Category: mental illness

  • New Essay Published!

    September was Suicide Prevention Month, and this piece is important enough to warrant being late. The one on suicide prevention is the story of my two attempts in a nutshell. I shared this story because it’s integral to who I am and because I know there are people out there struggling like I was. Maybe…

  • Happy New Year! 2024 Edition

     Happy 2024 everyone! So much has happened in the last year that it’s hard to quantify everything I’ve done as well as everything I survived. But survive I did. It certainly wasn’t easy, mind you, but while things are still difficult, I started this year off on a better trajectory. For a lot of reasons.…

  • The Paths We Take

    It’s the uncertainty that gets to me. I’m the kind of person who likes to have a backup plan for a backup plan because nothing ever seems to go right. Backup plans fail often too but they bring a sense of security, of having a way out that might save me this time.   But plans…

  • Savior of the Damned is Available for Preorder!

    It’s been a trial to get here, but I’m over the moon I finally made it. Two years of writing, revisions, editing, and beta reading have all paid off. It was not my first book ever written, but it was the first one I managed to get into publishing shape. I learned so much along…

  • Diverse Narratives

    I am Filipino. I am a part of the Filipino-American diaspora, and more importantly, I’m proud to be a part of it. Biologically I’m mixed race (Filipino/white) but I identify as Filipino because blood quantum is a tool of colonialism. Blood quantum says nothing about the people I was raised around, the culture I am…

  • Medication and Creativity

    I take medication for bipolar disorder, among other things. I take medication, as well as go to therapy, to help manage my moods and make my life easier. But there is stigma against it, especially among creators, because of the mistaken belief that medication kills creativity. And I’m here to address that.   There is a pervasive…

  • Anxiety

    Each new hurdle I cross when it comes to publishing brings its own special brand of anxiety. It’s a mixture of imposter syndrome and cognitive dissonance, because all I heard growing up was what a failure I was. That I’d never amount to anything. And every time I meet a new goal, it comes with…

  • Dreams

    Recently I woke up a couple hours earlier than I usually do because of a dream I had. The dream itself wasn’t anything particularly disturbing. It followed weird logic but dreams tend to, so it wasn’t that. It was more that it was almost what normal used to be like. It wasn’t anything that ever…

  • Learning to Outline

    The bulk of “The Guardians of Gaia” (the series that “Savior of the Damned” kicks off) has been written or outlined, and so I’m taking a break. It still has a ton of work that needs doing, but mostly it’s all there and I’m happy with the results. It’s been making me think of outlines, however,…

  • Suffering and Art

    No, you don’t need to suffer to produce art. That’s a misconception plenty of people have, and it’s a dangerous one. It prevents people from getting help, for one thing. But is it even true to begin with?  I’m mentally ill. I’m mentally ill because I had a traumatic childhood, and as both a teenager…