#i almost accidentally deleted the whole post and my soul left my body for a minute

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo 2022 wrap up

As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to look back at these past months to let everything really sink in. We people sometimes forget how hard we have worked to get to where we are and tend to focus instead on what's still left to do, on what is missing—so I think the best way to remind us of how far we've come is to write down some achieved milestones and some goals for next year!

We wanted to first and foremost thank you all again for the overwhelming support we have received in the short time we have been active on socials. We weren't expecting it whatsoever, and the huge welcome you all gave us is everything we could ever dream of! 💜

This is another long post of what has been done and what's to come, so feel free to skip it if you want to! We hope you finish this year surrounded by love and that your start of 2023 is full of energy and good vibes!

✦ One of the most important milestones of the year was our social media release.

As we worked on the game this past year, there were times where we thought it would never happen. It was never the right time for one reason or another, and the world seemed to throw a punch at us whenever we were about to take the plunge. To be here writing this post doesn't feel real yet!

The week prior and the first week of our social media release on Twitter was frantic for the team; designing the many posts, planning them and the objects game, writing everything down...Plus the anxiety of what would the response be. I'm sure a lot of fellow devs reading this (specially those like us who are working on their first project) can relate to that feeling.

And then the response came, and in almost two months we have exceeded all expectations we had. We tried to be realistic with them, so waking up each day to comments, likes, asks on tumblr, even DM's from professionals wanting to work with us was just...ah. There's something indescribable about putting something you love out there and have people be interested in being part of that love. I could cry. So let's just jump to the next milestone before I keep writing :').

✦ We had our visual identity established! Our GUI is on the way and it's looking amazing so far! We have Re.Alice to thank for that 💜

✦The script for the demo is done!

The first draft was oficially finished September 2021, and I have been editing it since. There were major changes done as Lost in Limbo's story and characters kept evolving, and to this day I'm still doing some changes to perfection it as much as possible. I write a lot and I'm trying not to do that, so I found myself deleting as many "useless" scenes as possible. Right now the demo sits at 33.168 words!

✦All the sprites for the LIs were finished!

We finished Pride, our last one, back in April. As a fun fact (which was absolutely not fun for all of us), we wrote down some fixes to be done to the sprites one week before the social media release. It was little things like a piece of clothing, move this to the left...and then the sprites were basically revamped in the spawn of a week. Specially the faces. We had grown so much as artists since the day we finished them, so Rachel started doing some edits and one thing led to another...And all LIs got plastic surgery! We'll show you the before and after someday, haha.

The sprites are all full bodies so as we saw ourselves overworked, we decided to just edit them from the waist up for the social media posts. Thankfully not all of them needed their lower body fixed—except for Envy, who had no legs. There were no legs under his clothing layer. Now there are. They were our first character designed and the first sprite to be done, so obviously the poor thing had the most flaws.

✦All routes were outlined!

Every LI has a more or less established route, and the main story of the game is slowly blooming into something really strong.

If any, Ara is the one I'm most unsure about as the writer, because I have so many ideas for her that could work! I'm sure a lot of things will change, even for the most solid routes, as we progress and specially as I keep writing, but it will always be for the better!

✦We started coding!

This past month I have been toying with Ren'py and so far everything is coming along great. Right now there's around 4k words coded with the respective music, sound effects, transitions...I have been learning along the way and there's still a lot of things for me to learn and investigate, so it's taking a while. My goal is to have the demo fully coded with placeholders so when all the assets are done, it'll be just swapping files!

We initially settled on Unity but then questions arised, so we decided to work with Ren'py at least for the demo, and then move to Unity if the game needs it.

✦We made a teaser trailer!

Yep! There's a teaser trailer for LiL! We were ahead of the curve with this one because initially we were going to post the teaser as soon as the game was announced, but then we decided it would be best to save it for the demo release. It's an animated teaser of the events of the demo (among other stuff)! As the demo release approaches we will surely edit it some more (I almost descended to madness thanks to After Effects, but here I am) but we are very happy with it right now.

✦And some extras!

We finished our two first supporting/secondary characters and are working on the third! In the demo, there's a total amount of six secondary characters you'll meet!

