#When you drag yourself out of an eating disorder and finally start eating regularly enough to gain weight steadily | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

emile-hides · 1 year

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If you’re still doing that art ask game thing, Then could you maybe do 🎉 (draw the character celebrating something) or 🍽 (draw the character eating a food they like) with Otsu from Manly Appetites? ^^; No pressure of course just wanted to request something that was (hopefully) self indulgent for you cause I was really so excited to see you happy with getting to 164 pounds!! :D

Thankyou!! I'm excited about it because this is the heaviest I've ever been in my whole life!! I may not be eating healthy but I sure am eating!!! And that's all that matters to me.

This is how I imagine that date for Otsu's birthday goes down

I wanna imagine after they get together Minegishi pulls every cliche in the book to try and kiss Otsu (because he's too abnormal to just ask to kiss his Boyfriend), and Otsu dodges all of them (because he gets really flustered about it and panics). Otsu would eventually have to suck it up and initiate the first kiss.

#Emile's Arts #Manly Appetites #I quick hand spell that wrong a lot so I have to like triple check I got it right fkgjkfdgjd #Someone else draw Minegishi trying to lure Otsu into playing the Pocky game pleeeeeease #I have discovered... Otsu is VERY hard to draw actually kfjgkdfjkg #It's his HAIR I really struggle with anime hair #I think if I'd drawn him head on it wouldn't have been that hard kfdjgkfdjg #Thankyou for asking #When you drag yourself out of an eating disorder and finally start eating regularly enough to gain weight steadily #Incredibly exciting!!#This is very self indulgent because I am a simp for Otsu and enjoy making Minegishi suffer #I should have drawn another panel or two where Otsu breaks away dkfjdskjfd #I wish we'd seen them KISS!!!!

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almaasi · 7 years

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on the subject of gishwhes (i just posted the 2016 item list for future reference)

this was item #126.

PHOTO. 126 POINTS. On a desolate, dusty prairie, a ranch hand rescues the local school marm from a runaway horse. Create a drawing of Misha & the Queen of England in the Wild West. (You pick who plays the school marm and who plays the ranch hand.)

it’s been nearly a year since i drew this, but i’ve been meaning to talk about the experience ever since, because this drawing damn near nearly killed me.

okay, actually, let me rephrase that: i nearly killed myself, but this drawing saved me.

story under the cut (warning: suicidal ideation)

here’s some backstory. i’ve been essentially bedbound for the best part of the last decade, doing nothing but mastering the art of Destiel fanfic and trying not to die. i’ve had on-off bouts of depression, but none as bad as during winter. (personally, the first gishwhes was my favourite as it occurred in summer for me, so i could actually appreciate it. this year i’ve been taking vitamin d tablets, it seems to help A LOT??? 10/10 do recommend.)

so, at the end of 2015, i crashed, horribly, dramatically. i was non-functional for pretty much a full year afterwards. i couldn’t write, i couldn’t read, i couldn’t hold a conversation without screaming at an eardrum-bursting frequency. i just lay in bed and watched youtube videos end-to-end (enter dan and phil into my life, but that’s another story).

after 9 years of ~mystery illness~ (i.e. “are you sure you’re not making it up for attention?”) i was finally diagnosed with celiac disease in january 2016. i changed my diet immediately, but it took a full year before i saw even the slightest bit of improvement.

gishwhes 2016 occurred at the end of july, at the peak (gulley?) of my depression and seasonal affective disorder. i signed up on a team with @bakasara, not knowing anyone else there, and unable to contact them properly since they were communicating using an app that required a cellphone number, and living in the middle of nowhere without cellphone signal, that wasn’t something i had.

so i was a shell of a creature, isolated, and wildly depressed. i picked one item from the list and dedicated every waking, breathing moment to making it good. all i wanted was for this thing to make it to the gishwhes hall of fame. it didn’t, but frankly i got something far more valuable.

