Still here

So it's been about 11 days since my last upload. Every time I start to feel better, I backslide just a little bit further than where I originally was and that's become an issue this year. As Christmas inches ever closer (can you believe it's next week? Because I sure can't) I find myself once again feeling the pull of inspiration stunted by my own mental health.

This year has been a ride, I'll give it that. Everyone kind of sort of got a bit of crap this year and we were all really tested on our values and strength.

I've recently, as in the last 11 days (ha) got back into drawing for the first time in months, I haven't drawn much, but I drew this one piece a few nights ago and made a tiktok around it and it did moderately well on the app's algorithmic For You Page. And I haven't felt that good about a piece since I think March or April of this year when I drew a silly little dragon in my circle people style. That tiktok blew up bigger than this one but it was still pretty cool to wake up to.

I don't post. That's why this bit of personal news is so much fun to talk about because I don't post.

Seeing how much I've posted here or anywhere on the internet really in the last 10 months to the last 10 years, you can see that I'm not really big on putting myself out there. Mainly because I get hurt. But if I don't say anything I also wind up getting hurt, it's silly. So I might as well have a piece of me out there so when it's done and I'm long gone like we all will be one day. I want there to be something that someone can refer back to and remember me for who I really was and not just for the abstract that was created in my absence.

It's been 11 days since my last post.

There's so much I want to talk about but I don't know how to formulate my train of thought long enough for it to leave and get to the next station. This year has really brightened my perspective on the concept of depression that nobody really likes to talk about. I find it inadvertently fascinating how much inner strength I've pulled out of sheer stubbornness alone.

But...it's been 11 days since my last post.

And I don't quite know yet where I'm going with my online presence but also I understand that I can't just keep starting and stopping on this little journey I find myself on daily. So I think maybe I'll just keep writing and keep brainstorming until something new comes to head.

Maybe my next piece will be on The Mandalorian, as I'm writing this now I see that the season 2 finale of the Star Wars Universe TV series dropped last night at Midnight on the Disney+ app. I don't know if it was just me and this 2020 depression I've been going through since like May. But this season, really anything I consumed this year, media-wise, has been kind of 'meh'.

Like I just haven't been able to stay focused long enough to really enjoy anything because too much and not enough is going and I just haven't been feeling the 'it' that everyone talks about. But now that the entirety of season 2 of The Mandalorian is available I may just rewatch it and write a quick little blurb about it. I don't know. Like I said earlier in this piece, I get bursts of inspiration that gets snuffed out, if not buried in my Mental Health.

As well as sometimes you'll be writing here and forget to save your changes and the website will glitch and the page will refresh and everything you worked on for the last hour and a half will be gone.

Just like that.

Gone.

I had so much written after this point that now I'm just feeling an excessive amount of discomfort and discouragement but I'll muddle through it or you'll never hear from me again. And it's already been 11 days since my last post and that was 5 days after I came back from being gone for almost 10 months.

So here we are again, trying to find that groove that I was in before the website freaked out and I lost everything.

Which is very frustrating and makes me feel really Meh about the thought of writing a review right now. But at the same time, you know what hasn't been 'meh' this year?

The Fruits Basket reboot. Which is something I will write about. Because Fruits Basket, as a series, got me through maybe the hardest years of my childhood. Which were Middle School and High School. I know everyone says that but in middle school I got beaten up and thrown around like a rag doll because of my physical disabilities and limitations and in high school I discovered that consent doesn't mean crud when your upper-body is weaker than your lower-body.

Yeah... those books really got me through some ugly stuff.

And the 2001 anime adaptation got a reboot last year!

I was 9 when the anime was first released. I didn't even know what Fruits Basket was or even what manga was until a year and a half later when I entered Middle School at the young and impressionable age of 11.

That's a strange number that keeps popping up in my life. Kind of odd, we can talk about that one on a later day though because who knows what any of that spiritual guide stuff is anyway and as much as it tickles my interest this is probably not the place for it.

But who knows? First I actually have to put myself out there and let my voice be heard through the noise.

Anyway...

Fruits Basket! I don't know who my audience is quite yet, but for those who have never heard of Fruits Basket, it's a story about a teenager who stumbles across this family cursed by the zodiac signs. My favorite, much like that of our protagonist Tohru Honda, has and may always will be that of the Cat, who was left out of the banquet at the beginning of time and who's soul has been cursed to deal with that fact alone and isolated for all of it's mortal lives.

I can relate because my physical disabilities keep me alone and had at the time that I was first introduced to the manga series been the cause for my lack of friends (now it's just a distrust in general).

So I totally relate hard to Kyo Sohma's character. Kyo of course being the boy the Zodiac Spirit lives in.

I think about this a lot actually, when I get stuck on thinking about paths and people and destiny (I know that's sappy). I think this series, which I'm sure everyone that was into anime and manga between the years of 1998 and 2019 were probably exposed to Fruits Basket at one point in their lives: but this series really came into my life when I needed it to.

I had this friend in middle school who moved away right after 7th grade who introduced me to the series. When I say I grew a long side these characters I mean:

While Kyo was coming to terms with his "curse" and learning to love and be loved, I was also coming to terms with my disability, which sometimes feels like a curse and learning to love and be loved and accept it. Which is something I still struggle with. If it's a positive force my brain doesn't accept that to be real. Trauma is weird and if you can, try your best to not traumatize and damage anyone as you work on not being traumatized and damaged yourself.

It'll make living here on this planet as an adult so much easier. If we cared for each other a little more than we have been. But what do I know?

So yes, I think I'll write a review on season 1 and 2 of Fruits Basket once the English dubbed season finale drops.

That's another one I'm excited for on Hulu. Not because Hulu is a personal favorite of mine. (It's not. I could care less) But because I'm spending like nine dollars a month on a subscription (Funimation) for a streaming service I only watch one thing on. It's a very expensive investment.

Fruits Basket is worth the $9 though.