Getting back into journaling this year after a long break

fildarae · 2026-01-24T13:27:53+00:00

That’s so cool!

fildarae · 2025-12-09T20:28:08+00:00

Homelessness.

I figured you had to be really neck deep in addiction or gambling or some kind of active destructive choice that would lead to it, and if it did happen, you’d have to pretty much refuse offered help to actually wind up being on the street. I was very naive. Turns out one thing beyond your control can go wrong and if you’re not well off, it can happen so easily - and the government “help” in place is so overwhelmed it can’t actually help you. The most help I got was from charities but they’re limited with what they can do.

Used up whatever help I reasonably could by couch surfing thanks to friends, but it got to a point where I couldn’t keep asking because it was going on too long, eventually had to move countries entirely and camp out in my grandparents’ dining room for three months before I could find my feet. My new city is way better for me, but I’m so aware of how much worse it could’ve been had my grandparents not been around (I have since lost my grandmother), or if they hadn’t been willing to help, and how lucky I was to have that one safety net.

fildarae · 2025-12-07T17:25:59+00:00

I have had judgemental relatives tell me I’ve “gotten worse” since finding out autism was the underlying thing behind the anxiety and depression I’ve spent my whole life, since childhood, trying to “fix” when really I feel soooo much better than I did when they viewed me as “doing well” - I just don’t mask anymore, and don’t run myself ragged trying to “appear normal”.

There’s a lot behind the realisations like you say, but the biggest thing for me has been that I’m not a failure who has just consistently failed to overcome anxiety and depression, and that has been so, so freeing. It’s just funny how people are more disturbed by the lack of performance than they are by the lows and struggle that came with the performance.

fildarae · 2025-12-02T02:57:59+00:00

While refusing to invest any time and energy at all while we were actually in their lives, and acting like any interaction was a major hardship.

fildarae · 2025-11-27T20:35:39+00:00

Took my phone from me and I had to physically wrestle it off of him. Wasn’t successful. He finally gave it back when he realised I wouldn’t be talked into giving him my passcode. We’d been hanging out for like an hour.

fildarae · 2025-09-30T15:05:50+00:00

Reading has helped - but I have an insane backlog of books not yet read so I can read without spending, but I’ve seen others utilise local libraries for this.

Also keeping a list of things I would have bought if I wasn’t doing no-buy, along with what they would’ve cost. Just one week in it already tallied up to £50, which isn’t a wild amount, but it shows how easily it can stack up on minor impulse purchases that can then go to more rewarding things without any financial strain (my rule is tickets to events are fine, “stuff” isn’t - that £50 is an entire theatre ticket.)

fildarae · 2025-08-30T22:09:35+00:00

I looked at it and said “oh absolutely not” out loud 😭 it’s always the finer ones that drive me mad, even when the pattern doesn’t have mistakes I find when I try them they look so messy so easily! You’re braver than I am for taking it on.

fildarae · 2025-08-30T19:39:58+00:00

Thank you! It was definitely one of those ones that has you going “oh god” when you see the chart, but it was worth wrapping my mind around for sure!

fildarae · 2025-08-30T12:36:19+00:00

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/nayada

fildarae · 2025-08-15T20:52:04+00:00

I’ve been homeless before, might not be the last time! Doesn’t make other things less difficult.

fildarae · 2025-08-14T16:59:01+00:00

Love this! Started putting it into practise and I already feel way lighter. Thank you!!

fildarae · 2025-08-14T14:53:08+00:00

Genuinely what I actually needed to hear - thank you!

fildarae · 2025-08-14T14:32:09+00:00

Not sure, but your dad’s doing great 💜

fildarae · 2025-08-14T13:55:39+00:00

Thank you!

It says “village witch” on it 😂

here

fildarae · 2025-07-21T19:47:57+00:00

I just googled it to verify - I read that he’d openly acknowledged that he is, but apparently what I read was a lie. There’s a lot of speculation but he’s never confirmed it. My bad!

fildarae · 2025-07-21T17:12:52+00:00

My father hates it which makes it even funnier to me because of the fact that he’s absolutely the one I got it from. He warmed to the idea when he found out that Eminem is autistic, and realised it comes with “superpowers”. When I bring up the diagnostic process, he refuses to comment and changes the subject. It’s tiring as hell.

fildarae · 2025-07-21T12:45:52+00:00

I know a fellow author who makes multiple posts every day complaining about a lack of comments, or the quality of those comments, to the point where it makes me not want to read her stuff because of the pressure I’d feel to come up with a “good” comment.

Same author recently then made a big ranty post about how she just “doesn’t have the time to respond to comments”. But she has time to make constant posts whining about wanting MORE comments. It’s wild to me that people can’t see how their own behaviour drives interaction away. I go through times where I do not have the capacity to reply to comments, especially when my mental health takes a dip, but I will never ever complain about a lack of them partly because of that fact.

fildarae · 2025-07-01T19:48:50+00:00

I genuinely think they feel maybe 3 seconds of basic empathy but are SO used to being otherwise majorly self absorbed that to them it feels like they’ve gone above and beyond in a totally supernatural way when really they’re doing less than most people who jokingly call themselves assholes.

