I gotta say it was a bad day...

Today was bad. One of my worst in a while.

I wake up at 11:30 this morning after once again having no recollection of turning my weekly alarm off. I haven’t slept in the past two days. I’m tired. My legs shake as I go downstairs to feed the cat and myself. My eyes are stinging from the tired I feel on a constant basis and I can hardly keep them open. It’s raining. I love the rain and I want to go back to bed, but I have no food to eat and I have work to do.

After a slow start to the morning, I’ve eaten and am ready to start my day at noon. I look at the attempt of a routine I’ve given myself. Today’s chores are clean the kitchen, do the dishes, grocery shopping. I take a moment to assess my condition (a task I do multiple times a day). My legs are still shaking. My lower back down to the bottoms of my feet are in pain. I decide to rest my body for a moment until I brave the rain for groceries.

Climbing back into bed is hard. Not just physically, but mentally. I want so bad to be doing things. Productive things, that I can be proud of. But instead I’m once again forced to lie down with my heating pad turned to its highest setting. I massage and stretch my legs and neck. Every inch of muscle is a trigger point and I’m left bruised from the movements. The heating pad is nice but it’s not hot enough to ease the pain today.

After about an hour, I drag my ass out of bed. I have to get the groceries. I have to do something today. I need to do this to feel I’ve accomplished anything. I get dressed as I look around the house at all the shit I have lying around that needs picking up. They’ve been there for days, maybe weeks. I haven’t felt physically or mentally well enough to do all these things I need to do. I start to feel overwhelmed. I start to think I’m a sorry excuse for an adult. I start to feel like I’ll never be able to live by myself (a dream of mine.)

The grocery store trip is slow. I’m in a brain fog and my legs will only carry me so quickly. They’re still shaking and I feel unsteady on my feet. I hope nobody can tell that I’m struggling to breath and walk. I get home and unload the bags, I feel my back almost go out, so I make sure to take it slow and easy. After putting the groceries away my body is in so much pain I need to lie down again. Standing hurts, sitting hurts, lying down hurts, moving hurts. I can’t find any comfort and so I cry, hoping at least that will be some sort of release of energy or pain. The migraine comes soon after.

More crying. I don’t know what to do. I’m writhing. I’ve taken all the medicine I can at this point. My body and mind are heavy with thoughts and pain.

It’s so frustrating and exhausting to live like this.

I can’t do this anymore.

It’s been like this for too long. I’m so tired and scared.

I’m sick of being sick.

Stop feeling bad for yourself, other people have it worse.

I want to do something, anything.

I want to feel like I have a purpose in life.

I have so much shit to do.

No one will understand why I can’t do the things I have to do.

I’ll lose followers. People will lose interest if I’m not creating content.

No one will want to hear about this.

I need help.

Today was bad, but today was just one day. I feel tired and I feel pain every single day. Most of the things that happened today are a regular occurrence. I’m usually good about hiding my pain and can manage enough to just say “this is just how my life is, I just gotta keep going, keep taking it one step at a time.” However, some days I reach a breaking point. The pain and long list of to-dos that I’m constantly catching up with due to my ever-changing health, paralyzes me.

I decided to write this blog post for something to do. I’m writing this mostly with my eyes closed because of the throbbing migraine that I still have. But I needed to write this tonight. It’s important for me to put my emotions and thoughts out there in some way so I don’t feel so alone. Lying in bed all day with nothing but my thoughts for company can be a risky business.

I have several Doctor’s appointments coming up that I’m hopeful and excited about. I’ve decided things need to change, I need to work even harder on fixing my body and mind. It’s easy to feel like I’ve done nothing all day, especially with modern day society’s obsession with productivity. Today all I did was get groceries, but sometimes that’s enough. I have to look at the progress I’ve made over the years and how far I’ve really come. I also have to be realistic with myself and tell myself that I’ve gone back steps with progress. I need to hold myself accountable for bad decisions I’ve made and have hope that with practice, time and professional help I can get my progress back on track.

If you’re having a bad day or is someone who struggles with chronic illnesses/pain like me just know that someone out there understands and sometimes all you have to do is what you can in the moment. Sometimes your purpose in life is to just exist.

A Statement on my Health

I suffer from a lot of health issues including Chronic Pain and a Chronic Illness.

Before I get into it, I just want to say this: I’ve talked about my health here and there, so maybe some of this, you may know already. I haven’t fully come out and talked about everything officially for a few reasons. It’s taken me a while to accept these things and be comfortable enough talking about them in detail because a lot of it is very personal. I never wanted to seem like I was complaining about it. The fact is, yes, my health sucks, and, yes, there are people out there struggling more than I am. I was worried that people would treat me differently if they knew. My number one goal in putting this information out there is to be honest, educational and hopefully explain my situation, not to gain pity in any form.

The Chronic Illness that I have is called Endometriosis. Essentially this means that tissue found inside the uterus can grow outside of the uterus, causing lots of pain and other issues. I was officially diagnosed about 4 years ago, but I’ve been dealing with it for 15 years now. A lot of people still don’t know about this disorder because it has to do with women’s reproductive systems and, man, are those yucky and gross and not worth learning about. I think it’s important to be open about it.

