thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.
People think being self aware cancels out mental illness. That when you realise your thoughts or behaviours are irrational you just stop having/doing them
Instead what happens if you're extremely self aware and mentally ill is that you just think in a resigned kind of way "I'm being really fucking crazy right now" while being very loudly mentally ill
Sometimes you are able to tell the people around you "oh, you can ignore me rn. I'm just being extremely mentally ill rn. It will eventually pass" and then continue your erratic behaviour. But mostly it's just privately thinking: "well this is embarrassing but I can't turn it off so just gotta deal with it I guess."
hi do you post your art on any other social media? i'd love to follow elsewhere as well, if you don't mind sharing!
Hi! I very occasionally post on pinterest and I used to post on insta as well (although that was while I was still figuring out digital art and a lot of it wasn't very good, maybe I'll try to start up a new account at some point), but right now tumblr is my main go-to since most of my art is OnlyOneOf-related and I have a lot of lyOn mutuals on here. Thank you so much for the support though, this ask made my day 💜
I started working on this over a year ago but abandoned it when coloring the face turned out to be too difficult. Coming back to it and realizing I understand colors and values much better now has been really rewarding, and I had a lot of fun finishing it!