Hey everyone!

It's been a while... I am, fortunately or not, alive.
Where have I been, what happened? Well...Let's start from the beginning.
(If you just wanna know what's gonna happen next without explanation why, go to the last paragraph)

A few years ago(man, does that sentence sound surreal to write) my life suddenly started falling apart. My beloved pet passed away after sickness. Then soon after a family member got ill and I had to take care of them and their many pets while being already drained. Lockdown. More family members getting sick, now with covid. My laptop died, taking a lot of data with it. I myself got sick and diagnosed with anemia on top of it. By that point my mental health was spiraling down out of control. Gradually I lost contact with pretty much everyone, including close friends, completely secluding myself in a very dark place. I didn't live anymore, I existed. Spending all the scraps of energy that remained simply to keep myself alive. After a while my physical health improved, but my mental state was at all time low. I had to block windows, just in case, cause I couldn't trust myself and the thoughts that were going on in my head were terrifying. The only thing I kept telling myself was "One more day. Hold on just one more day. It will get better".
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months... The unread messages from friends, the unfinished commissions, unfulfilled promises. All of it keeping my mind in a constant panic, guilt and shame. I knew I needed to come back. To at least tell everyone what's going on. But my mind kept telling me I can't come back empty-handed. Gone for so long and returning with nothing? What a failure of a human. I tried to work on things, but just picking up pen and tablet would send me into a panic attack. I was trying to wait it out, hoping things would get easier at some point and the panic would dissipate...but, obviously it was only getting worse. Especially every time I looked at the calendar as days seemed to rush by. Time both moved lightning fast and stood still.
Somehow, all this time I felt like it's simply a problem of my poor character and not the depression getting a tight grip on my brain. I suppose I just...felt like I had to push through, just like I was told many times by family(that doesn't believe in mental health). I felt like the doctor would just dismiss me if I showed up and explained myself, digging me deeper into the cage of shame. But after a long time I finally got an appointment in secret, because I felt like I either give it a try or won't survive. And, of course, was diagnosed with depression and a few other unfun things. I got prescribed antidepressants. The pills of course didn't cure me, but at least the scary thoughts of ending everything stopped and I got back to a few people. Quite some time passed since then. I'm still pretty unwell and aren't able to get into therapy but I'm a bit better, considering I'm writing this. I'm trying to get out of this dark place and to at least finish what I had to long time ago.

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So to everyone, I'm sorry. I know I should've came back years ago when things only started to get out of control. But unfortunately I didn't. Which made everything worse. I'll try my best to slowly finish all the pending commissions. If you had one - please leave me a message, in case I lost it with my laptop data and we'll try to work things out. When I finish it you can ask me for art of the same quality with any char/chars for free, as my apology for the trouble. Also, since FA's been having problems, just to be safe let me know where else I can keep contact with you, be that Discord/Telegram or WhatsApp.
I hope you're all keeping well and I'll see you again soon!

Yoshi.