#ichapersonal

[icharchivist]

had a dream last night of being dropped into the sea during a storm, being thrown around by the waves on rocks over and over again while mostly drowning, all in all for hours on end, and now i woke up and my whole body feels like it went through a complete beating. I have pains literally everywhere like i've been smashed through walls. this is such a eerie feeling but also holy shit this is a bad physical state to be in.

[icharchivist]

achievement: chronic fatigue officially acknowledged by a doctor with a "truth be told it's a miracle you even managed to drag yourself here considering how low your iron levels are, you should barely be able to move" mention, like hell yeah

[icharchivist]

tmi mental stuff + ff7 (og) spoilers under the cut but also something happened that is both funny but also maybe kinda sad and well

i've recently been back to therapy because well *waves at stuff* and it means i have weekly appointments which makes a lot of things return to the surface, so, lots of things to discuss and all

but well, today i realized i kinda needed to talk about my ex-gf because it's undeniable this whole fiasco of a relationship impacted the way i trust people and stuff even if i mostly made my peace with all of this.

but the thing is that if i talk about her it means i have to lowkey make a coming out since i can't use neutral gender language in french, and i wouldn't know how my therapist feels about that until i dropped it, so i ended up kinda getting lost in my own head about how to address her

which means i wasn't exactly focusing on the rest of my wording when i said "in a sense she kinda made me her puppet" and it's only once the words were out that i stood there, freezing, trying not to fucking laugh on the spot because damn the Cloud kinnie jumped out (derogatory)

(for the record the therapist was perfectly fine with it so i stressed out for nothing but also lma-fucking-o)

and ironically the whole thing is that the whole reason i made my peace with all of this is a large part because of my 2015 ff7 relapse, because i really connected a lot about Cloud's relationship with Sephiroth like "wow just like my ex (derogatory)", and therefore i managed to heal a lot to an extend, even if there's definitely stuff that are still there considering how i still was a mess after rewatching AC. (and like to be fair there's more to it than just my ex, but this specific aspect hit hard and helped a lot)

but god the fact it's the "puppet" thing that came out just naturally is driving me insane. super normal stuff.

I hasn't even got to think about this plotline a lot since i came back to it, and i genuinely don't know if it might be just being reviving the remake that put back this concept in my head or something

but it genuinely made me want to laugh to see how, by projecting so hard on Cloud in the way back, i managed to get this specific type of language to describe this stuff

anyway, fun. who knew the kinnie would jump out to help in therapy.

also since i have the ff7 spoilers disclaimer just dropping it here but unrelated, i was gifted a book about the making of ff7 og recently and i shuffled into it the other day and it hit me in the face with that one quote i totally forgot about despite loving it so much it was my blog title then, "but i'm just Cloud, master of my own illusionary world".

what a guy to project on.

[icharchivist]

also i am very sorry for my lack of responsivity these days, i've been having quite a few rough days and my brain isn't working at its best of capacity as a result

it'll get better, eventually, it's just various different blows in a row everytime i get a little better from the previous one and i'm just really tired atm

[icharchivist]

you ever get a compliment so specific on your field of study that all you can do is cry

I haven’t really kept up to date with my life on here bc things have been messy but this year i’ve been trying to finish up my uni diploma, which i had left in pause for years because health issues, esp mental health, just made it impossible for me. One of the class i still had to pass was English Literature analysis for this semester, because of a mix of “i can’t process all of those texts” and the fact it was an oral analysis presentation and my social anxiety had kicked up so badly those past few years that any physical presentation led me to such mental states crumbling that i just mostly didn’t manage to finish it up.

the oral was today, i’ve been stressed for weeks about it, i didn’t read half of the recommended texts, i don’t remember half of the lessons i did participate in, and i was so panicked i couldn’t bring myself to study at all, those past few weeks have kinda been a stressful nightmare on that point

I still managed to push myself to go to the exam (major upgrades on the last time i tried to pass it), despite an awful night and the fact i have constant dizzy spells these days (probably bc of stress)

turns out not only i was getting interrogated on the subset of the class that i didn’t vibe with at all/am not at ease at all, but i fell on a text we studied in class when i was sick, and therefore, it was legit my first time seeing the poem at all.

so i go in, lacking all sort of confidence, thinking to myself i mostly just need to show i was here and i’ll still validate the year with that. I try to yolo an interpretation of the poem as i can.