The symptoms of Endo vary from person to person, but my symptoms include…

  • Extremely painful and irregular periods

  • Constant fatigue

  • Abdominal pain

  • Pelvic pain

When I have my period, these symptoms are at their worst, but I’ve learned recently that the rest of these symptoms can happen any time, and they sure do. This illness has negatively affected my daily life as well as opportunities, my employment, and relationships. This illness has also been impacted by other health issues that I’ve been diagnosed with including…

  • Chronic Pain (Back and Knees)

  • Chronic Migraines

  • Depression

  • Anxiety

  • ADHD

  • OCD

It’s a lot to have to deal with sometimes and keep in check. I hate that I have these issues, but I’ve come to accept that they are a part of who I am.

Like I said before, I don’t want sympathy for all this. I just want people to be aware that this is my situation and because of these things, I can’t always be there, mentally or physically. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be there, just means that I can’t. I’m what is known as a “Spoonie,” which is a term used to describe people living with Chronic Illnesses. It means some days I don’t have enough energy to do all the things I want to do that day. Some days I have less “spoons” to give out. Some days I wake up and can eat breakfast and have to go back to bed because I have a migraine and my pain is so bad. Some days I can accomplish much, much more. But every day is played by ear, and every day is a gamble. So… you haven’t heard from me in a while? I haven’t streamed in weeks? I haven’t made art in a month? These are the reasons why. These health issues don’t make me unique in any way. I’m not asking for anything but a little patience if I go MIA for a bit, because man, do I feel guilty about it.

That’s all I’ll say about this for now. I might talk more specifically about my experience living with these things, but for now I think I’ve said all I want. I’m open to talking about this with anyone who wants to know more, so if you have any questions about anything, please feel free to reach out or comment below.

In other news, I hope everyone had a great Holiday and New Year’s! Take care of yourselves!

♥︎ - Finch

New Blog, Who Dis

To quote the iconic DK Rap…

“Here. Here. Here we go.”
— George Andreas

Many of you are coming over from my Mailchimp newsletter, like “why did you make me click another thing”. Sorry to change things up on you, but this is where my Blog/Newsletter lives now. I was tired of having to need an address to use Mailchimp so I shut down my PO Box and brought it over to my actual website. I also like the comment feature Squarespace has, so please feel free to comment on these moving forward (something I thought was missing from these blogs.)

Here’s the plan for this thing. I’m going to use it when I want to, blogging is something I don’t do often. I enjoy it; I enjoy lifting the curtain a bit to show you a piece of me that might not always be out there publicly and keep you up to date on things in my life and work. However, I’m gonna be honest blogging also intimidates me. It’s a lot of work and I just can’t make it a scheduled part of my life. I hope you subscribe below though to get these updates when they happen. I apologize in advance if they seem few and far between, but that’s what I can offer at the moment.

For now I’m trying to figure out if I should repost my few Mailchimp blogs here so they are viewable and I don’t lose them. What do you think, please use the new comment feature to tell me! ^^

I’ll have a post or two coming soon, one being an important statement on my health that I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while now, so stay tuned. Other than that, I hope everyone is enjoying themselves, see you soon!

♥︎ - Finch

Introduction

This is a post that was originally made on MailChimp but I’m moving over here to keep together with the rest of my posts.

Hi! I'm Tristan. I was born on the very edge of the Mason Dixon Line in southern Pennsylvania. Cow shit smells like home to me. I am the youngest of five children and I grew up in a very musical home. Both my parents were piano players; my mother, a classically trained player - and my father, a jazz pianist. Music was almost always present somewhere in the house and our parents made sure to expose us to a ton of different genres. We grew up dancing, singing and playing music together as a family.

Age three was a big year for me. I set up a chess board perfectly and my family thought I was a genius - I was not. I learned to dive. I had a tiny pet chicken who used to sit on my shoulder named Mr. Peep. I was living the good life. As I grew up I started to become obsessed with animals. I was that weird kid that made animal noises and ran around like a velociraptor. At some point I started drawing animals and in elementary school I first noticed it might be something I was pretty good at. It certainly helped to have a very cool art teacher who let us experiment and have fun with our art.

Most of, but not all of my giant family.

I grew up in a large tight-knit family. It has been a very important part of my life. Our parents made sure we were raised to be kind and only judge people on their actions which I've carried with me through my life. I'm also very fortunate and grateful to have a family cottage on a small lake in Northern Pennsylvania, which we've been visiting for over 100 years now. It's a place I can do one of my favorite things on this earth - swim. I feel the most at peace when I'm swimming. Because of this I've become fascinated with water and the worlds beneath the waves. I'm convinced it's because I'm a pretty spot on Pisces.

As I got older I became aware art was something I was good at and always brought me joy so I decided to pursue that in school. I started at a school in Upstate New York going for a basic Art and Design degree and a minor in Biological Illustration. During my second year there I had a discussion with a teacher that made me realize I was more suited to Illustration than Visual Art. I withdrew from that school soon after and the following year went to a school specifically for Illustration. After 3 years there I left to start my Freelance Art Career and here I am still working on it. I'm still growing, learning and adapting. I hope you enjoyed learning a little about me and look forward to more updates and thoughts in the future! Thank you for reading.

♥︎- Finch