Stepping Away

[Shiola]

Hey all,

I've been sitting on this message since I started writing my last work of the version because I felt I needed to keep in touch with what was going on, both in terms of receiving feedback on my work and providing input into endgame as it happened. Now that all that's over, I feel like I at least owe an explanation to those that do still want to see me around here.

I think I'm going to step away from main for a while. While I'm going to be involved in a limited capacity with mini, my engagement is gonna be drawn back quite a bit here. I'll be muting the discord but staying on the server in case anyone wants to get in touch with me, and I'm more than happy to step into voice chat from time to time as well if there's a read-a-thon or crawl or if people just want to chat.

There's a degree to which it's burnout. I've written hundreds of thousands of words throughout the version and the feeling of a perpetual deadline had definitely begun to wear on me more than a little bit. There's also the setting of our RP, which is dark from the get-go, I know; it's just that I hadn't really anticipated just how much the nature of it would wear in me psychologically. These things are important, but they're not the main reason.

I guess the main thing is, somewhere along the line something shifted and I started to feel like I wasn't really welcome here.

My instinct when I feel this way is to examine my own behaviour, to relentlessly dig into the minutiae of my own actions to see where I went wrong. I have a bad habit of gaslighting myself, of assuming that I must be too paranoid, too sensitive, looking into something that's not really there. Nevertheless, I've never been able to come up with a good explanation as to why I feel this way, other than that I've been made to feel unwelcome.

I've spent the last year wondering why it was that this community of people I had been so excited to write with seemed to dislike me so much. Was it how I conducted myself? Was it my writing? I honestly don't know. If there was some way I could've made up for some mistake or misstep I would've done so. I got some half-answers down the line but they never seemed to account for just how bad it felt, and how I felt.

I loved having people to create with. There are a lot of people I worked with who I have a solid relationship with, who I would love to work with again. Many people here did assume that when I spoke on things in chat, I did so in good faith and with the best intentions. For those of you that I had positive relationships with, I want you to know that I cherished them and it's quite a large part of why I've even been able to get through this terrible year, and even the winter before it which was frankly, also not a good time for me. The really good stuff here and the people who I was intimidated and excited to write with meant so much, and I feel like I have at least a little confidence in taking my writing out into the world now.

It was hard to focus on those positive aspects though, when I felt there were people who seemed to always be on my case about one thing or the other, persistently digging at things I said, large or small. Over time, it was a lot of little things that ultimately can be chocked up to a general lack of tact, either intentional or not. Even sometimes folks just actively tried to get a rise out of me for no reason other than that they knew they could. I experienced people doing that to me a lot as I was growing up, and it was heartbreaking to recognize it after the fact as such. It's an easy way to hurt me, in particular.

I tried really hard to question myself, to imagine reasons this wasn't the case. Why would people who barely know me dislike me so much? I shouldn't read into things. I shouldn't be so sensitive. I should just roll with the punches. People joke about being able to do that in chat all the time, shouldn't I be able to just not take shit seriously? I must just be terrible at taking criticism. There must be something wrong with me. It's just a game, right?

I haven't been able to come to a good conclusion about it. I haven't been able to find reasons why my instinct was wrong, based on how interactions with the community tend to go. I've felt like even when I've tried to calm things down, the negative perceptions of me make it impossible for even the most altruistic or innocuous things that I suggest to be taken seriously. Admittedly I've reacted badly as a result, and that's compounded the wave of negative feelings that I've been slowly succumbing to, the sense that I can't stop myself from lashing out. I've felt quite acutely that there were people who didn't want me here since the very early days, and it's taken a year for me to maybe admit that might actually be the case.

I don't feel like main as it stands is a place where I enjoy spending time, anymore. Given the amount of infighting and drama I also don't feel like it's a place that's very safe for me to be any more, from a psychological standpoint. I've felt pushed away and isolated, despite what I've felt has been an earnest effort on my part to contribute as much as I possibly could to the RP. I wanted to do my best for the site, but I don't think I was really treated like that was my intention. I'm well aware of the nature of the mental health issues I face, and I know that isn't the genesis of this feeling. That said, for the sake of those issues I also know that I shouldn't be feeling this way in a place where I'm trying to have fun and develop as a creator.

Especially in a time when social interaction is so limited by the state of the world, when there's every reason to want to find an escape, this hurts, a lot. I don't have anything else like this. I even get anxiety opening Mini, fearful of committing to something where, somewhere down the line, I'm gonna find out that I'm wildly unpopular for reasons that I'm never going to understand.

I've come to expect here that instead of self-reflection, usually people just seem to double down on behaviour that hurts other people's feelings. There's not really a consideration of the human element, not in any way that matters. This does not feel like a kind place, and I know I'm far from the only one who feels this way. The way endgame was handled and the discourse surrounding it, and the way that I saw people act throughout, is evidence enough of that.

Even now as I'm writing this, I half-expect to get messages telling me how I'm wrong, how nothing I'm feeling is really accurate, how it's all in my head and I was just misinterpreting things. There's a part of me that wants to believe that, still. I've just seen and heard enough to not trust that instinct anymore, which sucks. I prefer being optimistic.

The other part of me says that, in all likelihood, no one's going to care enough to actually contradict me on this. That's fine too, I guess. I'm gonna try really hard not to be here, though the way my head works I'll have a hard time not checking back. Pouring in my efforts elsewhere is the best I can do, but it's hard to replace this place, or at least the idea of what it was to me when I started. I wish I could've done better, and I wish things were different.

All I can do now is the best I can to keep my head on straight, and that means walking out on this. I don't want to, but I feel like I have to.

All the best,

- Shiola

[RC~]

Hey,

I've been there and SOTF burnout and SOTF drama are a real thing. Taking a break is always a good solution.

I hope you'll feel better soon and take care of yourself!