Only so that at the end of the presentation the teacher tells me it was incredible, that this interpretation was really good, and when i mentioned i was really uncomfortable because i actually didn’t know the text at all, she told me it’s even MORE impressive that this is what i came up on my own in 30 minutes. She then asked me if i was pursuing further degree in literature because i “clearly have a gift” for analysis and was disappointed when i said no because she said i would really bring something to the field.

i was panicked for weeks over all of that and now i got this compliment and i cannot process it properly, i’ve been crying for the past half hour or so

I genuinely lack so much confidence in my analysis in general (despite trying to hold up the appearance that i’m actually super confident, promise! any confidence you see on this blog is me lying through my teeth) so being told that by a professional on the field is just. oh god. 

anyway idk if i’ll manage to process more brainpower for today but for now i’ll just stay in a state of limbo a moment over the most specific compliment i could get on something i genuinely care about to start with.

man.

[icharchivist]

funny how it takes me being sick to realize just how bad my chronic fatigue is but like, in this specific way of like,

i very rarely call in sick even when i'm very sick because i've always learnt to power through pain, but it can happen i call in sick when i wake up completely drained and unable to move as a result so i get myself back to sleep. And i always consider myself very lazy for giving in to the tiredness rather than forcing myself up.

but rn i have huge stomach pain (my stomach has been making me miserable for a few days but it's only today kicking in above my pain tolerance) and it's killing me and i have to debate whenever i call sick or not, because i'm still thinking about powering through even though i'm feeling genuinely sick

and it just. took me that to realize that if i'm able to genuinely tell myself i can ignore massive pain to work, but i can't ignore when i'm too tired, it's prob less a problem of laziness and really more a problem that my fatigue issues are just that bad.

So. Perspective!

bleh i should really call sick for the day

[icharchivist]

man i wanted to oversleep this morning because it’s been a few days that i’m running completely on fumes and have been sick and for once i didn’t have any reasons to be awake in the morning...

but a neighbor has been hammer-happy the whole fucking morning directly on the walls we share for the past 4 hours, my head is pounding like crazy as a result, i am going to cry.

[icharchivist]

I'm so happy for you, Icha! Good job on your orap exam and facing your fears!

But I always figured you were good at media analysis, since that's most of what you're doing here already. Especially with all the Anons. You're basically analyzing Granblue Fantasy and A3 and coming up with theories and interpretations based on what's in the text and what's implied and what that could mean for the future and how that informs their character, y'know. The power was inside of you all along.

Still, I'm super happy for you, well done!

aaah thank you 😭😭 so so much i'm so relieved.

and thank you 🥺 I do love analyzing stuff in general, like, this is how my brain works, i really take pleasure doing those things and everything

but honestly it's really just a question of lack of confidence. Like i constantly second guess myself and doubt my own analysis as in, what if i missed a crucial element? what if i'm letting my bias get in the way of a proper analysis? (despite the fact that there is such a thing as analyzing the text for what the author meant vs for what it meant to the character vs how it is received by the audience, so there's value in bias, but still). What if i completely missed the point, what if those others analysis i disagree with are actually correct and it's me blinding myself? type of things.

it's just that i always do my best to remove any showcase of doubt from my analysis when i post them unless it's something that comes less from lack of confidence and more from seeing different possible interpretations. Esp on my blog where it's generally something i write for myself and i try to allow myself to not be this critical, as a treat.