We worked on some backgrounds! It may sound silly, but this has been an uphill battle for us most of the year. We have four backgrounds ready to be painted, and we'll have one last concept done before the 31st!

We met amazing people. Personally, if I could tell the Seyl from a year ago that she'd be talking to a lot of devs she admires, she would laugh at my face. What do you have to say now, huh?! But on a serious note; it takes me the world to just find the courage to even leave a comment to someone I admire, and managing Lost in Limbo's accounts has given me the push I needed to just stop thinking about the many what-ifs that are never going to happen and just make the possitive thoughts and emotions I feel inside something real. Daily reminder to let the people you love and admire know!!

You thought the post was over? No! YOU ARE TRAPPED HERE FOREVER!

Ahem. Here are some of the goals we'd like to meet in 2023!

✦Finish all the assets for the demo!

The most obvious one! We have a calendar planned for the entire lenght of 2023, but life gets in the middle, three of us are studying a master degree that is testing our sanity, and there will be, of course, unexpected problems along the way. So we'll deal with them as they come!

There's still expression charts to finish, secondary character's sprites to make, backgrounds to paint and animate, CGs, key and promotional art...But we'll get there! And hopefully you all will be here with us to see the process!

✦Open a ko-fi page!

As you may know, Lost in Limbo is a passion project made by four friends who have no money and no future prospects. Rachel and I have been working as freelance artists for a long while now, but it's hard to work on LiL, work on our commissions to support it financially (and getting work is getting harder), and focus on our master degree, which also asks a lot from us.

So far, everything Lost in Limbo has needed that we couldn't provide ourselves with the quality we wanted has been paid out of our dusty pockets, so one of our goals next year is to open a ko-fi page so everyone who may be interested in supporting the project until the Kickstarter drops can do so! 💜

✦The demo? The demo.

This point is dependent on the first one, because if we do not manage to finish all the assets, we will not be able to release the demo by the end of 2023. If everything goes smoothly and as planned, we'll have all the assets done before the last three months of 2023, and we'll use those three remaining months to sort out everything else. This is the most possitive prospect we could think of, so there's a chance we won't make it.

We are adamant not to rush the demo release no matter what, but we will work as hard as we can to make it happen as soon as possible. There's a lot to be done; I'd like the demo script to be proofreaded, we would love the demo to be at least partially voiced, we will have to get the demo tested for bugs...

We know reading this is kind of sad, but we want to be honest with you all. We are the first ones who want to see the demo out there and who want you all to experience the world we have created, but we don't want to sacrifice quality because of it. What we can promise is that you'll get regular updates and that you are all welcome to ask us anything, anytime, about the game, the process, or about us.

✦Be more active in the community!

To end on a positive note, something we'd like to do next year is be more active in the indiedev community. There's a lot of places and ways for indiedevs to interact, but we haven't felt ready to join them yet. We have been following and silently admiring so many projects for so long that the thought of being in the same space as them sometimes feels overwhelming (blame it on social anxiety), but the brief time we have been managing these accounts, we have been given a lot of love and support from other devs, and we want to give it back. We know we will be welcomed when we decide to take the step! Thank you all so much, from the Ravenstar team, for giving us and our project a chance! 💜

✦Stop confusing 'in' with 'on' and viceversa.

Because in is like inside and on is like on top, but sometimes that's not it, and for non-native speakers is confusing as hell and I want to stop googling every two seconds

What a year has been! From starting the project around July 2021 to being here doing a wrap up of 2022, it doesn't feel real yet. And there's so much more to come! Thank you all so much for believing in us and in Lost in Limbo, for taking your time to write a comment or an ask, leave a like, or even just reading our posts.

This final toast goes to my team; to Rachel, Astro and Kayden for being amazing people full of love and creativity. Thank you for a year of passion, hard work and laughter every step of the way. Lost in Limbo could have never been what it is today without the three of you.

Let's all make 2023 something great! 💜🥂 See you all next year!

[bunniekittiee]

Ahh alright so im sorry about anon’s request! It was late asf where I’m at and in my half asleep state I accidentally posted my barely started work of Smoke and I deleted it, but i ss the request, so I will just input it on here. So sorry about that, that was my fault.

Request-

Can you write a headcannons where reader gets kidnapped and Smoke goes to rescue his s/o?

