Pixie's Chronicle: Reflection

I feel like this has been a huge week of self-reflection for me. I didn't plan for this to happen, but for some reason, I just ended up taking a lot of time to myself to just think about things, and to just try and focus on other hobbies I've long been neglecting. It's been nice, but at the same time, it was incredibly eye-opening and scary.

As you may know, mental health is something I struggle with daily, and this week, I really took the time to research what was going on with me, along with ways that I could maybe help myself. I ended up watching and reading some pretty heavy stuff, and it really opened up my eyes to just how much I've been suffering without even realising. I now know that a lot of little habits that I have aren't normal which was incredibly shocking to me. I already know what's wrong with me since I was diagnosed a few years ago, but I'm still learning about all these symptoms I have that I didn't even know were symptoms.

I needed time to process all of this information and to really come to terms with what's been going on in my head lately. So I've just really been wanting a lot of space and time to myself this week. I apologise to those who have maybe tried to talk to me this week and haven't really got much responses out of me, but for once, it wasn't a depression episode that caused it, it was more me needing space to think about and process things. My boyfriend, being the magical creature that he is, seemed to immediately sense this and automatically gave me space. Did I mention how awesome he is? He always just seems to sense what I need and does so without question. I wish that I could be that intuitive and emotionally switched on.

So once again, this was a week that I mainly spent locked in my room, just thinking about things and trying to explore what makes me happy. I couldn't really concentrate on writing or planning stories much this week, but this did give me time for more of my hobbies. I've been drawing and painting a lot this week, just doing casual stuff, because I find nothing more relaxing than just putting some YouTube videos on and being left alone with my pencils and paints. Painting is just so relaxing to me, and it always has been. This week, it helped me come to terms with certain memories that I have.

One of my oldest friends came to visit me on Saturday. We ended up discussing a lot of the things that we'd been through together and the horrors that we've faced. It made me think, "yeah, we made it. We may not have made it out of there unscathed, but we made it. We survived." We had a bit of an emotional moment, talking about how no one else understands what we went through and the damage it did to us. We kinda just held each other for a bit and sat in silence. I think that was the first time we'd ever properly talked to each other about things. We've mentioned it in passing a few times, but we never really talked about stuff in this much detail. We're one of the few people in the world who completely understand each other, and I think that just strengthens our friendship even more.

She truly is a special and dear friend to me.

That was what inspired me to maybe do a bit of soul searching since, as you may have read in my last few blog posts, I keep having an existential crisis. I don't really know who I am, or where I want to go, or what my place is in the universe. There is nothing I would love more than to go travelling right now, but unfortunately I can't afford that. So right now, I think I need to settle for an inward journey rather than an outward one. I think that's what I need most anyway.

So I've kinda just been staring into space a lot. I mean, I do that anyway, only this time it wasn't me daydreaming about far away realms and different characters and creatures, but rather about myself and the world that I currently live in. I know that I need to cut a lot of toxicity out of my life, which is something that I am now starting to try and do. But I also have a lot of stuff that I need to try and come to terms with and face. I did one of the hardest parts a long time ago: I admitted I had a problem. Now I just need to find the courage to face those problems and try and overcome them. That always seems to be the hurdle that I fail at.

But I'll stop talking about all of this heavy stuff now and get on to the other weird stuff that happened to me this week.

While my friend was visiting, we thought it would be funny to do that stupid jellybean challenge, you know where you pick a jellybean and it's either going to be a nice or gross flavour? It was a lose-lose situation for me, because I hate jellybeans, so either way I was going to be spitting it out. We got quite lucky at first and kept getting nice flavours until we got one that tasted like sprouts. Yuck! It literally just tasted like I had eaten a fist-full of dirt. But the worst one by far came next. We got to the red one, and it was either going to be delicious strawberry or...fresh blood.

I think you can guess which one we both got.

It was by far the most foul thing I have ever tasted in my life. It made me gag, it was that bad, especially since it did literally taste like blood, so the natural instinct was to panic and get rid of it. My friend actually ended up having to run to the bathroom, thinking that she was going to throw up. Luckily, she didn't. But it did make us stop playing the game after that. I didn't want to be responsible for making my friend ill.

I also had a really strange experience on Monday. So it all began while I was vacuuming the house. I had just reached the bottom of the stairs and was trying to untangle the wire when I all of a sudden felt like someone was behind me, which was already weird, because as far as I knew, I was home alone. Then I heard and felt footsteps behind me, so I jumped out of my skin and turned around, only there was nothing there, and the footsteps instantly stopped.

Weird. But I pretty much brushed the incident off and went back to cleaning. I reasoned with myself that I had just imagined the whole thing and was just being overly paranoid - something that isn't new for me. Once I had finished the cleaning, I headed back upstairs into my room when a strange smell of, what I'm guessing was aftershave, hit me. Again, very strange as I had been home alone for hours. I tried to figure out where it was coming from, and weirdly, I could only smell the scent in my room. It was driving me crazy that I couldn't find the source, as the smell was incredibly strong and overpowering. Whatever it was, it seemed to be the strongest around the end of my bed.

