millennium-fae-artblog:

it’s been a difficult few months, after i moved back with my mom because i couldn’t live alone anymore.

a few years ago, i resolved to be a young working professional right out of college. i was going to enter a media team to become an animator, and from there my own director. famous and rich

then, i got very sick during the summer prior to my junior college year. suddenly, i couldn’t reliably live independently anymore. continuing school was hard enough, upholding a job was out of the question.

i managed to graduate college with honors, very impressive for someone with a new chronic illness. but having neglected therapy and medication for three years, i crashed a few months after turning 23. i had to move back with my mom. she would take care of me.

it’s both disheartening and enlightening to realize that i’m someone i dreaded to become; in my early twenties, with an art degree, and unemployed while leaching off my parents. i continue to create art and flex my skills, but it can be a struggle when i get caught in a depressive loop of, ‘what’s the point?’

during the past few years, i had to re-learn what it meant to be a productive artist. although i spend many days where i can’t even go outside, i’m still an artist like any other. i can’t produce media the way i wished i could, but i’m still making good things.

it’s a lesson that no one taught me. high-school graduates aren’t taught to expect the possibility of becoming disabled in the midst of their formative years.

its a lesson i’m still trying to absorb, but it’s an important one.