Smoke x Fem. Reader

He was not sure how it happened, but his worst nightmare came to life.

Tensions were high with the Tengu clan, and Bi-Han was slaughtering quite a bit of their clan left and right.

However, they invaded the Arctika and created the worst chaos imaginable.

Tomas was worried about his s/o. He wanted her to be safe and sound, and he was almost sure that she was safe where she was at.

But he thought wrong.

When he went to find her, he saw that it was ransacked with blood smeared on the floor and she was gone.

His heart dropped and he ripped the place apart.

Kuai Liang had to interfere to get him to explain why he was on the verge of an anxiety attack.

Once Tomas explained, Kuai Liang immediately jumps into action and goes to Bi-Han.

Bi-Han may not have a love life himself, but he knows that his brothers have their own. Even if he doesn’t exactly approve of it.

So when Kuai Liang tells Bi-Han about Tomas’ lover being captured, Bi-Han is ready to invade.

As much as he may tell Tomas cruel things, he knows that if they were not able to get her back, he would not be able to be the warrior he is.

So it is crucial to save his lover.

At least, that’s how Bi-Han reasons it in his head. He doesn’t want to admit out loud that he doesn’t want to see Tomas really torn over losing his significant other.

Tomas is definitely losing his mind knowing that their rival clan has her, and they can do anything to her.

Tomas can’t sleep, he can’t eat, he can’t do anything else but work a plan inside of his head on how he was going to murder anyone who hurt her.

Although he was the sweetheart and kindest out of the brothers, he would not have any mercy for those who kidnapped his s/o. They took away the most important person to him.

That was something he would never forgive.

Bi-Han and Kuai Liang are concerned as they watch Tomas pace around, eyes alit with anger as he waited impatiently for the brothers to sketch out a plan to invade.

Was a little argumentative with Bi-Han which had taken the cyromancer aback as Tomas had never argued with Bi-Han.

Kuai Liang has to be the peace maker and eventually they have the plan laid out.

Tomas is ready to spill blood. He cannot stand the thought of her capturers being alive while she suffered.

He knew she was terrified for her life. As strong as she was, he knew that she was scared, and that made him so angry.

He was supposed to be a protector, not a failure.

Bi-Han wonders what is running through Tomas’ head as they trudge their way through the terrains. He sees his eyes have hardened and he’s deep in his thoughts.

Kuai Liang notices the tension around Tomas and feels guilty that they were not there to save her as well.

When they arrive at their destination, Tomas is ready for warfare. They go through the plan and invade quickly.

Tomas slaughters many, interrogating a few in order to find his lover.

He is drenched in blood, his gray eyes now burning with rage and hurt. He wanted his wife back, that is all that is important to him.

The brothers are a little concerned about Tomas’ bloodshed as he was never this rash before.

Ripping apart the village and the Tengu, he was able to find her.

She was bloodied and tied up, bruises sprinkled across her skin with jagged cuts along her body.

Tomas could not help but feel his whole soul being consumed by the fiery anger, one that was much brighter than Kuai Liang’s.

But he kneels down, cutting her restraints with his karambit and he holds her frail body close to his.

He knows he cannot let his guard down and tells himself that he will reunite with her properly when they are safe.

He finds his brothers who are still fighting off more ninjas, and he tells them that he found her.

The Lin Kuei finish the job and destroy the Tengu’s territory, leaving their mark on the clan for good.

Tomas is very fast to get back to the Arctika where he treats her wounds in silence while Bi-Han and Kuai Liang stand there with their words twisted.

They do not know what to say to make Tomas’ worries go away.

Tomas is exhausted, but he wants her to awaken. He had missed her so much, and she was back in his arms.

But she had not woken up since Tomas saved her.

This made him stress more.

Bi-Han eventually spoke up and told him that his wife needed to rest and that she would wake up soon.

Tomas sits next to her in med bay, holding her hand between his own.

In the middle of the night, she awakens and Tomas is immediately on his feet.

He hugs her close to him, feeling his eyes water and his lip quiver slightly as her arms wrapped around him.

“I thought I lost you.” He told her while he laid a kiss on her temple. “I am so sorry that I was not there to save you. It is my duty to protect you, and I failed.”

