Hi guyyyyyys we keep saying we're going to post some blog updates here and then NOT so here goes!
So back in early fall we got diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. This has come with quite the personal reckoning as we've been forced to face up to the trauma we endured and just how severe it was. We've been anxious about talking about this as it's such a stigmatized disorder, especially online and especially in our age group, but we're slowly edging into doing it more (we might've already done it here, we're not sure, our memory is terrible). We lived through the 'roleplaying mental illnesses' era of Tumblr and while we do know that every single one of the kids who were doing that definitely weren't neurotypical and had SOME kind of issue, even if it wasn't the one they were acting like or had convinced themselves they had, it still damaged a lot of millennials' ability to take certain diagnoses seriously, and to be wary of self diagnoses - in our case it's from our psychiatrist, and at any rate we feel that since psychology is pretty much entirely based on self-reporting, it's a bit silly to say that someone can't self diagnose if they've done all their research and aren't just jumping to conclusions. That said we do still think that for disorders that are harder to research successfully, especially if you're not familiar with the process of doing thorough research, it's good to get a doctor's opinion - especially if it's something that needs medication! - to make sure you're getting the care you need. We've been working hard on our girlfriend's ethos of believing other people to be generally reporting their qualia accurately and to not be able to judge that qualia if it's different from your own, and to take people seriously if they tell you what's going on with them, so we're hoping others will extend us that same courtesy. We've developed an alphabet's worth of diagnoses at this point, but every new one has helped us understand ourselves better and get the care we need with more accurate treatment and targeted support.
So we've kind of been flapping around a lot emotionally while we cope with the new self-awareness and facing up to this trauma we had been suppressing. We were aware of everything that happened to us, but we weren't letting ourselves put it together into what we've been referring to as a 'lifelong narrative', putting our experiences in context with each other and in a timeline, and taking them as seriously as they should be rather than brushing them off or just avoiding thinking about them. It feels like the last ten years have been a parade of 'what do you mean that's not something everyone thinks/feels/experiences?' but it's also helping us find our people. We've been making friends in the plural community and with other dissociative systems, we've been employing the pronouns and self-expression (including using we/our/us to refer to ourselves as an entire system, if that wasn't clear), and we've been able to give ourselves more self-care and self-support as we work on our intra-system communication. It's been positive on the whole but it's been really fucking hard, too, on us and on the people who support us most.
Back in March our wife lost her job, she was let go as her previous company whittled down her project to 'save' money and resources (even though her project was their biggest moneymaker) and her team in order to prepare for using AI to take over her job and the jobs of the people that were let go before her. We had known this was coming for a long time but weren't sure when or how long we'd have to prepare, and management had just gotten done telling everyone that they weren't shrinking the team any further and everyone's jobs would be safe sooooo yay corporate evil. The tech industry is fucking tough right now so she's still on the hunt. She's had a couple of interviews for one position and is now in the interview process for another - she's had three interviews for them this week (including two today just a few hours apart!) and now we're waiting til Tuesday to hear back if they want her for an in-person interview. The main good thing about all this is discovering that her old company was underpaying her by $20k/year AT THE LEAST. +$20k/year more would be the VERY BOTTOM of the range considered appropriate for her position.
So stuff sucks right now, we've had to tighten our belts a ton and make backup plans upon backup plans (we're safe and have a place to go even if we lose our apartment - but between our own income and unemployment and a little help from loved ones, we should be fine for at least 6 months), but once she gets her feet under her again, stuff will be drastically better for us financially than it has been. We'll be able to get a better place to live closer to Hale and closer to where all the jobs are (especially since a lot of positions in the area are hybrid work, and gas is getting fucking expensive! Thanks Trump) and pay off our not-significant amount of debt, and not have to worry about living hand to mouth anymore. We've been housepoor even before Cassio lost her job after moving here in 2023 and having to borrow a bunch of money we still haven't paid back to do so, for an emergency that fell through and wasn't the emergency we thought it was (in fact it was not one at all - the situation we moved here for completely fell through), and haven't been able to afford to move. We were going to say fuck it and add to our debt to move this year to somewhere cheaper, but our lease was up this month and obviously we can't look for a new place to live with pretty much no savings and no 'two months of employment history making at least 2.5x as much as rent' that all rentals require around here.
Of course, right when all this is going on, we pushed ourselves too hard working too much, and gave ourselves a nasty case of bicepital tendonitis in our right arm - and we're right-handed, which meant we couldn't draw for weeks while we recovered. Our doctor put us on steroids to treat the inflammation, especially we were having a horrifically bad arthritis flare-up in our knee at the same time that was making it almost impossible to leave the house (since stairs are the hardest for us and we live on the second floor), with the understanding that it would probably make us manic and agreeing with our doctor that it was worth it to be able to get back to work ASAP. Unfortunately, for the last couple of days on them and about three days afterward, the steroids completely fucked us up emotionally far beyond a mania, and we spent almost a week crying and panicking constantly, with our kid alters fronting the entire time (which is very uncommon, they've been around - or at least being aware that they're around - more since coming face to face with our childhood trauma for obvious reasons, but having them out the majority of the time is unheard of), which was miserable for Cassio as well as for us. So that sucked, and we're not doing that ever again!
Our community came through with flying colors to support us with donations and love (equally appreciated), and while our doctor cautioned us that 'just because it feels better, doesn't mean it is better while you're on the steroids', so we waited a few days after going off them to make sure we weren't going to start hurting again, and then slowly started doing some drawing/work again. Of course we almost immediately re-injured ourselves, hooray! We're trying to do some work slowly on our mobile tablet anyway, which we can hold in our lap so that we're not supporting the weight of our arm with our bicep and shoulder, but it's looking like we probably won't be able to stream this weekend, which suuuuucks because that's our primary source of income. We're currently open for tablet commissions to try to make up the difference - prices here:
If you're interested, you can either DM us on Discord if you already have us there (if you're a paid member, you should be on our server, and can DM us from there) or on Telegram at @farorenightclaw, or email us at [email protected] . Emails might have a slower response time! We will need your email address eventually anyway though to send you the files! WIPs will either be DMed or emailed depending on how you contacted us. This is a significant discount from our usual prices so, hopefully worth it! You also cannot get flat colors on our streams so this is a special opportunity for that as well.
We don't want to keep asking for donations more than we need to, as we've received such an outpouring of support already and it's helped SO much, but with monthly bills coming up we unfortunately need all the help we can get. You can support us through the following methods if you don't want to or can't afford to buy a tablet commission but still want to give financial support:
Donations:
http://ko-fi.com/farorenightclaw
Merch:http://redbubble.com/people/farorenightclaw
http://farorenightclaw.threadless.com/
https://pawtopress.com/products/alice-sfw
Digital products:
http://itch.io/farorenightclaw
https://www.patreon.com/c/farorenightclaw/shop
If there's merch, physical or digital, that you'd like to see, please let us know! Almost any image or set of images in our gallery (at least, prior to 2014 or so) can be made into merch or art packs so it's there if you want it X)
Hey you made it to the end of the post! We included a couple of high res and WIP images as a reward (though of course, since they're at the top of the post you can view them without reading any of this, lol). Man, we haven't done a lot of SFW for work lately, have we? @_@
Have a great rest of your day!
Characters belong to: us, us, HP1741A, CassioBunny & us, Ashgar, Fruxalga, Svanhildr, IonicSpark, CassioBunny & us, us, Goopypanther & us