End of an era · 6:24pm Aug 18th, 2019
The final chapters of the Inner Strength update just went live, so if you’ve been waiting for that before reading, now’s the time!
I thought I might do a retrospective of sorts. More than the story, however, I want to talk about my life and the four years that have passed since I first started writing this story. Which means this is going to get depressing 
I first started writing Inner Strength at work on a break. I bought one of those 70-page spiral notebooks and wrote a little chapter about Twilight eavesdropping on Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, and I was absolutely terrified that anyone might see what I’d written. Including Angel, my wife. I wouldn’t tell her until after I’d written two whole chapters and she asked what all that typing was about.
At the time, I never thought Who We Become would turn out like this. Who We Become wasn’t even a name yet. Originally, I’d planned for Inner Strength to be four chapters long, although I did plan some sequels. Its first sequel, Pretty Hate Machine, evolved into what’s now Finding Home. The next three sequels, The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, and And All That Could Have Been still have yet to be written to this day. Everything else – Inner Strength becoming a full-length novel, the myriad stories that makeup Who We Become, Looking Glass, for which I’m best known these days – all of it was unplanned as the story rapidly grew out of control.
But it all started at work, which right now, is very fitting to me. I didn’t write at work for long – I was too afraid of someone reading my writings – but that was how it began.
It’s been four years. That’s insane for me to imagine right now. I started writing Inner Strength, and by extension pony fic, four years ago. So much has changed since then, good and bad. I can basically divide my life between before and after horse words, even though not nearly all the changes are a direct result of my writing.
My writing itself is the obvious one. Four years ago I was unsure of myself and for good reason. I was disconnected from writing, an activity I had once loved, by – fittingly – a four-year gap in which I had written nothing. It’s now easy to see part of my identity was missing in that time, but I was fed up with writing things no one read and had stagnated in my artistic development (again, likely because I had no audience). Inner Strength turned me back into a writer, which is above all else the core of my sense of identity.
I could go on about changes in that time. I learned what nonbinary genders are right around then, soon thereafter discovering that I’m genderqueer. It took me longer, but eventually, I also realized I’m trans. Angel and I opened our relationship into a polyamorous one, and we stumbled through figuring that out, both of us having partners that didn’t work out before finding ones that did. I discovered Satanism through the Satanic Temple because I’m on a never-ending quest to become a conservative’s nightmare or something.
All of those are worthwhile things to talk about, but I think the one thing I’d like to address is my mental health. In the past four years, I learned that I’m autistic and had been trying to force myself to not be, essentially. I put myself in situations that caused me undue stress because it was something I believed I should be able to handle. Chiefly among them was working at Walgreens.
That’s not entirely fair. I needed the money, and I didn’t care where it came from. But I pushed through Walgreens for seven years because I felt that if I can’t handle something as simple as cashiering, I had no hope of doing anything else. And, after all, the retail hell stories rarely were true to my experience. I didn’t often have horrible customers who treated me like shit, I only twice had a manager who was unrealistic in expectations, I was able to gravitate towards hours and jobs I liked better in a reasonable amount of time, and the longer I stayed at the store, the more respect I earned from managers and coworkers. All in all, as far as retail experiences go, I could scarcely have asked for it to be better.
And yet it drove me to suicidal levels of depression, because whether I wanted to admit it or not, I am not a mentally healthy person. In addition to autism, I have major depression and generalized anxiety. The anxiety I can cope with most of the time, but the depression may not have been major if not for work. It was always there. I can look back at being a kid and see signs that were too subtle for anyone else to know about, that I hid too well. But it was work that brought it to the level it is today.
And the lowest it brought me was pretty damn low. I would fantasize about getting seriously injured because it would mean I wouldn’t have to work. Even to this day I sleep too much because it’s the closest I can come to feeling okay sometimes. And, of course, it made me want to kill myself. I’ve looked into ways of how to do it painlessly. I know I can’t overdose on sleeping medication because they put something in it that makes you vomit if you take too much, and I know this because I have prescription sleeping medication on hand and have had less than admirable thoughts on how to use it.
One day I bought milk, and I’ll never forget how I felt. I didn’t want milk, particularly. I didn’t want anything. I was off work after a particularly bad night and I was thinking about driving to the Skyway bridge and jumping off it. Or to a small nature park by my old house, which I had always thought would be where I’d want to die if I were to do it myself. Not home, I didn’t want to go home. But I bought milk, which I didn’t want. But see, it spoils. You can’t go anywhere when you have milk. When you get milk, you have to go home. It’s just what you do.
It wasn’t all suicidal thoughts. Depression is ugly. Uglier than you see in fiction. Because depression isn’t just sad, but like, sadder. It’s a whole beast of a thing. I didn’t and still don’t take care of my house and keep it clean because when your life is shit no matter what you do why would you even want to put in the effort? I don’t bathe regularly because, again, effort. I don’t leave my house because I just don’t have the energy to be around other people. This includes my mom and my brother, two people who mean the world to me that I see on special occasions because depression makes me want to stay home so I can do nothing at all because it kills my interest in doing things.