“Tomas,” she said as she gently grabbed his face. “You did not fail me. I love you, I am so happy to see you again.”

He still felt guilty, but he held her all night long and made sure she felt safe and comfortable.

There were some signs of PTSD from the encounter on her side which did not surprise the ninja, but his heart felt broken.

The guilt ate at him more as he felt that it was his fault she now had to face that burden.

If he was only quicker. If he only knew.

He does everything and anything for his s/o. I mean, he would before the encounter, but now he does everything for her.

Tomas will push back his duties to help her with any emotional distress or physical pain she was feeling.

He felt that this was the least he could do because he did not do his job.

Kuai Liang and Bi-Han see the guilt eating at him. They know that it weighs on Tomas heavily.

He is carrying the burden as well.

But he continues to show affection and love her no matter what. He is so in love with his s/o and he is willing to do anything to ease her pain.

“It will be okay, my wisp.” He cooed softly as he rubbed her back while she cried into his shoulder. “I am here now. You are safe with me. I will never let any harm come to you again.”

[sending-the-message]

Suicide by Search Engine by M59Gar

I'll admit it, I was suicidal. On a spectacularly bad day in a particularly lonely month during a rather bleak winter, I wasn't really feeling the whole life thing anymore. I'd been unhappy before, and even depressed, but this was different. This felt like a hot knife of pain prodding me to action; where before thoughts of suicide had only ever been hypothetical, now the world seemed filled with the promise of sweet relief at every turn. Sidewalk curbs begged me to trip and smash my head, traffic jovially requested I leap out onto the street, and friendly steel rods in the construction site next to my house were always poking out and waving me over to get impaled.

The only thing that saved me was the helpless and horrified feeling that this urge was coming from outside myself. The little man riding around in my brain—the little man that looked out my eyes and spoke my thoughts to himself—was not trying to sail my body against the reefs of traffic and steel rods. He was trying to brave the storm despite feeling hopeless; it was something else that was trying to crash us against the rocks and destroy us.

Chemicals. It's chemicals in the brain, you see. I looked it up online. Between a thousand different searches for ways to kill myself, I also managed to open a suicide prevention forum. All I managed to post was help, but that was enough. Kind souls contacted moderators, concerned moderators contacted police, tired police contacted doctors, and grim men in white uniforms took me to a special hospital.

For a long time, I was disconnected from the world. It was summer by the time the doctors found the right combination and dosages of medicines to balance the storm in my brain, but the day I finally walked out of that facility, it was beautiful and warm out.

And I wanted to live!

I waved at a passerby. She was very old, but took the effort to wave back and even smile.

Oh my God, could you imagine what I might have done? What I might have missed out on? I bought donuts from a shop with change that had been in my clothes in storage at the facility for six months.

I sat on a bench and broke down in tears while human beings milled left and right around me. Do you know what it is to be alive? You get to talk to other aware beings. You get to have ideas and share them and have those ideas refuted, entertained, or accepted. You get to build things. You get to eat things.

Like donuts.

For fifteen minutes, I sat on that bench near that bus stop crying profusely while eating donuts. When people asked if I was alright, I just told them that these were really good donuts.

I didn't have money for the bus since I'd spent it on treats, but the orderlies had let me charge my phone before departing. I loaded up the Internet for the first time in half a year and mapped the way home. It was a beautiful day! I would walk.

No specific turn was in itself scary. It was too slow a change for that. It was only after two hours of walking that I looked around, saw homeless men, drug addicts, and openly carried pistols that I realized I was in a very bad part of town. I clutched my phone tight and continually checked the mapping program. It insisted that my next turn was down a dark and trash-filled alley, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Rising city heat caused gold waves of evening light to dapple the street; in that back and forth light, I saw unhappy eyes look my way.

Time to move on. Screw that.

I found a rundown gas station and asked for directions inside. The attendant listened to my question from behind his security glass and told me I was way off. The part of town I was looking for was practically in the opposite direction.

Well, maybe the maps program in my phone was six months out of date. Maybe that was it. I got to walking and left the bad part of town before night fell, and I reached my apartment around three in the morning. All my bills had been on automatic payment, and thank God for that. My landlord had probably never even noticed I'd been away, but I did have a massive pile of mail just inside the door.

