So I’m back from the dead (literally). A Goodbye Message.
Hey there. Some of you may remember me.
Some of you may have wondered why I suddenly stopped posting, but the vast majority of you probably didn’t even notice, as is how it is. ^ ^;
I’m finally back, and it wasn’t an easy journey getting back.
(Slightly long post, but please forgive me for not putting it under a cut, it’s sorta important)
On November 19th, I checked my blog as I always do, to learn that my blog was terminated.
No warning, no reason, suddenly BOOM gone. I’ve had this blog since spring 2012. It’s almost entirely sfw, I’ve always been hyper careful with tagging, and any questionable content has always been hosted on other platforms. Yet for some reason, I was one of many blogs caught up in what’s come to be known as the #TumblrPurge.
I followed all the steps. I emailed staff, first desperately, then more rationally, making my case. I figured that a bot had caught my blog, as I knew plenty of other more suspicious content blogs that were unharmed. At first there was hope, it’s just a glitch, it’s happening to a lot of people, they’ll give it back right away, some people have already gotten theirs back!
My methods of contacting followers were limited to my Patreon and Twitter, neither of which has much of a base. Followers who knew me on there were incredibly kind and supportive, and sometimes even reached out to staff on my behalf.
I didn’t want to spam, but I also was desperate. I emailed staff once a week. I tried using different categories. I tried adding attachments. My messages ranged from simple and succinct, to deeply personal and desperate.
I was honestly devastated. I spiraled into the worst depression I’ve ever been in. I could barely eat and vomited nonstop for a week. I gained 20 pounds in 2 weeks. I was completely out of control mentally, and even reached out to a psychiatrist friend in case I couldn’t handle it myself. I couldn’t draw, and thinking about projects that I once loved only hurt me more.
Talk about social media addiction, but I’ve legit never gone longer than a week without posting something for years, and especially since becoming a content creator, it felt sickening to not have the place where I drove myself to post constantly and consistently. It broke my schedule. It made me feel cut off from the world, and I felt claustrophobic and uncomfortable in my own skin.
I lost so many things with this blog. Yes, I was primarily a content creator, and while of course I had backups of all my art and some of my longer text posts, I lost so much more.
I lost, perhaps most importantly, all my interactions with my followers. I lost connections to so many people, people I hadn’t contacted in years and may not have even been active anymore, but who I always believed I would have this route back to. I lost memories, both online and of my personal life that I had recorded on here.
And as someone who unfortunately put so much of my identity and self-validation on my social media experience, I suddenly felt like I was absolutely nothing.
For the longest time, I thought I was su*cidal as a result of my depression (word bleeped out bc who knows what can get you flagged now). I certainly thought about death and dying daily.
But then, I realized what I was feeling wasn’t quite that. I didn’t feel like I wanted to die.
I felt like I was already dead.
Which, may sound like an exaggeration, but in terms of tumblr at least, it’s exactly the same. If I had died in rl, I would have dropped off the map, just like this. Suddenly stopped posting, no warning in advance. My blog may have existed, but in this case, no record of my existence even remained. To people who came looking for my url, I may as well have been dead. You wouldn’t have known any better.
Or who knows, maybe I was a criminal or had done something awful that resulted in my blog being removed. Maybe I had just had it with this site and had chosen to leave. Maybe I was just taking a much needed break. It would have been odd, since I prioritized communicating and always said when I needed a break, which was rarely ever. But either way, I had no way of telling any of you what had happened to me. My voice was gone.
Feeling like I was dead, after I recognized what I was feeling, was…disturbing, I guess. Kinda explained why I always felt like a corpse though.
(of course, feeling like I was dead contributed to thinking other things like maybe it’d be better if I really wasn’t around at all, but that’s a result, and not the main feeling.)
Anyway, I kept emailing staff, and I finally managed to come back. It took ten emails and over 2 months of waiting and wasting away and trying to come to terms with how I’m unlikely to get it back. I didn’t get my blog back until TODAY.
Now that I have come back, the landscape’s changed, as I had heard it had. They hadn’t even announced the adu*t content policy change when they terminated me. I honestly feel like I’m back in a world that’s moved on without me, and it’s made me feel very strongly how insignificant I was in the first place.
During my time being dead, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do. I regretted not doing my 25K follower giveaway sooner. I regretted not getting this or that content out. I regretted having kept certain long text posts and ask responses in my drafts yet unpublished.
But more than anything, I regretted not being able to say goodbye, and thank you all for my time here.
Yes, it’s had ups and downs, but tumblr was where I first found myself as an artist. Tumblr was what first made me interact with and find a group of people interested in what I created. Tumblr was where I was able to interact with those people, you. And I know I’ve had my ups and downs too, and different fandoms and different moods, but I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for letting me be a part of your experience here, however big or small that experience may have been.
I also learned the dangers of immersing myself too deeply on one online platform. So much of myself had been poured into this one blog, this one blog that can disappear with a legit snap of staff’s fingers. (my twitter handle was “Got Thanos’d on Tumblr” for a good month lol) I used to think that’s what made my content valuable, that I poured so much love and thought and everything personal into it, that’s what made it special, but in the end oh so very damaging when it was ripped away. As someone who spent almost all my time online creating content, it was an awful reality pill I had to swallow, and I don’t want ANYONE experiencing the same thing I did.
So please. The takeaway here, if I can be a cautionary tale, is to be aware that an online identity is more unstable than you think it is. It can go POOF. I’m lucky to be here, and that staff finally responded, and that I had the masochism to continue emailing staff weekly no matter how much I felt like I should stop breathing afterwards.
Also, please, if you have people on this site you care about, whether it be a friend or someone you think is neat, anyone you will miss if they suddenly disappeared, please go connect with them in other places beyond this site, which may become increasingly unstable. This can be another social media if they have it, an email, a chatting platform, anything. Even if you personally don’t use it yet, create an account so you can find them when you can no longer access your account, or they can’t access theirs and they can find you. Don’t regret it like I did.
As for me, after all of this, I don’t know if I can post content on here again.
I’d gone well beyond hoping for another chance at this community. All I’ve been thinking about these past two months was how I would have wanted to say goodbye.
Now that I have my account back, I’m currently filled with more numbness and bitterness than any joy or relief. I don’t know if I can create content anymore for a platform that has hurt me so deeply, no matter how much its community means to me. This experience changed me, and I’ve taken damage that isn’t going to go away so easily.
As I think about what to do moving forward, for now, you can find me on my accounts that I WAS active on these past two months. They aren’t the same, but they were all I had.
If you read this message until the end, thank you.
Again, I might decide to post on here again. I might not. But for now, here’s again what I’ve been wanting to say for two months:
Thank you, Tumblr. And goodbye.
https://twitter.com/YukiPri_Art
https://www.patreon.com/YukiPri
prguitarman
origamiaround
2087
gamechangershow
gracieabrams
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
vaporwave
ellievsbear