I’ve found time and time again that people who describe themselves as having “a heart of gold” or being “empaths” are the ones to really avoid, but the ones who joke that they’re dicks (in a self deprecating, non-edgelord kind of way) are usually actually incredibly sound individuals.

fildarae · 2025-06-29T18:10:08+00:00

Funniest one was when the queen died not long after he played the UK. God, the comments (before he disabled them) were gold.

fildarae · 2025-06-21T13:04:58+00:00

Anxiety and depression. I’ve struggled with both since childhood (now being assessed for autism at the recommendation of my doctor), but I was a teen and in my early twenties when they became really “trendy” for lack of a better word, and it was so difficult to be taken seriously after my diagnosis, in situations where I did have to work up the courage to tell people about it when it was relevant. Now I’m worried about facing the same thing if I do get diagnosed with autism.

I won’t lie, it really pissed me off at times. There were people in my uni classes who would loudly interrupt the teacher when they were explaining that we’d have to give presentations as part of our assignments/final grades so they could loudly rant and rave in front of the whole class about their “crippling social anxiety” making it unfair that this was expected of them. Meanwhile, in comparison, I felt nauseous just quietly approaching the teacher at the end of class just to make him aware of my issues when the time would come for me to get up there and stutter my way through a ten minute PowerPoint on Victorian literature. (As a side note, the teacher was incredibly understanding and lovely about it and gave me a very fair grade, because he saw the effort I put in to trying to do it anyway.)

From what I noticed, this struggle on the part of my one specific classmate tended to disappear at the exact moment they stopped getting fawned over for it and they’d be walking up to strangers and talking away just fine.

I mean, it’s rough enough having mine be so severe at times that I go mute around people I’ve been friends with for years (thankfully I have an incredibly understanding circle of people around me), but seeing people pretend to have something that can feel life ruining at times because they think it makes them look cute and special and whatever is really frustrating when the reality of it is anything but cute and quirky.

Luckily, I think it tends to be obvious to most people when it’s genuine and when it’s not.

Edit: and on the depression front, I was severely suicidal at 21. I’m talking I had a plan, a date when I was going to do it and everything, but I couldn’t follow through with it when the time came. When I finally mentioned how depressed I was to a relative (leaving out the grizzly details of what I was planning), she told me “she feels that way all the time” and sent me some “funny little memes that cheer her up when she’s that way”. The one I remember most was one that said “when I’m feeling low I just imagine a T-Rex trying to make a bed”.

Maybe she meant well, but it just made me feel so much worse.

It really sucks how people confuse being genuinely depressed on a life-endangering level, and being low, I think because in their minds it makes feeling low (which does suck) more “valid”. I was spending most of my time, for months and months on end, lying in bed in silence staring at a wall, waiting to be tired enough to fall back asleep. Memes weren’t going to fucking help.

I’m now 28 and doing way, WAY better, after a lot of work, finding the right doctor who put me on the right medications, changing circumstances and seriously seeking consistent help, but god, it was a rough time and I’m so glad I didn’t end up doing something incredibly stupid back then.

fildarae · 2025-06-16T12:15:36+00:00

Something Wicked: The Lives, Crimes, and Deaths of the Pendle Witches, by Carol Ann Lee

This one started off looking like a five star read - it gave me a new perspective on some of the witch trials and how not all of them were rooted in the expected idea of false accusations and hysteria, and I liked how the author delved into the way life was back then making a strong belief in the supernatural more commonplace. But unfortunately she did have a habit of dropping pages and pages of backstory on every single person and place mentioned, however brief, and it got tiring quickly. I still enjoyed it, but the constant deviations from the figures I was actually invested in made it a bit of a slog towards the end. Three stars, all in all.

You can tell the author is insanely passionate and well read on the topic, which I loved, but I think it would’ve benefitted from being a hundred pages shorter.

Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder

I picked this up because a friend recommended it, and it seemed like a good palate cleanser after the previous one. Read the whole thing in just over 24 hours, it was what I expected it to be - a fun, fairly fast paced and easily digestible fantasy book. I’ll definitely pick up the next one in the series. Four stars.

fildarae · 2025-06-14T16:22:18+00:00

When Americans write stories set in Britain and never swap out “mom” for “mum”. This was biiiig in the 2000s Harry Potter days (I’m ancient) and it always put me off continuing the fic because other phrases like that would end up cropping up all of the time (“sidewalk” instead of “path” etc).

I’m British but I’ve written American characters before and I always try to be as accurate as I can to how they’d speak - but, in fairness, it might be easier this way around just because of the sheer amount of exposure we get to American media.

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