Thread by @baph0meat

Tw: suicide, self-esteem

Yo I missed the fuck out of that 22nd July comic you brought back up again at the start… — #iracc i’m still working on that! that’s an endless process, and i think even more so when ur in a field like min… curiouscat.qa/baph0meat/post…

ok continuing so i don’t have to mess w cc’s character limit on the subject of: how do u stop comparing urself to others re: the time you “lost” to severe mental illness while it felt like everyone else was Moving Forward lol

this isn’t the first thing i did but i think it’s one of the most important and i wish i’d figured it out sooner: i had to realize that i NEEDED all that time. it wasn’t wasted or lost, it was spent staying alive and getting to a spot where i could recover/was recovering

there was a lot of bitterness and resentment when i looked back and realized how many times, esp when i was a kid, someone couldve listened to me/helped me + “maybe things couldve been different!!!” but.... and i mean this gently, that just didn’t happen. that timeline isn’t real

cw suicide / in the timeline that DOES exist, it DID take me almost my entire life so far to stop actively wanting to die. that’s just how things are. so i NEEDED all of those yrs to claw my way out of it + its not productive or kind to fixate on ways i couldve “recovered faster”

(also none of this is a neat timeline, recovery isn’t a linear slope where u get to the top and go “yay i’m fixed!!” and then u never experience stuff from The Before Times again, i’m just trying to write about this in a relatively straightforward way for the sake of clarity)

tldr: i know this is way easier said but you have GOT to stop punching urself in the face over n over bc u feel like u “wasted time” struggling w survival all the way into adulthood. it is not helping. this is how u survived, it’s what ur working with, + frankly u did a good job.

moving on to the more specific issue of comparison to other ppl and where they are in life, and how easy it can be to feel like ur illness fucked u over and is the reason ur “behind.” i’m gonna talk abt this specifically as an artist but i think it applies to a lot of stuff

i’m ur friendly neighborhood art school dropout and art school wrecked me. art school wrecked me and nobody really noticed bc art school wrecks just about everyone. the school i went to had such a high turnover rate that my suffering wasn’t even a blip in the numbers

i was flunking, i accidentally outed myself as trans in the only class i was enjoying so i stopped going to it, in a last ditch effort i went to one of my professors to sob + beg for her to let me make up an entire quarter in 2 weeks + she saved my life by telling me to drop out.

and i was like this is it. my life is over. i fucked it up. i’m done. and the next few years are a blur + abt half my family has Never stopped asking me abt “when i’m going back to school >:?” even when i actually like, worked my ass off + created an independent career for myself

and so bc i thought it was Over and i’d Fucked It All Up, art became something that was for other ppl but not me. i’d look at other ppl creating and enjoying success and think, bitterly, good 4 u! too bad i’m a loser who fucked it up already.

i was like 21 so this was obviously ridiculous but that’s how i felt. it felt like everyone i looked at who had Made it and had 10k followers and a bustling online shop also had “[art school] ‘15” in their bio or was younger than me to begin with

+ for a while the only way 2 get out of that mindset was 2 just straight up stop looking at social media stuff that made me feel that way. i was not capable of transforming that resentment + envy into something positive, so i just had 2 stop looking at it. thats human + it’s OKAY

it’s very easy to say “be inspired by other creators’ success, not jealous of it 🥰” and very hard to actually feel that way especially when you throw in mental illness. sometimes u need extra steps nobody really talks about.

i got there by pivoting my focus away frm artists i had only a parasocial relationship w/who i had started to view as “out of my league” + instead poured more time + attention into my peers + actual friends who were (+ are) making stuff i enjoyed, + that was (and is) very healing

nowadays when i look at another artist + something about them sets off that nasty internal spark of resentment instead of a spark of admiration/inspiration, i say 2 myself, “okay. obv theres insecurity here that i have to work on. let’s set this psn’s work aside + go work on me”

obviously i would love to be a saintly fountain of overflowing love and positivity for all people but i am not. i compare myself to other people + i get jealous. but pivoting to “how can i lessen these feelings” instead of “WHY NOT ME! WHY NOT ME!” has been infinitely better 4 me

and sometimes “lessening those feelings” doesn’t mean “sitting with myself and coming to peace with my emotions 🥰” it means “i have bpd and something abt seeing [specific instance of success] makes me feel fucking crazy so i have to log off” + that’s FINE as a stepping stone

it’s like working out or practicing a skill. every time i practice funneling comparison and envy and self loathing/self blame into something productive and kind to myself instead, it gets easier to do the next time, and surrounding myself with people and work i can relate to —

instead of people and work that evoke envy or self loathing in me gently and gradually rewrites what i consider “success” and “creative fulfillment” into something healthier and more realistic, until bit by bit i can enjoy and be inspired by seeing immense progress in others

and like. idk. this is weird to touch on or talk about but i know it might seem weird for me to be saying all this when right now i’m like.... kind of the person i express being involuntarily resentful of in the past, lots of followers and does this as a job or whatever

but 1. that happened really fast for me and i am still kind of uh. figuring it out, 2. it made it VERY clear to me that my prior mindset of big audience = big success is just straight up not real, even tho there are obv advantages to having a large audience vs a small one

(also when i say “happened really fast” what i actually mean is i have spent my whole life working very fucking hard on my craft and then suddenly like three years ago ppl started paying attention, and that latter half is the part u have next to no control over)

uh i am talking so SO much, as i often do when answering a curiouscat question that was probably only anticipating like a 4-tweet response, but i just have a lot to say bc i have had to work on this a LOT in myself and often it is just not pretty or easy.

the emotions that come up when u compare urself to others, esp when mental illness and a horrible feeling of injustice re: the course of your life are involved, can be really ugly and hard to reconcile w the positive tone a lot of self-help advice abt the issue has, and i think -

that can lead to u feeling like ur doing it wrong or ur just a Bad Person who can’t chill w the Good People. but for me the most foundational action in my recovery has always been “how can i safely + constructively ease the pain i’m feeling,” not “how can i stop the Bad Feeling”

ANYWAY UHHH TLDR:
- turn inward!!! turn inward!!! spend ur energy on YOURSELF and the ppl close to u
- it is ok if Unproductive Thought -> Nice Healthy Thought :) is not a straight line from point A to point B and u have to cobble together transitional solutions in between