[TW: Mentions of Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Verbal Abuse, Harassment and Politics.]

Hi. I'm an artist and aspiring author with a lot on my plate, so I'll cut to the chase; I'm angry, lost, frustrated, and I don't know what the hell do to with myself anymore.

I graduated high school right when Covid struck years ago, I never had a proper graduation and lost the chance to go on a class field trip to Paris. That was about the last time I saw most of my real life friends and former classmates until I moved further away in the state I live in. Since then, I've tried making a few connections online, and it went well for a good while, even allowing myself to earn a bit of a reputation as a former online creator who posted art and made videos.

After high school and my so-called "graduation", I took college courses online, since I had no other choice with Covid running rampant, and got a degree in graphic design. I had just entered my early 20s and I didn't know where to look in terms of a career at the time (I didn't even have experience with a part time job), and fear that I may have taken too long with AI taking over the world, art and writing jobs especially (should be noted that I absolutely despise AI by the way).

Around the same time, my grandmother had been living with my family and I, and due to internal turmoil involving herself and my father, she snapped one day and was packing her things to leave, suddenly threatening to abuse me and send me to prison (for no reason) right in front of my youngest sister as she was leaving. She had never reached out to apologize. but instead sent gifts and letters to both my father and youngest sister, which speaks volumes about how she feels.

Not too long ago, I since cut ties with a long-standing online friend group because of my own mistakes that I made years ago. Mistakes that I was never directly told about until the moment everything went wrong. For the longest time I was under the impression that our past mistakes (from both myself and my ex-friends) were water under the bridge since we were getting along so well at the time, only to find out they had been keeping the truth from me and allegedly pretended to stay friends with me for several months (their words directly as we were cutting ties) before we separated. To my own fault, I hadn't been on my best behavior around the time either.

I felt lost for a year, and even now I still do. I've since gone to therapy for a year, have done everything I could to help support my family, returned to college (in person, for the first time since Covid hit) to take classes towards an IT based degree and made new friends both online and on campus at college thanks to common interests.

But now, I feel lost and overwhelmed. This one's a doozy.

My college work, specifically the IT material I have to study, has become too much to handle at times.

The country I live in is practically in shambles and falling apart no thanks to the government or the controversial president that both of my parents had voted for, with seemingly no hope for a livable future in my current condition.

My therapist could no longer provide for me due to an error on their part with the therapy providing company, resulting in me debating on whether I want to move on with my mental health or completely start over from scratch with a new therapist who knows nothing about me.

My ex-friends (I heavily assume) kept a hold of my old phone number and address when we were close, and have been using both to continuously harass and remind me of my past mistakes even after blocking multiple phone numbers, going so far as to attempt to doxx my location and taunt me on the recently popular wplace website.

My parents got divorced, leaving me with even more responsibilities after nearly having our current home sold to find a new one for the remainder of our family.

My current workplace (which is fine in general) unnecessarily stresses me out from time to time despite being a form of escape from both home and schoolwork.

And AI is, unfortunately, continuing to grow for whatever reason, taking away even more job opportunities in the creative sphere that I could've found and applied for if I took the chance after getting my graphic design years ago.

All this to say, I'm tired, stressed out, low-key depressed and have contemplated either disappearing or killing myself numerous times. But I haven't.

Despite me voicing these similar concerns to my own mother, she always assures me that I'll be just fine, but I find that hard to believe. I don't know what my future holds for me, or if I'll even have a future at all. I still love drawing and writing, and am even working on a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy novel that I'm hoping to publish one day, but the continuous push for AI to be the norm (despite sometimes motivating me to do better in my own work) is simultaneously bringing me down with how much the slop it creates is being accepted compared to human works, art and writing alike.

My pursuit for a better paying career (since most art and writing jobs nowadays simply don't pay a livable wage for whatever reason) has been stressful, and trying to learn IT in college through strenuous book reading, extensive memorization and less-than stellar exam scores has only been pushing me away from the career path than motivate me. It's not what I wanted to do. Creating things with art and writing is what I want to do, and it's unfair that wanting to be creative in this way is an extremely difficult way to live in comparison.

Even though the thoughts of suicide linger every now and then, I never feel the urge to physically do anything about it. Despite everything, I still love my family and want to be around to help them in any way I can. I can barely imagine how they'd react if they found out I was gone in any way. I also want to continue making an impact on the world with my works, past mistakes aside, and create both art and literature that people can enjoy and possibly find inspiration from, knowing I didn't give up when everything was difficult in my own life.

Which leaves me in a sort of limbo, to be perfectly honest. I really don't know what to do with myself, or how I can pick myself up from feeling down about life all the time, and continue existing like everything's fine.

Any help or advice, while not required by any means, would be greatly appreciated. Even reading through this means a lot to me.

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