But i'm genuinely always doubting because of lack of confidence, you have no idea the amount of relief i get when i see people finding value with the angles i explore and everything. I'm honestly much more stressed about that that i let it on ALKDLKFJDLFK (i try to believe in "fake it until you make it" when confidence goes but i'm at a point where i'm faking "fake it until you make it" hoping i get to make it one day)

And also it's easier to have people who gravitate toward similar ideas than me agree on my blog in general, since well, I'd say people come to read me because they already have those affinities to start with, so it makes the bias thing even more something i end up doubting.

(and also it doesn't help that as far as my family is concerned they tend to belittle the way i approach analysis in general to downright calling me stupid for those so i'm DLKJFDLKFJ constantly expecting the worst)

So having a teacher, someone specialized in that field, actually review my analysis process on something i don't have a strong bias about, on something that's pure analysis of text rather than feelings outright, is probably the most unbiased and neutral view of my process and that the compliment was this strong just makes me so emo.

And honestly i'm also relieved she told me that feedback as the exam ended (she also told me usually they ask the students question after the exam to see if they really understood the text but she skipped it for me because i clearly got it, apparently), bc else i think i would have ended up overthinking myself into another panic on how i talked pure nonsense or something.

But aaah still, thank you so so much for the sweet words anon, it genuinely makes me happy that you think so!! i'm just a bundle of stress and it's a relief to get some words of affirmation like that 😭

thank youuuu 💞💞💞

[icharchivist]

oof a little tmi but i can’t help thinking about it (general depression mention under cut, fandom related, sorta, mostly about personal feelings about a3 with a sprinkle of "thoughts started by ff15")

my desire to replay ff15 came from how, i’ve been feeling extremely emotionally numb those past few months and having an emotional response to one of the tragic scene of the game made me realize this game could provoke at least the feeling of Sadness, which would be welcomed to feel again.

And idk if it’s because it opened the dam but ever since i did that i keep thinking about a3 again, which i’ve mostly managed to not think too deeply about again since the English server closed and it makes me cry on the spot thinking about it. I’ve been listening to the a3 songs consistently and yet recently doing so makes it very easy for tears to come out, and i genuinely can’t listen to any songs that came out more recently (basically since the second batch of solo) because they fill me with so much emotions i cannot process

but compared to ff15 where i was “wow! sadness! so cool let’s go again!” everytime i’m feeling something about a3 again i’m feeling extremely distraught. 

I think eventually it really shows the power of catharsis through tragedy, because ff15′s sadness coming from this “the characters have a horrible fate and it only makes the happy moments more tender” means i’m focusing a lot on the grief and knowing it’s going to be taken away from me, but so, i can manage expectation a little bit more.

But thinking about going back to a3, which i’ve been toying with because i miss this whole cast so much, is genuinely making me unwell to think about and makes me want to cry, because those intense emotions are so different from just the catharsis of tragedy.

a3 makes me feel a lot of things because it’s probably the best achieved story of found family i’ve really been into, and with the course of the two years i had played it, where the events happened in real time then as to see the characters grow, it really felt like a home. Like all of them left in me this feeling of, they’re family, they’re a piece of me. And losing that, to some aspect, has been extremely shaking, and i’ve already mentioned i have a hard time thinking about switching to the JPN server or catching up to the story there because  after those months of just, growing with them at the same pace at them, the idea of binging 5 years of content is making me unwell. 

But also, about how much of what makes me emotional about a3 is the journey through healing. It sets up tragedies for the characters to overcome, and then they show the healing journey, and it takes a very, very long time, with the acknowledgement healing isn’t linear, isn’t easy, but is always worth it. 

And i feel like i’m at a point of my depression where this idea is genuinely distressing to me, and considering how deeply i relate to some of the charas with the most complicated arc on that level, it terrifies me DLKFJDLKJDFKLFD part of me is terrified to see how they end up moving forward from their pain because i don’t know how to do that.

And worst of all, a3 leaves me yearning awfully. This whole way to have such a special thing, a special relationship like that, the idea of a place to feel at home at and safe healing at without being completely alone, to be understood, is making me yearn so much it makes me ache beyond measure.