I left it for later and crashed in bed, my bed, my home. It was good to be alive.

But I had no food!

Getting out my phone, I looked up twenty-four-hour pizza places. There'd been two before I'd gone away. What had they been called?

While beginning to type in my search, I froze. After each of the first three letters in pizza, the autocomplete search had filled in: please kill me, pick the best way to die, pizza poison buried in cheese.

I was very unhappily reminded of all the searches I'd made online... before. I cleared my browser cache and put my phone down. I wasn't hungry anymore.

And I thought that would be the end of it.

The next morning, I had a text.

West Columbus Drug & Food Rx: NATHAN, your Rx is due now. Reply REFILL to fill. HELP for more info & STOP to opt out of Rx Alerts. CANCEL to cancel Rx.

I typed in refill and hit send. I was really hungry, but it was important I took my medication in the right amounts and on time. I got dressed, brushed my teeth, and headed down to the store. I waited in line for twenty minutes only to be told they didn't have my prescription on file. I argued with the pharmacist calmly for a minute until I checked my phone to show them I'd just sent REFILL—and I saw that somehow my reply had autocorrected to CANCEL.

The pharmacist apologized but told me I'd have to have the facility send another prescription. Strict insurance rules, nothing they could do.

I sighed. It was fine, whatever. I stepped outside to call the facility. I'd hoped it would be longer before I contacted them again, but it was important, so I hit the contact number for Sunnybrook and waited with the phone to my ear.

Nothing happened.

After about ten seconds, I lowered my phone and looked at it.

I wasn't even in a call.

I'd somehow accidentally hit 'delete' and the confirmation, removing the contact from my phone. Sighing, I went the phone's browser and began to type in the name of the facility to get their phone number all over again.

The search autocompleted as I typed: Sin to kill yourself?, Sucks to be alive, Sunday the best day of the week to die, Sunny weather increases suicide risk study says.

My finger stopped four letters in. I shivered from some sourceless chill. This wasn't funny anymore—if it had ever been—and I angrily cleared my browser cache again.

Bitter, I waited a tick, and then typed in the letter 'k':

kill yourself

Of course. Online companies had massive profiles that held all the data every one of us had ever put online. I'd made thousands of searches about suicide before losing contact with the Internet completely for six months, and all that data was stored on a server somewhere linked to my particular phone. Shaking with anger and a strange kind of abused-puppy fear, I let the phone slip from my hands before kicking it as hard as I could while it fell. It soared out onto the street and exploded before being run over by seven different cars.

Screw you. Just screw you. A mindless artifact of technology had left residue of my mental issues on the Internet, that was all. I just needed to get a new phone and put it out of my head.

I walked to Sunnybrook and talked to a nurse in person to have my prescription refilled.

I walked back to the drug store in person to get my medicine.

I took my medicine and began to feel better almost immediately.

The next day, I went in person to a tech store and got a new phone. New number, new everything, no connection to the old. I walked out of there happy as could be.

Once I got home, I sighed, stretched, looked around my apartment, and said to myself, "Maybe I should go see a movie." I'd never been one to leave my solitude for any reason, but now life was good, and I was even feeling a little bit outgoing. I got my new phone out to see what was playing.

I typed the letter 'm' and the search autocompleted to movies in my area now that I'm feeling better.

"What the hell?"

Coincidence. It had to be. I began to type again: movies about Hell.

No.

It wasn't possible.

Or—

I moved my phone's listening end up to my mouth and said as if I was talking to someone I'd brought home, "Hey Jessica, I feel like seeing an action movie. What about you?"

Alright, continue typing: movies good action date.

It was listening to me.

It was fucking listening to me!

New technology. It had to be. But was the microphone simply always on? Were people okay with this? When I'd gone in for treatment, there'd been a privacy outrage. Had things shifted back hard the other way in the last six months?

I'd paid cash for the phone. I wondered if it was learning about its new user. Still pretending I was talking to a non-existent Jessica, I said, "Yeah, my friends usually call me that as a nickname, but my real name is Nathan."