So I just kinda slowly sat back down, starting to feel incredibly creeped out. But again, I just tried to brush it to the side. Within a few minutes, the scent had completely vanished. I managed to calm myself down when all of a sudden my dog started barking at nothing. And of course, that was when I had to resist the urge to run out of the house.

I don't really believe in ghosts and the paranormal, but that incident had me pretty shaken up for a while afterwards. My mum is convinced that a male spirit was watching over me, but I dunno. If you guys can think of any explanations then I would certainly be glad to hear them.

This week, I also finally started on my new year's resolution to learn some other languages. I downloaded an app, Duolingo, after my friend showed it to me on Saturday (not sponsored by the way). I liked what I saw, and I just knew that I had to try it out. I thought I'd start off with German while I got the hang of how the app worked, since I already know a good few German words and phrases, and I was super impressed. It makes learning languages incredibly fun! I'm already at 200xp which is awesome! I'm going to try out some brand new languages soon though. So yeah, if you want to learn a language, I definitely recommend downloading that app. What makes it even more awesome is that it's free!

Duolingo

Another thing that's kept me occupied this week was the season five finale of Steven Universe. Don't worry, there's not going to be any spoilers about the show in this post. But I will say that I've been in a state of absolute shock and awe over just how beautiful and amazing the episode was. My boyfriend and I were squealing so much by the end of the episode. It really was one of the best highlights of my week. Only problem now is, we'll probably be on another almost year long hiatus now. I'm super curious about the movie though which looks really interesting. I'm really curious as to who that red gem is. I'm betting that it's some sort of elite gem.

Because of all of this, I haven't really had much chance to get some writing done this week. I think I needed a little bit of a break anyway, especially since I plan on throwing myself into my stories these next few weeks and trying to get as much writing done as possible. My stories have still been on my mind though and they're very rarely off it. I think I especially needed the break from planning Immortal Bond. That story is truly driving me crazy, and I think I need to find a new source of inspiration to maybe help give me some fresh, less complicated ideas.

I had hoped to update Chat Vert this week, but ultimately, that didn't end up happening. I am aiming to hopefully get the next chapter out no later than Wednesday though, as well as spending a lot of next week writing a lot of the chapters in advance. Hopefully by next week, I will have gotten a lot of this self reflection out of the way. Maybe it was just my brain's way of telling me that I needed some more rest, I don't know. I really do apologise for the delay though. Especially after leaving the last chapter on such a cruel cliffhanger.

Madness Within should be updated at some point over the next few days, so keep your eyes open for that. Hopefully this next chapter might clear up a lot of the confusion that some people experienced during that last chapter. I was still feeling really bad about it for a couple of days until IzzyCraze356 managed to cheer me up and reassure me. I still don't understand why a lot of people were confused, and pretty much none of them got back to my messages asking them to elaborate so that I could help them and maybe try and improve. But oh well.

Chapter six of Destiny's Dance has now been cleaned up and re-uploaded onto FanFiction, and I have also now uploaded the chapter onto AO3, which you can now read by clicking here. Chapter ten of Madness Within has also been edited to remove any typos that I missed, and you can now read the cleaned up version on FanFiction as well as AO3 by clicking here.

I also suddenly had an explosion of viewers on my blog this past week. I have no idea where you guys have all come from, but welcome, and thank you! I really couldn't believe some of the numbers I was seeing, and it all seemed so out of nowhere. But hey, I'm not complaining. I'm really grateful for people taking time to read these posts. I always thought my rambles might be boring, but I guess not.

Speaking of my blog, I ended up having to split my post about defending Marinette into two parts. The whole thing was incredibly long, and I didn't want that to be off-putting to some people, so I thought it could also work nicely by being split into two parts. I thought that the first part could focus on the main reason people seem to have a problem with Marinette as a character, and that's the argument that she causes the most akumas, second only to Chloe. So yeah, if you haven't already, you can now read that post by clicking here. Part two will be out on Monday, and that one will be focusing on the problems that people seem to have with Marinette as a character.

I am now once again active on Tumblr again, and luckily I haven't come across any spoilers yet. It's looking like that episode might be released some time in early February, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I apologise for the Steven Universe spam on there at the moment, but I just loved that episode so much!

Anyway, that's pretty much all I have to say for this week. Once again, I apologise if I seem like I've been a bit on the quiet side this week, but I've had a lot on my mind and apparently needed a short break. Next week, I'll hopefully be able to more intently focus on writing, so here's hoping that all of that goes well. I hope that you've all had a lovely week and I'll see you all again soon.

Pixie out.