And i miss a3 so much, and i want to come back to it so much, but the moment i think about it for two minutes, i end up crying in a very distraught way that isn’t at all the emotional relief just tragedy can give.

So weirdly enough it is making me think more about the appeal of tragedy, of how sadness is just “what if it could have been better, what if i could fix it”, the acknowledgement of pain without having to make the hard work to see it through. And in itself, it’s a good first step if only to stay out of numbness.

but i didn’t expect it to open the dam again and now i’m wondering how much of this numbness is a reaction to losing the a3en server or at least just, long term consequences of it, it’d track, trying to protect myself from the pain of losing something important

and i knOW it sucks because being this emotionally attached to a gacha is really no good, but also, they’re my little guys. They’re my buddies. They’re my friends and my family.  

At least the fact i feel this strongly about it means at least i won’t feel guilt for the insane “i bought the whole cast in plushies” endeavor i took last year. I usually let them on the sofa to decorate since, yknow, 24+ plushies, but i’ve brought Sakuya back in my room when it’s time to sleep because it’s my son and i love him so much and i wish i could hug him non stop.

... Post that is brought to you by “i rewatched Sakuya’s 1st SSR backstage yesterday because i needed his reaction to seeing Izumi cry and it made me cry so fucking hard” and “i wanted to listen to a Sakuya song because it’s my SON but then My Dictionary and Monologue came in my mind and i cried so fucking hard out of nowhere now i’m scared to even open the a3 playlist and perhaps i should not listen to any music right now do not touch me”

I fucking miss a3 so fucking hard man, i say it a lot, but trust me, sometimes i feel like it comes out as "i just say it for the 5 a3 accounts that still somehow follow me, as a justification and apology" but it's genuinely a cry from the heart when i say that. I miss it so, so damn much, and i also can't touch it at all because it's genuinely destroying me emotionally to touch it again. I want it back in my life but i also just feel despair at the idea of getting it back. I just wish it had never left at all, that would have been easier.

Talk about insane media experience. man. I miss my sons so fucking much.

[icharchivist]

i should have been a little more careful with my tone because i got a little heated lmao but at the same time it’s important for y’all to know about me that if i stan a character who happens to be a murderer, the murders are part of the pack of what makes them interesting and “they did nothing wrong” is something i only say jokingly, i think the blood on their hands and anguish in their heart due to their guilt is sexier than just frame them as victims of external consequences. In fact i’m a big sucker for stories where people who commit those crimes are just as victims of themselves, of way they mishandled situations when they didn’t know better.

This type of story is so important to me and just saying that since people abused them it means their murders are okay actually feels so reductive. 

also like, personal tmi under the cut

but oof as someone who has been in an abusive relationship and who’s ex was specifically manipulating me to hurt other people on her behalf, the framing of the idea of “you did nothing wrong bc you were forced into it” specifically irks me. When i first started to hear this sort of reasoning it genuinely stunned my healing process because i could not separate the abuse to how guilty i felt for actions i considered were my own free will, no matter the influence and threats that pushed me to follow them through. 

Because i still framed it as /I/ did it, no matter how amount of “but you were forced into it” would change the fact that /I/ did it. And it’s not like the people i’ve hurt were people who were hurting me. 

The first time i got to acknowledge that, yes you were manipulated into it, yes you still hurt people, but what matters is what you’re feeling about it in retrospect and how you’re willing to improve and make sure it never happens again, to acknowledge both your lack of agency but also that you DID something, and that you are more than the actions you did, it was like a major burden fell off from my shoulders.

I’m talking about things that happened over a decade ago and honestly i’m pretty much at peace with myself by now and now i’m a better person than i ever was, now i can make peace with the fact i was vulnerable and taken advantage of, and i don’t beat myself up anymore for those things. But i would loathe to hear “you did nothing wrong” because this is just denying the intensity of my guilt and how there was no way for me to heal by acting like it wasn’t there.

