I know I've posted a lot of simplistic cool tone speed paints and doodles over the course of the last several months, and it probably gets tiresome to look at but that's what I always feel like doing to express my moods. I guess that's just how I've been feeling for a long time now.

This can be one of those 'shout it out!' submissions that have been going around I guess, but without the cheeky variety of fonts actually arranged on a drawing of my character.

Last night I dreamt that while on a road-trip I incidentally met the sister of a beautiful girl I once befriended, and tried to get to know the sister in the hopes that I could regain that girl's friendship. In real life she doesn't have a sister and I don't know how I would ever randomly encounter something that has to do with her because she lives all the way down in Georgia, but anyway. I woke up and felt a strangely intense desire to text her and tell her about the dream, but said friend, or rather ex-friend, told me to never contact her again awhile back. It really got to me and I wound up crying shortly after waking. Said girl and I had flirted and talked at length almost every day for a long time and she made me feel loved and cheerful, and I apparently accomplished the same feat for her. We'd since cooled off with the flirting when I found love elsewhere and she also went through some relationship transitions of her own, but I genuinely still enjoyed talking to her and always figured we would be friends. Until one day when she told me that would not be the case, because flirting with me had been a 'terrible' thing to do and so she needed to cut me out of her life.
I told no-one of the dream, until now. I feel the need to spill all of the things. I never know who I should spill them too, so it may as well be a random description on a FurAffinity submission.

The night before that I was reminded of another friend I had lost, too, for entirely different reasons - two friends, actually. They were curious individuals, unlike any other people I knew and they stumbled through life in their own way but I really did like them and appreciate them. I'd met them years and years ago at the first furry meet-type-thing I had ever attended, then later got to know them better after they roomed with me at a convention. I would spend several nights in a row over at their house, hanging out and drawing and talking, watching various television shows the one wanted to show me and trying out beers and art supplies the other wanted to share with me. They were good friends, we had undertaken a fair few adventures together and they tried to help in whatever way they knew how when I was out of sorts. I lost them as friends because of some dramatics that went down between other mutual friends and it was assumed I was on the side of the other friends, while really I didn't know what to do so I tried to stay out of it. I was momentarily shocked when I discovered some information that was unearthed in the process, but I really wish it would all go away and I could have my friends back. I always want to be friends with everybody so there's nothing more disturbing than when friends decide they hate friends. It's happened a few times before. All the bitterness, hurling of insults and back-talking just makes me sad and uncomfortable.

Several days before that, one of my good friends and I held another good friend while she shed tears for a formerly also good friend of ours who now seems to ignore us best he can, intentionally or not. I had shed tears over the same friend a couple weeks earlier actually, on my birthday (much to the alarm of my boyfriend, who was the person I had cried on). Anyway, before I just felt vaguely sad that he had slipped away from us, but seeing that it made my good friend cry I briefly felt angry, because she's one of the best people I know and no-one should make her cry. But then I started recalling my own memories of the friend-gone, and wound up going and looking at pictures of good times with him on Facebook, both during the school year and when I had met up with him over the summer, remembered how close we all were then and I just felt sad again. Sad that people can change in personality so, and that we were so easily forgotten to him.

Constantly lately I've also been realizing that this time last year I was studying abroad in Germany, and find myself marveling at how fast the year has flown and how it did not turn out the way I thought it would at all. I felt like I had so much time - for adventures, to learn and hone my skills as an animator, to build up my portfolio, to pay off my debts. I did have adventures. And I did make a dent in those other things, but... not even a fraction of what I had hoped.
At the time I was also ridiculously in love, though thousands of miles away from the person, and at the time he reciprocated with passion and romance and affection. We communicated every day the entire time I had gone away in literally hundreds of emails, Skype conversations, texts and so forth. We had a passionate, fun couple months together before I left and I was hopeful for much more of the same when I returned judging by the nature of our interactions and yearning to be together. It didn't quite work out that way. I got back and things changed. First there was a strange back and forth, then he was depressed a very long time and I stayed steady as I could throughout, then as he improved things between us seemed to improve before lapsing again. It's a very long story, one that I actually do not feel like telling. But it is enough to say I still love him very much, even if he is usually not sure how he feels about me. The root of all of it was that he somehow lost his physical attraction to me. This admittedly poked at some dormant body-image issues that I then had to deal with. None of it is really his fault though, he genuinely has my best interests in mind and tries to be honest. I think about all of it much less than I used to, consumed by my work load and the difficulties I am having with other persons, and because I've just become a more independent person in general. It's been better, lately, for my having done so and I enjoy his companionship and his friendship in whatever form. Though really, I just want to start over with him. I don't quite know how, but I do know that I've never met someone with so very much of what I've always wanted in a person and I usually feel safe and happier being around him. So at least this one is a bit less of a dead-end then my other paragraphs. Part of me feels ever hopeful we'll figure it out.

Two months from now I don't know where I'll be living, what I'll be doing or if I will have managed to snag a job related to my degree. All of my friends here are frightened, as the same applies to them.

Last weekend, my ex-boyfriend whom I was with nearly four years stopped by to visit. He was the one who broke up with me. Twice. But now he admitted renewed feelings for me and showed me all the playfulness and affection I've been sorely missing... but I didn't want it from him. Adoration is complimentary, but it's not enough on its own. I thought about it considerably but no matter where I dug inside my brain, I found that my feelings for my ex had just completely evaporated and that there was nothing left I could reciprocate with. Given what I went through over him previously, I found the irony of it all more frustrating then anything. Then I felt really really bad that he was lonely and sad as a result. People are complicated and life has a stupid sense of humor.

I just want to do right by people but I don't really know how.

I also don't want to let people down, in terms of the work I do or how I act. I almost feel like giving in to sad emotions and venting like I am right here is letting people down - that I should be constantly happy, silly, steadfast and fun. And I often realize that so, so many people have it so, so, so much worse off in every way possible, and I grieve for them and feel selfish for my own extraordinarily inconsequential-by-comparison sorrows. But I can't help feeling them anyway I suppose.

Wow. I spent four times as long writing this description as I did drawing the image, though they were both stream-of-conscious. That's a first.

Note that I'm not sad right now, just tired. I spent the day working on a screenplay and writing can be a very emotionally draining process. When I doodled the picture I was, but now that I'm at the end of this incoherent teal deer I'm just exhausted. But I feel fine. I'm a stronger person than I ever used to be and I can deal. So please do not worry.

Good night.