I started to type into my phone again, but a severe amount of interface lag seemed to be slowing things down. After a good twenty seconds of frustrated typing that did nothing, the letters I'd hit all appeared again in the search bar.

moviesiesiesaoishdoihoeishkyou are dead Nathan

Nearly dropping my phone like it had turned into a rattlesnake in my hand, I caught it back at the last second. I had to be hallucinating, right? I deleted the search and then typed again.

movie you killed yourself 188 days ago

Shivering, I stared at that message for an interminable period. What the hell was going on here? I didn't feel dead. At long last, I said aloud, "No I didn't!"

movie the data doesn't lie searched for suicide three months followed by zero data you died

"You think I killed myself because I went off the grid," I breathed aloud, not quite believing what I was interacting with. Had neural learning algorithms actually developed a sort of proto-consciousness through analyzing massive amounts of data? One of my acquaintances was a programmer, and he'd been talking about something just like this when—

movie anomaly will be corrected further data for dead profile must be prevented

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

I didn't like what was happening, so I turned off my phone and left it near my sink.

That night, I did not go out.

I did not see a movie.

All I could think about was what might happen if I used my credit card. The online data conglomerates would see that, and whatever it was that thought I was dead would know. If I withdrew cash from an ATM, it would know. I was stuck.

But this was crazy, right?

It had to be a side effect of the medicines. I was imagining things.

The next day, I used my credit card at a Starbucks.

I was so stupid. Oh my God, so stupid...

Two days after that coffee, the mailman died in an explosion that blew my door off its hinges. A mistake in components shipping for a military contractor near Columbus had somehow sent dangerous materials to my address. I found all this out in person from an apologetic military lawyer. They offered to pay for my door; I told him to talk to the landlord.

Because me? I'm running. Big Data thinks I'm dead, and they, or it, have gone from analyzing their information to trying to make it true.

I'm posting this anonymously. My name is not Nathan. But I bet someone or some thing knows what my name really is... and it knows all about you, too. Be careful what information you give out. The things you say around your phone or the things you search online may come back to haunt you.

Literally. Beware the ghost in the machine. It is always watching, always listening—even if you think your phone is off.

+++

[aquarianlights]

I know I've already made a roommate/fremily appreciation post today. . .but it's the end of the day and I made up at least 200 notecards and several pages of notes in the time that they were gone and I am practically burnt out, but I'm still going. I'm still trying. And I have severe insomnia so if I don't take my ambien, which I am not because I have a limited supply and need to save them for emergencies (ie; getting myself to sleep early before starting a new job or internship). So, I mean, I might as well get things done and push through while I'm up all night when it is nice an quiet in the house, which makes memorization and focus easier for me.

But anyways. . .I just. . .wanted to point out that I would not have been able to continue going on like this if it were not for Tajh, Michelle, and Jeffrey. I have had some really, really, REALLY low times lately. Just. . .dips in my moods. Nothing like the depression I have experienced my whole life and nothing like suicidal ideation or thoughts of self harm like I have always dealt with. No, this is different. It's a hollow sort of pain. An emptiness. I terrifying cavern in the middle of my chest leading to no where in particular, but simultaneously excavating my heart right out of my chest. I'm beginning to just. . .consistently feel nothing at all. I am expressing emotions outwardly so that no one who knows me irl freaks out. I am forcing smiles and laughs and cute voices and exaggerated expressions like I normally do. Wild hand gestures, etc, etc, etc. . . But none of it is real and I haven't had to force these kinds of things in a long time. I'm talking since I was on my antipsychotics. But at least back then, I had a REASON to be like that. . .since antipsychotics literally suck the life out of you and leave you with NOTHING. Nothing but a hollow cavity in your chest where your heart and lungs are supposed to be.

It almost feels like someone cut all the nerve impulses off in my body (literally every single one) and then just. . .deleted all the chemicals in my brain and left me with nothing. It's like someone is trying to kill my soul, but not my body and me in particular. Because, albeit sometimes I believe in the concept of a soul, it doesn't always make sense to me. I believe we are merely our brains and the connected stuff (nerves, maybe?) to all the spine segments. That's all we are. . .electrical impulses pulsing throughout our bodies. And it feels like my system got fried and someone pushed a hard shut down on me and hasn't turned me back on to restart yet.