But yeah idk like, the way to heal for abuse victims isn’t the same for every single victims, but basically the rule of thumb is that if you see me say that yeah this abused chara still commited crime tho, about abuse victim characters it’s not to say that “they shouldn’t have murdered” it’s to say to please allow people, especially abuse victims, the grace to have complicated feelings and recollections of the stuff that happened to them, and the way they decide to reclaim their agency to move forward.

Saying “you did nothing wrong” can easily come off as just a way to dismiss how the victim is feeling rather than to help them move forward. 

and i think it’s just healthier to separate “doing things wrong” from “who’s blame is it” because you can have done everything wrong and not be to blame for it and it doesn’t dismiss your memory of the experience and actually separate your agency from your action in a way that is easier to have you reclaim it without having to endorse your actions.

I’m making it too personal over a stupid wording but this is one of the type of character study that i care about so much, you can go and talk about “did nothing wrong uwu” type of things on priv just don’t say it in my face DLKJFDKLFD yes they did wrong! even if they had little agency into it, it was still wrong! the lack of agency is important tho!! isn’t it thrilling that it means that now they have a choice to try to reclaim their agency and make it better!!!

[icharchivist]

May you find catharsis in beating the shit out of Cloud's toxic ex then. Vicariously

I'm proud of you for going to therapy and I'm sure you're doing great! I'm cheering for you

Now beat the shit out of that guy

aaaaah 🥺 thank you that's very sweet!!

I sure do find this catharsis there (and ironically despite all of this i really enjoy Sephiroth, like wow thank you for helping me process all of this you bastard (almost affectionate)). So at least there's always that ahah

but thank you also for the sweet message <33 i'm sure trying my best 💪

wishing you well, and take care <3

and i'll go back beat the shit out of that dude ahah

[icharchivist]

Also because my life is a joke, like i mentioned yesterday i rewatched Advent Children and it kinda hit me back in the face how much i still relate to Cloud to this day.

And one of the things they bring up a lot in the movie is how Cloud struggles to forgive himself for what happened and stuff.

Anyway i was talking with Salt today, and Salt doesn't know /anything/ about ff7 and even less what are my thoughts about Cloud, and he threw at me, with no warning or real reason, "always so forgiving towards everyone but yourself."

And i've been having a moment ever since because what the fuck. what the fuck. what th--

[icharchivist]

slipped in the stairways trying to leave my flat, hurt my ankle and fainted and now i feel like utter shit so huh back home and probably return to sleep because i have 0 energy but fuck i havent fainted in a long time and the feeling really is awful holy shit

[icharchivist]

some of the weird things to come out from my fall in the stairs a week ago now is that, aside from feeling slightly anxious in the stairway and have a slight heartbeat jump when my i put my foot on the edge of the step in a way that could Go Wrong (which sometimes i can’t avoid bc the steps are narrow), is that i’m getting SUPER ANXIOUS when it’s dark in the stairway. 

And it’s so weird to me that while i’m anxious i’m doing pretty well around stuff “surrounding the incident itself” ie: how i got hurt, But the slight second when i close the door of my flat and am in the pitch black stairway because the lightswitch is further down the hall, i feel extremely panicky.  Because when i woke up after i fainted it was pitch dark (except for the faint light of the lightswitch) and it brings me back exactly to the sentiment i felt when i woke up 

which i hate so much djhfdlkfj i’ve fainted quite a few times in my life and the “waking up” moment makes me feel awful. Between just dealing with the aftermath of the body completely shutting down, and the vulnerability and hurry that comes from trying to wake up and move away asap before someone comes to notice. Which. honestly probably is a whole can of worm about how little i trust people to see me when i’m vulnerable and the reasons i feel that way and it especially kicks in there at “my most vulnerable” huh

on other notes, in the like, 5 days following the incidents my ankle was doing pretty good and i had no pain, but now it’s starting to be painful enough even when i walk and it’s like. Why the hell the pain was dormant for all that time. That’s mean. dkfhdfjdf. i probably should start to worry about it.

