malibunny

 Something we, and a lot of people, struggle with is feeling fake. We've been thinking about it a lot, and what contributes to it, and these are some of the things that we have come up with that have worsened our black and white thinking when it comes to neurodivergence and also bpd specifically.

At least one of the issues I've identified is the kind of posts I see on tumblr and twitter that are something like "*has a good day* guess I'm neurotypical now!" or things like people saying "anybody neurotypical enough to help me with _____?" (something we have seen people say btw, these aren't hypotheticals). 

Neither of these posts are Bad with a capital B or anything. But what we've been noticing is how much the sentiment behind them, and Tumblr's (as if Tumblr is a monolith lol) attitude toward neurodivergence has affected our insecurity, which was certainly there before we ever used Tumblr. Maybe Tumblr is just magnifying everyone's insecurities, and turning them into funny/relatable posts, we're never sure how we feel about that aspect of it. 

We're terrified whenever we have a good day, or heaven forbid a good few days, or a good week, that we've become neurotypical, we're totally cured and now all our friends will leave us when they realize how good we have it. We see it often where someone will say "I'm having a bad mental health day-- not that I ever have good mental health days" and it upsets us that people, ourselves included, feel the need to justify things like this. Having a bad mental health day shouldn't make anyone worry that people will assume that their other days are just peachy, nor should it be a bad thing if their days actually are peachy usually. I know for us it comes from a fear of being misunderstood, we hate to think that anyone will make assumptions about us, but we're working on not justifying the things we say or do that don't need justifying. 

The line between neurotypical and neurodivergent is not black and white, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's sexist or racialized, and in the end, much of it is just arbitrary in the sense that we draw a line where things are often blurry and not nearly so cut and dry as the lines make them seem (say, in the case of personality disorders, which are also often used in ways by doctors that aremisogynistic and racialized). I guess the point I'm making is that I don't like the way we talk about neurodivergent vs neurotypical as if it's a clear cut line, that either you Are, or you Aren't.

Logically we know that us having a good day, or at least, us having had almost a year of relatively stable moods does not undo the years of instability, nor does it override the dissociation and other symptoms we still experience, but we think that the kind of flippant posts we see and the environment we're in on Tumblr/Twitter does contribute to our literally constant worrying and beating ourselves up over whether or not we're neurodivergent/neurodivergent Enough. 

Sometimes it feels like, though surely not intentionally, Tumblr (or at least the specific Tumblr community/circles we're in) does create an environment in which it feels like you have to suffer performatively to prove that you are neurodivergent enough. You have to be at "peak suffering" lest your neurodivergent card be taken from you. 

Then again, this could be us just being borderline and not actually seeing things clearly due to the way we tend to look at the world. We're never sure. Are we even borderline? I'm trying not to think about it too hard to stop myself from freaking out about it. 

Congrats you got to the end of my long post! :) I'd appreciate comments/thoughts on this, even (maybe especially) if you disagree!

- Misty

 I had a friend when I was a kid who was 3 years younger than me, and we both loved to draw, and had always been artistic. Despite being 3 years younger than me (which with me at age 9 or 10 was a Huge difference), she was always better at drawing than me, especially really delicate, pretty anime styles with nice colors and full backgrounds. I always felt like I was a step behind her, and she improved so much soo fast, too. 

Anyway when I reactivated my Facebook recently, she requested me as a friend, and I figured I'd add her after a long time deliberating. She seems so happy and put together, and I just now saw what her art looks like now, and it's truly jaw-droppingly beautiful, and afaik completely self-taught. We went to art school for four years, and we're looking at her art wondering how we could ever possibly make something that beautiful. She seems so successful now, in comparison we feel like we look like we've just become more of a trainwreck. 

Our art looks like scribbles in comparison, and it worries us that our art may not ever be marketable or skillful. I know that the best way to look at this is that everyone does art differently, and i can't do what she does, just like she can't do what i do through virtue of being two different people with two completely different outlooks on life and art. Her art is beautiful and has gorgeous smooth colors and it's definitely evolved slightly away from anime style but it still is there and the influence on it has only made it better. I always felt like my art was so ugly because I couldn't master anime style, mine always looked clunky whereas she could easily recreate graceful shojo styles. Even though my style has evolved into exploring ugliness (which started then because when I got into Gorillaz, Jamie Hewlett's style inspired me to draw people and things that weren't idealized) and there's a lot of horror art that I make that I couldn't make the same if I had her exact style and outlook, I still always find myself envious of people who can draw sweet cute things in popular styles. 

I don't know if it's premature of me to wish I got more recognition for my art. I think first of all I need to make more art more often, and really put effort in, but a lot of the time it feels like I put so much effort into my art, and there's a certain gratification to just looking at it and making something that I like, but I wish other people liked it more, too, and I'm not sure how to help that part along, or if my art is just essentially unmarketable. I don't want to feel like I'm compromising who I am in order to make my art marketable, but at the same time I'm not sure if maybe my art just isn't that great (and then I wonder if I were to be switched with a popular artist, would my art continue to be popular if people were seeing it through the lens of already-accepted popular art). Idk, I won't deny that I still want to be popular just like I always have.

- Misty

 I think something that would make me feel better is if I could make art that I really like, and also if I could make money off of it. The problem is that we're so exhausted most of the time, and our executive function sucks when it comes to sitting down to make art, so we just don't make things, plus despite us loving to write, actually planning a story is almost impossible for us to do because we don't think narratively like that. We do have a horror comic we want to make at some point, it would just be challenging to draw because of the whole... gimmick of it. We want to work on our horror website, we just feel bad because we don't want to give our partner system more things to think about, plus we feel like no help because plot is so soooo hard for me/us. 

I don't know how to think in a way that makes plot easier to come up with. I always feel like whatever I'm thinking of is too cliche, or gimmicky, or already been done (despite liking things that take inspiration from other things... and besides, what great work of art/writing/acting/music/Anything doesn't take any inspiration from anywhere else?), or it's just bad, or not deep enough, or too pretentious, or whatever, I just can't pick something. Except doppelgangers bc that's my fav though and like everything that I have been making lately has to do with them.

- MISTY