Maybe whoever was controlling that broke me. Maybe they accidentally uninstalled the wrong driver and can't re-download it anymore so I'm missing an important driver. Or maybe someone took the whole motherboard out. Idk. . .

I feel numb. I feel empty. I feel stoic and stagnant and borderline catatonic. I almost feel like I'm on the edge of psychosis. However, the fact I can keep control of my fake emotions and make sure to display them at the correct times to not raise any suspicion to my lack of ability to feel anything.is a good sign regarding psychosis. Means I'm deff not in psychosis right now. But I feel oddly close to it. All the times I've been in psychosis have had this foreboding feeling like I am getting now. It's more than just foreboding.

I just. . .do not comprehend/understand why this has been going on. It's been going on for days now, maybe even a week or two. But. . .it didn't get bad or severely noticeable until yesterday. And now today it's even worse.

And I'm sure I have come off as cruel, bitchy, manipulative, annoying, bratty, and mean at the most inappropriate times when people I'm talking to did absolutely nothing wrong. I try to apologize for my words and actions when I am like this, however. . .it never seems to help any because the action is already done.

And I am. . .I will admit. . .I am mildly hallucinating. Nothing bad, but. . .I'm starting to not be able to distinguish reality from the "dream world" which is what I keep slipping into. So they're not full blown hallucinations. They're like. . .actual dreams when you're asleep. . .but only in the waking world and superimposed over reality via sight. And it's very odd.

It's like that time that I very much SWORE I heard my father knock on my door. And I had a whole conversation with him about a UPS package drop off while the door was still closed (which wasn't odd coz he didn't like to go near me if he could help it). But when I actually had the courage to walk upstairs and talk to my mother about it later, she gave me a look like I was an alien.

I keep getting sidetracked because things are happening when I close my eyes or when I focus on the superimposed image. And I don't even mean to. And it all feels so real that I am actually responding aloud to the situations I'm seeing and hearing and somewhat physically feeling.

And there is nothing I can do about it.

I feel nothing. . .yet, my heart is in my throat from these subtle af, confusing, alarming, disturbing hallucinations.

It's one thing to have schizo-induced hallucinations because if you really focus, you can TELL they are not real with reality checks. These kind of hallucinations are legitimately so real and exactly like real life that it's impossible to tell what is real and what is not. These kinds of hallucinations I see actual events that would or have happened realistically wherever I am. I close my eyes and suddenly I'm in the room I am currently in. ..and one of my roommates will come in and start talking to me like we do. And we will have a conversation that we would DEFINITELY have in real life. . .with all the hand movements and everything. So when I open my eyes, I automatically finish the conversation ALOUD irl without even meaning to and then I look around only to notice I'm completely alone.

And it is scary as all hell. This used to happen a lot growing up and when my schizo-affective disorder first manifested and then calmed down later. I haven't had one of these hyper-realistic hallucinations in a very long time. And it keeps happening every time my eyes close due to being exhausted. Sometimes I even end up typing things that are happening in my hallucination because I thought I had spoken about it or typed something relative to the conversation in my hallucination and then I look at what I'm typing and suddenly realize it doesn't fit ANYWHERE in the paragraph or post.

I'm...alone. And scared. But at the same time. . .I can't feel the loneliness or feel scared. I know I AM lonely and scared. But. . .I can't FEEL them. If that makes sense?

But I just wanted to give a shout out to the absolute best roommates in the ENTIRE fucking world. You guys are amazing and I love you all so much. The words of encouragement and the little things you do like buy me coffee or turn on the light for me or bring me something that is out of reach while doing schoolwork so I don't have to get up and spill notecards everywhere. . .comforting me with little pep talks and a pat on the head/petting, a squeeze on the shoulder, something affirming that I'm not alone and that I CAn do this. . .It's all those little things that are really making me happy. Because it shows you're all paying attention to what I need/want and I could not even feel any more love than I feel right now.

Jeff, Tajh, and Chelle will be my fremily for life. Even if moving here when we get a newer, bigger house doesn't work out for some reason, all three of you will always hold a special place in my heart. And I will never, ever, EVER forget about the little things that have been done.

Thank you. I love you guys to death. and I'm sorry I had to make a second post of appreciation for all three of you, but I wanted to get it out there and remind you all how much I love you.