antagonistchan

[antagonistchan]

Hiiiii it turns out that trying to pick up the pieces of your online life after you went totally nuts is way harder when your IRL life won't stop shoving important shit in your face

[antagonistchan]

important addendum to last night's post

Feeling significantly more determined today. I think making that post last night was very important for me. For over two months- from the moment June started acting weird- I'd been dancing around my problems whenever I talked about them. I wanted to be as civil as possible. Just spilling all of the beans entirely, explicitly and from start to finish, got SO much off my chest.

I even broke out my secret weapon- see, this isn't the first time I've troubled Star by being a complete fucking coward who can't bring herself to read her god damn messages, so we've actually exchanged phone numbers for the express purpose of having a way for her to cut through my bullshit and reach me in an emergency. And today, I just... flipped it. Instead of her cutting through my bullshit to reach me, I cut through my own bullshit to reach her. Was extremely nerve-wracking but it's sorted now. Like obviously the crisis with Star isn't over, I still need to resolve things, but I've at least talked to her, made it clear where we both stand, confirmed that we're not done, gotten my foot in the door for wrapping everything up.

[antagonistchan]

The first half of 2022 was the worst time of my life. The sheer inability to experience joy that I had for that entire sixth month period is just uncontested, and then towards the end, the worst thing that anyone has ever done to me happened- a level of exploitation that I hope to god I’ll never experience again.

But there is one thing that’s worse right now. My self-worth is probably at the absolute lowest it has ever been. My respect for myself, and my capacity to believe in others’ appreciation for me, is in an absolute crater. I’m just sitting here, convinced that everyone I know has had enough of me. I can’t even open any notifications from anyone because my brain won’t stop screaming that they’re all just going to talk about how I deserve to die in a hole. And I know I can’t keep living like this, I have to gather my courage and open myself back up if I want to move on from this, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to. Which just convinces me even more that I’m a worthless coward. It’s a vicious cycle.

So, some context- for the last several years, I’ve ultimately had two social circles- both of which have pretty clearly defined “leaders”. June and Star (the latter of whom I’ve also been dating). I’ve got about two close friends who I didn’t meet through either of them. I basically didn’t have real friendships prior to meeting Star in early 2019, or at least it had been a few years since I had. They’re both people who would take a massive chunk of my social life’s foundation with them if they decided to get rid of me.

And in July 2022, June did just that. But I was able to weather it. I understood that my relationship with June had been deteriorating for months, and June fully explained the split and wished me well going forward. It sucked, but I was able to keep going. It wasn’t even the first time June had pushed me away, though the first time he was less serious about it and he wasn’t quite so central to my social life’s foundation yet. On top of that, June was actually already the third close friend who’d decided they wanted nothing to do with me that year. Over time, those three lost friendships plus some other snafus caused me to have doubts about my worth as a person, but it never got too bad. Star was particularly insistent that they were all wrong about me, that I was wonderful.

And then, in September 2024, June actually came back- apologized, said that in retrospect he felt like the villain in what happened between us, and that he missed having me around. He was pretty aggressive in bringing me back into the fold and making sure I felt comfortable- being endlessly accommodating to a degree that I worried might have been too much. Not that I said anything- I still remembered what happened before and was constantly walking on eggshells trying to avoid somehow upsetting him. But I didn’t think it was actually necessary, he was being so supportive- it was just a precaution, born from wanting to avoid a repeat at all costs.

And then in early April, I was working on editing the upcoming next episode of Touhou Tuesday, and something he’d done to his footage was giving me trouble. I hesitantly asked him if he could avoid doing that in the future, and in an attempt to make it clear that I wasn’t upset, I went for a super casual tone. In doing so, I accidentally said something mildly insensitive. When he came online, he immediately sent me a really bitter message about the thing I said. I immediately apologized; he did not respond. Several hours later, I sent him the finished episode, just in time for the typical upload time. He never uploaded it. The next day, he cancelled our TTRPG meetup for that week. I got the hint that he was upset with me for some reason and deigned to give him space. After a while, I edited my last message to him to clarify that I was just ignoring him to give him space, just in case this was a misunderstanding and he was confused why I was ghosting him. TTRPG and Touhou Tuesday recording sessions came and went with no word. At some point in there, I had a scare regarding an ex-abuser apparently poking her head around my general sphere- this didn’t go anywhere, but did significantly unsettle me. And then in mid May, just as I was starting to think “Surely I can just poke him and ask if we’re good now”, he very suddenly blocked me everywhere with no explanation. My first sign of this was when I was just talking to someone else on Discord and I very suddenly saw all of his servers blink out of my sidebar one by one. This caused the beginning of my current crisis.

I was too freaked out to respond to anyone’s messages- that is, anyone except my partner Key. Key messaged me the next day. Because I’d slightly cooled off by then, and Key isn’t available every day, and most importantly, Key has a history of not acknowledging my big “I’M SUFFERING” notifications I plaster all over my page whenever I have a mental breakdown, I felt like Key was the one person I could safely talk to without all of this coming up. My safe space where I could just ignore all of the pain I was going through and still have someone to casually chat with. A pocket of normalcy.

