I have a natural itch to draw commissions
because I love drawing everyone's cute characters!
and it's been an absolute joy that's also kept me going when I've been
feeling low - Truly, everyone's cute characters are what held me up when I was drowning!
They are like dieties in a temple to me, haha, and the shelter let me survive,
so I will always be grateful to everyone's characters and the awesome people behind them -
this community is amazing and has always made me feel so hopeful for a good future.
More Information about the bad situation (why I have been away so long)
I live with my family with a 'tenancy agreement,' because I spend so many hours
caregiving for their needs, that it is impossible for me to have a normal outside life
or get a regular day job, etc. It is an agreement where I do not pay rent to live here,
but instead I provide a lot of hours of work in the daytime.
However, the situation never completely resolved, as many close friends knew,
and I was taken advantage of.. I was "scapegoated" by my family, I came to understand later.
The truth is the members of my family with power over the situation who controlled
funds etc, would use coercive control tactics to reduce my options of freedom.
This became extreme, and I had to involve state services to intervene.
There are social workers who were already involved with the case (my younger sibling
is severely disabled with cerebral palsy, their guardian is the family member who owns
the house - and I have been providing caregiving to both.) I was eventually able to get
their attention to the matter and they got more involved.
Now, the situation has improved considerably, as the family members are receiving
therapy and the social workers have directed their actions more to improve home life.
In the meantime, because I had struggled with my own health for so long, and I couldn't
get any food, I didn't realise how bad my starvation state had become. I became very weak,
and had no energy. It took a long time for me to recover, I was told it was severe, but
I had been powering through because I needed to care for my family. I would pass out
often from exhaustion without sleep or food, but it became normal to me, and my family
members own mental disorders made them blind to my physical deterioration being a problem.
The current situation stands that I decided to stay to make sure my younger sibling
continues to get the proper care, I don't want to seek damages or anything, my family is
old and tired too, despite their flaws it would not help anyone to take this to court,
it would just cause more pain. Now that social services are directly invovled and I
communicate with them often and the situation is monitored, the home life is improving.
I understand if anyone would want more details! But I can't go into specifics here or
really get too detailed without worrying about my privacy, and also I don't think it's
too necessary - I don't want to make this into my "life story" or something, everyone
has a lot of struggles in life, I just really owed an explanation for why I disappeared,
and why I fell so far behind on commissions.
yeah, the truth is - my health spiraled so hard. And the situation at home was not
allowing me to recover, to the point I could really not even use my body to move a pencil if
I wanted to. I kept trying to get better and blamed myself, but my health was so bad that
even I could not really fully grasp how much time would go by etc, it's difficult to fully
explain without sounding like an excuse, so I am truly thankful for everyone who understands.
I can really just assure that now, it is changing here, and my health has begun improving.
I am eating regularly again with access to food, and that has helped a lot. I also have managed
to sleep most nights, also helpful! I was able to acquire a new computer, my previous ones
had broken, but now that I have the ability to draw again, and my health is improving, my focus
with all my freetime at night is drawing and catching up on all the commissions that are
far overdue.