Depression/Oppression Induced Art Block

There's something that just kinda clicked to me just now about the nature of art. Whether we admit to it or not, art is an act of expressing yourself. It can be as detailed as a painting or as simple as a one word poem. As soulful as a eulogy or as casual as an insult. We can define our own meaning to what art is at any moment, but this is the way I see it. And as someone who has been repeatedly told and oftentimes shown that my voice, my feelings, my comfort doesnt matter, is it any wonder why I feel this lack of meaning with my art?

Should it be any mystery how I took the connection being discarded by the one person I trusted the most in this whole world in an instant and came up with the idea that I no longer had value. 15 Years with someone you met just on the brink of puberty, who had saved your life in more ways than one. We were almost at a point where our friendship was hitting the halfway point of my entire life. Her loss leading directly into being homeless in 2024, one the streets in the middle of January, well I wont belabour the point. The way I was treated changed me as a person and a system. It's like I died and finally getting housing that Summer after months of torment was simply reanimating my corpse.

I often feel a lot of shame that that happened to me. I had considered my first homelessness to be a "noble sacrifice". It was a voluntary choice I made when I was 19 so I could gain independence from my severly abusive mother. But not only was I protected by getting into the emergency shelter immediately and being a youth, this time I had no way of making money and was fighting for disability, and my partner at the time knew that. So then came all the shame and gravity that came with being on the street and treated literally less than human. I still kept drawing, and I still do it, but have often lately felt a struggle to connect with it, unless it was vent art, which I was always reluctant to do because not marinating in the feelings felt a lot more appealing.

And then it hit me. I continue to feel the shame and dehumanization lessons I had to suffer, not only throughtout my whole life anyway, but the added intensity that being street homeless gave. If nobody gave a crap about what I had to say when my life was on the line, why on earth would they care about anything else from me. And this is not to discount my friends and community who have loved and kept me afloat. But the conflicting messages of only getting positive feedback through the computer and being completely disregarded in person, I often feel like believing my friends is only deluding myself. This is often the first sign of me going into a depression induced psychosis episode.

It's no wonder I seek so desperately for validation and approval online, because when every other avenue demeans you into nothing, you either latch onto what keeps you going or succumb to despair. It's hard to have hope because I keep getting all the wrong lessons because of whats going on in the world that keeps directly keeping me down. and then I go through all this to see all the most violent fighting going on about the stupidest bullshit, i.e. puritanical censorship of fiction. Why does being allowed to express myself mean so much to me? It's literally whats keeping me alive. The promise and hope of being able to make more art. The longing for me to pursue the projects I spent my life over. To take everything that helped me escape the brutal reality, and maybe help someone else escape theirs too.

this message was brought to you by medical marijuana and playing YunYun! Rhythmn Psychosis. Rim de Lacent!

P.S. "Escaping reality is a crutch" not only is an ableist statement, but it's an easy thing to say when your reality isn't a bullet hell and your hitbox is half the screen.

What keeps me alive should keep me alive. I'm not hurting anyone and I put warnings on things, nobody is walking into something they dont want to see if I can help it. But thats beside the point. The seemingly simple things that I hold close to my heart because they help me find value in myself. Any I need to cling to everything I can to keep going. Even if sometimes its because making my friends happy make me happy. And that should be okay too. When my own identity has been demeaned so much that I dont even know what I want from myself, I need to allow myself grace and let myself take little steps.

So much of my thinking gets blocked by all these arbitrary rules my mother placed on me. In fact, a lot of the self soothing techniques I would do would just be bowled over by her and essentially brainwashing me out of healthy coping mechanisms. Like bruh. But yeah, my reality blows, and its hard to keep going, but I need to start questioning my self meanness a lot more. It's hard when its so thickly reinforced but augh. I just hate having to argue with headmates over it </3