[jads-abum-rat]

“Hey, Jads, what do you do with your old sketchbooks and drawings?”

I see that they are cared for in the way they deserve.

[airyucat]

I genuinely wish more people did this. I feel like every other artist except bird friend here hoards their old art like a starving squirrel holding the last acorn on earth. Just let it go! Throwing away old art is one of the most freeing experiences, though of late if people want them I’ll give them away

[airyucat]

Hello again, tumblr. It’s a fitting that that my first post back comes from a place of deep pain. I used tumblr a lot in grad school, some of the most painful years of adulthood. It’s not that I don’t trust my loved ones, but it’s that I still have intrusive thoughts that I let become thoughts. But this animation also comes from a place of deep gratitude. I wanted to add more outlines to the video, but if you’re in it, how dare you not give up on me >:c How dare you always support me, no matter what I’m going through. Absolutely rude (am I supposed to specify sarcasm here). If you’re in the video, I love you inexplainable amounts. And if you’re not, or you’re wondering if you are, I probably love you too. But I have a constant feeling of a valley bigger Valles Marineris cut through my being. Loved one prove to me they love me over and over again, and my stupid scientist brain collects stupid evidence and puts together a stupid hypothesis and runs simulation upon simulation on why this is wrong actually, why those people don’t care about me, why they’re lying to me actually. I have far away friends on other states and countries, so we try and plan online events, that get cancelled or where 2 people show up and can only stay for 15 minutes. If you truly cared about me, why don’t you call, or message, or reach out, of your own volition. Why do I have to wait until I’m cracking and deseperate and seek you out in pain for us to connect? I left an online group I loved - I let one person ruin it for me - and there went a big piece of my life. And people who said they still cared about me, why should a hi every now and then be enough? We used to move mountains with tremendous conversations, but now I just get a Merry Christmas in response to me saying it. I have friends here, in norcal, that live 2 hours away by driving, and 3 hours away by public transit. It’s exhausting, I often need to spend the night if it’s a late event, and I’m so far away that there are events I miss by not knowing about them. I’ve known them forever, but like, not as long as the full time I’ve known them. I met some before moving to Michigan for grad school, others when visited norcal but lived in michigan and then socal. So I was MIA physically from their lives from 2012-2018

Trauma led me to move back to norcal at the end of 2018. I got a job in SF, and my now spouse, Tai, and I moved to a cheap area still far from friends. It was supposed to be temporary, but I’m bad with money, and weddings can be expensive, and it’s hard to save up when a pandemic hits. But, in late 2018, everything felt broken, awful, horrible. Honestly that time and the year before felt like “what if our whole polycule that hadn’t even formed yet fucked up every thing every where all at once.”

So, 2019 was the year Tai and I took time to ourselves fix serious issues in our relationship, which meant we were distant from everyone, no matter the distance. We got cats at the start of the year though, two of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The end of 2019 was when we we finally reconnected back with our poly partners, and started reaching out to friends. And then, well, happy happy 2020 pandemic. Mid-2021 was spent reconnecting for me, but disconnecting for Tai, for similar reasons. “If you truly cared about me, why didn’t you reach out until you found out how bad things were.” I like to think we’re both decent at masking though. As a kid, before my dad starting ripping up all my art, he ripped up the ones where I drew sad faces. Because you’re not supposed to be sad, ever. Early 2022 I lost my one of my best friend’s dad. He felt like my dad. How sad was I allowed to be? I still don’t know, and next month it’ll have been a year since.

Did you know that a wedding at Disneyland and another wedding at a Hindu temple are really, really hard to plan? That’s what almost half of 2022 was. The weddings themselves, in May, on our anniversary, and the honeymoon, wow. Breath-taking. Especially for all the adlibbing we ended up doing (no rehearsal needed). 12 years since I met Tai. 11 years since I asked them out. 8 years since I proposed. Took us long enough.

My favorite pictures are the ones with or of loved ones, particularly our polycule and wedding party. I generally never get nostalgic, but I cry thinking about all the people that supported us. A lot of them are outlines in the video. My chest physically hurts knowing I will not be able to express how damn much I love them. People from all those three groups above? Didn’t matter how long the drive was, or the plane costs and delays, or the wallet-draining hotels, buying Indian and Disney-bounding clothes, spending a day in weather that was too hot for them... they did it. For Tai. For me. They did it. Side note - I’ll never forget that my (white) girlfriend taught me how to tie a sari. If you ever feel like an outsider to your cultural roots, remember me. And after the wedding... it was back. June, July, August, September, October, worse worse worse feelings of being excluded, people not wanting to be around me, doesn’t matter how false those feelings were. You can know something logically and not know it. Tai withdrawing from everyone. Accidental emotional neglect - if someone’s masking well enough, you don’t know. You can’t know. You can’t. And it matched my self narrative anyways: I’m disgusting and people don’t want me around. It solves everything; no one can kick you down if you’ve already done it. Emotions compounded by feeling unskilled in art, drained by my job’s commute and miniscule amounts of time off, Kaiser giving me scraps of therapy once every 8 weeks... My mental health pludged. October. Went to Europe with my girlfriend. Met some internet friends IRL. Covid finally got its claws into me, but my symptoms were just a sore throat, and I thought, maybe I was climbing up mentally. Maybe I got this! Halloween. My fave holiday. Sat around the apartment and did nothing. November. My birthday. It hit. It always hits hard. I can mitigate it with a party, and I did two weeks later, but having friends in their 20′s makes me wish I didn’t spend half of those years rotting away getting a PhD. I guess I can slap a Dr. in front of my last name now. 32 is the age one of my fave webcomic writers ended her long-running comic, and had plans but not really, and I think about her a lot, now that I’m that age. What am I going to do? I’ve got 10 months left to this age.

We went to a convention that emotionally hit Tai bad, and now they really really really won’t reach out to our friends. And I started trying to see friends more and talk to them more and... burnt myself out a little I think, because if you feel excluded and think people don’t want you there and aren’t used to interactions without a spouse or partner, seeing friends more isn’t a magic cure. It’s helping I think... I hope. I had to also come to terms with the fact that I’m probably never going to move to Hawaii, or have kids, or buy a house of be a Cool Internet Artist™, and might never be able to retire. Everything felt like it was crumbling. And then I drew this ...last week? It feels like a million years ago, but the new year did just happen. Here I am now. I’m going to keep trying I guess. I don’t know why, really, but here I go. I’ll try and be on here more, and just, share more. Take things out of my head and plop them down, and hope that the void yells back every now and then. Love, Airyu (Agni)