J

Nothing to do but

keep existing

and

rolling forward to the next day

and

rolling forward to the next day

and

so on.

I was alone in my room for a while and I didn’t draw or write much.

I’m tired of not drawing or writing, but I’m also tired of being alone and in my room.

It is amazing and it is a relief, but it’s bought me time and space to safely ponder “why I’m so fucked up,” and the answer has generally been “because I think I’m fucked up.” The feeling of certainty that I was irredeemably corrupt burrowed its way in at an age when the workings of my emotions were opaque to me. It incubated, mutated. Shame disguises itself to suit the occasion, adopts new postures and voices to surprise me constantly in new ways, in new contexts, thrashing and struggling to undermine developing confidence. The feeling that I could, at any moment, be utterly rejected by the people I look to for friendship and support will not leave me alone. All I can do is calm myself and let it pass.

When you’re used to feeling completely alone and depressed, you develop defenses to maintain the greatest state of stability in loneliness and depression that you can. That means eliminating threats—the potential for change. When you open the door to the possibility that things can get better, you feel you’re chancing that things could get much, much worse. You shove people away, or gingerly evade them when they reach out to you.

I spent a long time grappling with how to process what I went through for the past two years (especially 2012) into some kind of project that would fit the mold of what I felt I should be making and yet not turn what personal truths I needed to discuss into complete bullshit. There was too much internal processing left to finish.

Now what.

I’m trans and I’d rather work on talking about it than keep talking around it. My pronouns are she/her. The “J” doesn’t stand for anything. I would like to get back to making drawings where monsters fight each other in the air and then complain about food and fall asleep.