around this time, i often got into this sort of... panic mode, whenever i heard my own voice. i’d separate from myself, internally, and get so frustrated that i was speaking, how dare i, what the fuck is wrong with you, shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up

and i’d wrap my hands around my neck and try and strangle myself, shut myself up, go away, stop existing

my family was always nearby (they were the ones talking to me when i flipped out) and they’d always rescue me from my own hands. i could feel bruises on my windpipe, i’d cough for ages after

but... i had melatonin tablets so i could sleep. i knew they were there, in a white bottle in my room, i wrote it in a fic once, i’d just sleep and not have to wake up, like that melanie martinez song i had on repeat

but i didn’t because of my family, because i didn’t want to upset them. i asked them a lot, questions about whether it would actually be easier if i wasn’t here, because they dedicate so much time and effort to keeping me alive, and i don’t give anything back. i’m a drain on resources and time and money, i’m keeping my mother from achieving any of her own goals because she constantly has to look after me

of course my mother and sister reassured me i was needed for some reason or another, though my dad didn’t get my underlying point and continued to remind me how useless i am

about 6 days in to the hunt, i left my room - probably to get food, i don’t remember - and i chanced upon my family watching tv without me. i just started pacing, ranting about something, i don’t know what, probably my anxiety about this drawing not being good enough, not being perfect, being the one thing i thought i could do and i still can’t do it.

but without interruption i just started screaming. like, banshee/woman-dying-in-a-horror-movie/cat-getting-run-over kind of scream. i fell to my knees and kept screaming for a full hour, my sister’s arms around me.

my dad went to bed, my mother watched something on her portable dvd player, and my sister kept holding me gently while i screamed, writhing on the floor in my pyjamas.

then she got me some food, got me to wash my face, and took me back to bed.

the next day was the final day i had to work on this drawing before the hunt ended. if i went to sleep, i’d miss the deadline to submit it. so i was like... you know what, it’s not perfect. the figures are stiff, there’s no life in their eyes, and the colours are all wrong. but god dammit, i’m not wasting what i’ve done.

so i spent 3 more hours on finishing touches, staying up well beyond a sensible hour for someone so exhausted. i added the birds, some depth to the sky, changed the colours up a bit, signed it - then sat back and realised it wasn’t as shitty as i thought.

no, it wasn’t what i had in mind. yes, i’d spent a full week on one item. it wasn’t as good as @euclase but who am i kidding, i’m not @euclase. i did good for me.

i submitted it to the gishwhes site having learned one thing, which i typed into that little box on the site that prompts a quote:

“I’ve been extremely sick for a very long time, and I poured the very last of my emotional, mental, and physical strength into this art piece. Through my own force of will, I learned that perfection should come secondary to Not Giving Up.”

those words weren’t just about the drawing. they were also about my life.

and dear god, i am so glad i chose to live through that week. two months later i recovered enough to start writing regularly again, and within the remaining two months of 2016, i posted The Moonlighter and the Magician, Raising Hell in a Hotel, Fight and Fool Around, and last but not least, Welcome All Winchesters - which i count as one of my strongest pieces.

of course, by january 2017 i was depressed again, but Mostly in Silence was written from that dark place. the fic, as well as the team free will self-care checklist i made to go with it, helped drag me out of the dark place. (combined with the fact i finally started to see minor improvements to my health after a full year eating a gluten-free, maize-free diet.)

it seems i’m one of those people who is best saved by creating things. expressing feelings in some abstract, outward form. if you ever find yourself in a position like mine, i have one piece of advice:

make something. make anything.

it doesn’t have to be good. it doesn’t have to be perfect. you don’t need to be @euclase. you just need to be.

and continue to be.

always keep fighting.

you are not alone.

~ Elmie ♥

p.s. i’m on patreon!! $1 would help me support myself financially!!

patreon.com/almaasi

#gishwhes #Misha Collins #gishwhes 2016 #Elmie makes things #Elmie draws things #post of postiness #suicide cw #health stuff

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