The next exception was my girlfriend Edith. Edith and I had already made very serious in-person plans for May 29th, so I knew I needed to at least acknowledge her by then. I barely made that, getting to her on the 28th.

And then finally, I was eventually willing to engage with some people on Tumblr exclusively, after the date.

My date with Edith did do a lot to shore up my confidence and happiness, so I just thought “Oh, it’ll just be a matter of time before I can get to everyone else. Soon, I’ll be able to collect myself and face the music and open back up to everyone. I’ll need to hurry before it gets completely insane, but I can do this.”

And then on June 9th, while I was talking to Key on Discord, I very suddenly noticed that a lot of group chats I was in with Star had suddenly been bumped up to the top of the list, with no notifications. Upon clicking on them (and even more quickly jumping up to the top), I realized that Star was leaving all of them. I then checked our shared server, and she’d left that, too. The memories of seeing my connections to June flicker away one by one just came rushing back. June was sick of my shit, and now, so was Star. Both of the people who formed the entire foundation of my social life. That was it. I was done for. My life was over. I’d still have some individual people, sure, but I no longer have any social groups. And who knows how many people they’d take with them? I still hadn’t fully had the courage to take stock of the friends I knew through June and how many of them still wanted to have me around, and I had no idea how many of the friends I knew through Star would still stick with me. I was back to being a loner. I’m apparently just that toxic and spineless, I guess. Who could ever give a fuck about someone as apparently awful to be around as me?

It’s been a week, now, and it hasn’t really gotten better. It doesn’t help that a ton of IRL shit very suddenly came up that urgently needed my attention, too, which just prolonged the amount of time I was caging myself off.

I’ve never hated myself as much as I do now.

[antagonistchan]

i'm not dead by the way. just unbelievably anxious and incredibly busy with irl stuff, so i literally don't have the time or energy to work up the nerve to come online. but i should at least say something to make sure everyone knows i'm alive at least

[antagonistchan]

The core issue is

I'm actively ignoring WAY too many people right now

and I WANT to stop ignoring them

I want to address the things that need to be addressed, and more importantly, I just miss them

But every time I even think about opening back up to anyone, I get so deeply anxious that I feel physically ill

[antagonistchan]

Of course I can't stop driving people away

I've got absolutely no spine

[antagonistchan]

Oh god no no no no no no no no no

Not another crisis while I'm still trying to drag myself kicking and screaming out of the last one

I can't

[antagonistchan]

man

does anyone else remember that time like ten years ago when The Children's Place got in hot water for making a shirt that said "Don we now our FUN apparel, fa la la la la, la la la la"

like i get why they didn't want to make a shirt that said gay apparel. that does imply things nowadays that the original song did not mean to imply.

but like. nobody was forcing them to make a shirt of that lyric at all. they could have just not made any shirt. that would have been an option

[antagonistchan]

i've talked about this before

but it's still funny to me

if all you have to go off of is my taste in anime, you'd think i care WAY more about music than i actually do

SO MANY of my favorite anime are about music but like. that's entirely a coincidence. i don't seek out anime about music or anything, it's just that anime about music very frequently lands a direct hit on my tastes for other reasons

[antagonistchan]

i looked up the Robot Alchemic Drive tag on Pixiv

and it's funny

because it is extremely categorizable

all of it is one of the following:

crossover memes

pixel art of the robots

Yui/Nanao yuri

just Yui or Nanao in general

[antagonistchan]

i looked up the Robot Alchemic Drive tag on Pixiv

and it's funny

because it is extremely categorizable

all of it is one of the following:

crossover memes

pixel art of the robots

Yui/Nanao yuri

just Yui or Nanao in general

[antagonistchan]

it's so weird that Oreos' catchphrase is "milk's favorite cookie" because Oreos are really good but they're not very good for dipping in milk. your average chocolate chip cookie is way better for that

[antagonistchan]

the other day i heard something i've never heard before

"Rub a dub dub, thanks for the meal"

like. who says that. the entire point of the rub a dub dub part is that it rhymes with grub, how can you swap grub out for meal

[antagonistchan]

yeah sure

[antagonistchan]

at the JRPG cafe, and the drink sizes are sod, soda, and sodaga

[antagonistchan]

After numerous financial drains over the last couple years, I'm finally genuinely flat broke. If you'd like to help me, it would mean the world.

[antagonistchan]

i constantly see people say like "man there's not much Disney media left for Kingdom Hearts 4" and like. man those people are being so blinded by KH3 mostly just being recent-at-the-time Pixar movies. they're forgetting that KH2 had Tron (YEARS before Tron Legacy) and Steamboat Willie. they're absolutely capable of doing weirder shit if they actually try.

an inexhaustive list of things that would be bizarre but extremely plausible picks for Kingdom Hearts 4 (if i understand correctly, the first one is already confirmed for KH4):

Star Wars

Marvel

Cars

Emperor's New Groove

Disney Parks settings, like the Haunted Mansion

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Herbie the Love Bug

Mary Poppins

High School Musical

the Alice comedies

the Simpsons

Doctor Who (this one wouldn't be easy, but i mean, if they can negotiate with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate for Tarzan in KH1, they can negotiate with the BBC for Doctor Who in KH4)

Honey I Shrunk The Kids

LOST

the Muppets

the Mighty Ducks