And on another another note i’ve since then talked to various members of my family about how i fainted, like, on the same day and the next day, and i’m. kinda extremely bitter that the reactions were mostly “it sucks. anyway.” instead. Like, my mom texted me the next day asking me if i was going to pass by her house anytime soon to pick up something heavy i was supposed to bring back to my flat by foot bc she didn’t want to get the car out for it (which is like. thanks since her flat is 15mins away from my place by foot while 5mins away by car and the thing was heavy as hell) and i texted her back that day telling that i injuried myself and didn’t feel like doing it anytime soon, she asked me what i did to myself, i told her, and her reply was “So you’re not coming to pick up the thing?” like. Thanks mom. Strangers online has shown more worry for me than you just did. This is fantastic. This is normal. I am not bitter at all.

jldhflkdjflkdffd i’ve been in a bad mood for the past few days and adding to the moodswing (not causing it, adding to it) the combo of the fact it was my sis’s bday a few days ago and we have a family event planned tomorrow bc of that and i don’t. want. bc it ruins my mood anytime., added today especially about the slight panic when i left the house bc of the dark hallway, and my ankle being a bit mean today, i’m thinking about that especially and i’m just. okay. this is fine.

sighs anyway back to moping a bit.

[icharchivist]

“in the tags” game where they ask about slightly personal experience are so funny to me because i do always try them on like “yeah sure can’t hurt” and then after a bit of tags i’m realizing huh, wait, this is a traumatic experience or linked to one that’s still is working me up and i shouldn’t dump it either on OP nor on my followers and so i end up drafting the post like, yes i used your post for a mini therapy session, no i’ll never publish it, thankyou very much

[icharchivist]

dlfkjdfl this event reminiscing about teachers who care a lot for their students and how “we always care for our students, it’s them who forget us” is making me emotional bc it throws me back to my high school days where all my teachers were very sweet and understanding, that i had quite a few who figured i had a lot of problems at home and let me do stuff like sleeping in class as a result

and i’m especially thinking about my English Teacher from my first year of highschool who really loved my participation in class because i was so bright and fun and pertinent (her words) until the day we had to talk about huh. child abuse, especially emotional abuse and neglect in class and i got extremely quiet then and failed only this exam in a sea of perfect exams. When she gave me back that mark she pated my back and told me “it’s okay, we’re changing topic soon, don’t think too much about this topic again alright?” and tried to reassure me that this specific grade didn’t mean anything about my work either

and huh. I think it sent a message to my teacher because then she became even more protective out of me, one day i skipped class during that time and when i apologized she was so sweet about it like “shh it’s okay i understand, you can skip now if you want too”, and eventually later in the year she saw me with my mom at school and she just. passively aggressively went to great my mom and tell her i was a great kid, and my mom was happy because “she was holding my hand so tight out of pride i thought she was gonna break it” and i was huh. i don’t think she was proud of you mom. anyway.

and in the years that followed i had others teachers but everytime she would meet me in the corridors she’d stop to make small talk and ask me how i was doing, and then at the very end of highschool she was tasked to watch over my italian final diploma exam (it’s something they often do to make the teacher impartial when watching over students), and i was super stressed bc i was really bad at  Italian, and she saw me, beamed, and when she had to go through the table to check our IDs, she stopped near me and gave me a side hug to encourage me and tell me she knew i could do it, and i almost cried on the spot. (and then i started laughing because then she went to the next student and i heard the student say “.... me too i could go with a hug” dFLKJDFDFDf)

there’s a few teachers i still have very good memories of, a lot of teachers who genuinely cared about me and encouraged me and were attentive to me, and i’m so forever grateful because man, before highschool it really was hell in school and during highschool, school got better but personal life got significantly worse... and i still think about those teachers who took the time just to cheer up on the quiet child who’d otherwise be really invested if she cared for your class a bit.. but i still think about this english teacher so much...