It impacts me as a writer too, because of course it does. As my depression got worse, my writing grew more and more sporadic. For people who have followed me for years, you may recall a time when I was positive I’d never miss a weekly update. Story to story, I pushed out weekly updates with a regularity I was beyond proud of. Then that stopped. I developed my new way of publishing – writing an act at a time and then publishing it weekly – because I couldn’t manage the chapter a week pace anymore. At my worst, I was hardly writing at all.
And that’s fine, lots of authors don’t put up word counts as I did, but this isn’t a hobby for me. This is my life. It’s, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the core part of my sense of self. It’s all I want to do with my future, in some fashion or other, I want to write. So it started a vicious spiral where I was too depressed to write, but not writing made me more depressed.
Thankfully, drugs helped that. That’s another change in the past four years, actually getting professional help for my mental health. The only reason Playing House exists with any sort of regularity at all is because of Trintellix (an antidepressant), and then Rexulti (an antipsychotic) is the reason I’ve been tearing through words again for the first time in years.
And that helps more than I could ever express. Writing is so important to me, I need it. But it’s not everything, and the shadow of work still looms over everything I do and leaves me too broken to heal.
But not after today. Angel and I are moving to another state to live with her boyfriend, which means I’m finally leaving this job behind. Last night was the last night I’ll ever have to work at Walgreens. My mental health has been crawling upwards because of the medications I’m on, and now the biggest obstacle in my way is being removed.
It feels surreal. And while the connection between work and Inner Strength may be minimal, it feels so fitting that the day I post the last chapter of the Inner Strength update is my final day of work. It feels like the end of an era, both in my writing and my life.
And the start of a much better one. I have no doubts this will be good for my creativity, so keep your eyes out for many more words from me. Starting, of course, with the new act of Playing House, which will begin publishing at the usual time next week. I also have a few new stories in the works, including a new Noodleverse story and a short romantic drama that isn't connected to any of my other works.
Now if I may ruin the mood of this blog post for a second, there is something else I’d like to address. I’m leaving my job, which means leaving my steady paycheck. I need this time away from work to improve my mental health, so I can’t start looking for a new job just yet. Don’t fret about me, I’ll be living in a household with enough finances to take care of me. This is not a dire situation. But still, I’d like to take the time to say that any and all Patreon pledges are extremely welcome as it’ll be my only source of income. You can also get early access and other bonuses depending on how much you pledge.
Now, onto bigger and better things!
Congratulations on finishing it! I can't wait to see the changes. ^^
I'm happy you're doing so much better, and that you're getting into a better situation. :)
5108036
It's been a long and rough ride, and I'm sure there will be more bumps ahead, but I'm glad to say things are finally looking up 
Thank you
Best of luck
5108090
Thank you
aaaaand stolen.
5108302
Lol it's the name of a Nine Inch Nails album, so you're not really stealing it from me
5108302
That is such an apt description of pre-reformation Sunset in this series.
Glad to hear things are improving for you, your work has been and continues to be impeccable. We need more high-quality queer stories out there, and I've greatly appreciated your depictions of these characters with all of their beauty, flaws, struggles, and adorkableness.
5108361
Well, they say write what you know
Thank you for the kind words, I'm at a weird place right now (being unemployed for the first time in seven years is hitting me, even if I hated my job and even if it was planned) and this gave me a nice pick-me-up
>Pretty Hate Machine
Did you ever see NIN perform live? I saw them in 2005 and they were so loud that: 1) Bringing my earplugs was the smartest thing I did all day or night 2) I was able to feel my keys vibrating in my pocket and 3) I felt dust particles and/or stucco raining down from the ceiling at times. Lots of Type O Negative fans in the crowd, too. None of us could believe it when they played "Burn" live. We went nuts.
Good luck with the move and after.
5108458
I hate to say I've never had the pleasure. Probably obvious by the fact that I've got a tradition of giving my stories working titles of NIN albums, but they're one of my favorite bands and I would love to see them someday. Especially would've loved to have seen then back in the day since I'm not as much a fan of their new material, but still, I'm positive it would be a hell of a night no matter what era of NIN I'm seeing. Seen their live videos though, they put on a hell of a show.
And thank you, I'm extremely excited the it
It’s really inspiring to read how you have, and are dealing with your mental health thought something as productive as writing.
Writing which means allot to me.
So thanks for being awesome through a personally tough time.
5108514
I don’t know where my life would be without writing right now. I don’t really want to know, frankly. I’m glad to hear my writing means a lot to you, it’s so amazing to know I touch other people’s lives with my words and it gives me a reason to keep going when things feel too tough to go on.
Good luck with your new life.
5109261
Thank you, I'm locking forward to getting things going with this move
Okay I really love all the music references there
5109362
Haha thanks, I'm a huge music nerd and come up with most of my stories when listening to music. It may not seem to have much in common, but WWB was inspired by Nine Inch Nails lol
5109371
Nah with how keen both are at destroying me feelings I could tell
5109377
lmao fair