Commentary from Published June 3, 2016
Yeah, that voice. Although I’m sure it’s my own voice from times when I was deeper in the pit, it still calls out like a survivor in the rubble. It’s not something I can easily rid myself of, and it’s one of the examples of how when one is recovering there are still some aspects you can’t shake off. Your brain has been rewired from the experience, and that plan for ending it is still there somewhere. It’s easier to laugh it off or acknowledge it for what it is, but it isn’t gone. I wonder if it will be, or if it will be there to haunt me for the rest of my life.
This is one of the more difficult characters I’ve drawn, after years and years of drawing mainly slender people this character is a challenge. However, it’s something I need to focus on if I want to become a better artist. This character was added way back in 133 and although I originally intended her to be a regular it took another 154 strips to bring her back. And now this is her third comic, and I know we’ll see more. One of the rules I set out for myself with this character is that her story can never be about weight because that would undermine all the reasons the reason she’s in the comic.
I actually pencilled and inked this twice. The first time, an ink spill ruined it, so I had to retrace the entire thing. It was really demotivating to immediately have to redo a comic but it happens.
This is one of the more difficult characters I’ve drawn, after years and years of drawing mainly slender people this character is a challenge. However, it’s something I need to focus on if I want to become a better artist. This character was added way back in 133 and although I originally intended her to be a regular it took another 154 strips to bring her back. And now this is her third comic, and I know we’ll see more. One of the rules I set out for myself with this character is that her story can never be about weight because that would undermine all the reasons the reason she’s in the comic.
I actually pencilled and inked this twice. The first time, an ink spill ruined it, so I had to retrace the entire thing. It was really demotivating to immediately have to redo a comic but it happens.
Kris – one relevant for you
Quite this. ♡ Thank you.
♡
<3 Saffychan
That’s … brilliant.
powerful as always
Right in feels~ ;_;
I’ve been in this situation many times. It actually feels like a miracle I’m still alive.
It will always be there, it will never go away :/
Salman Ahmad
That voice is the reason I’m afraid of PMS…
Where I’m at…though it never feels like I’m better…
This. So much
A friend who goes through similar illness once told me that for people like us, “normal” is always going to be a little fucked up. A hard truth, and one that I am still coming to terms with.
I used to be there. If you keep refusing to let it in, eventually that little voice stops knocking at your door every day. It still sends “Wish you were here” postcards every so often, but I don’t plan to pay it a visit.
I find it ironically fitting that you had to redo this comic, because of the ink mishap.
As for the sentiment, I feel less like a loser now that I know how hard it is to make that voice go away. :I
I forgot to add, I love and respect that you’re trying to branch out by drawing a fat character more. It’s really hard to get weight distribution to look right and given that there’s such a stigma on fatness (for some good and not so good reasons) it’s a lot harder to find useful reference material. It’s also so much easier to just avoid the issue altogether, which is why there are so few fat characters (especially fat women) in illustration.
I’m also really happy that you knew the focus on depression was it’s own thing and that people might gloss over it as irrelevant if it was just about her weight, but I think it’s possible to address that directly. Like, what if someone told her that losing weight would make her happy and she explained why that’s a logical fallacy? Because depression is an erroneous state of mind and it doesn’t just disappear because one aspect of a person’s life has been improved on. She could correlate it to how “you just need to find love” as an equally silly solution or something.
I don’t know… I just think you have the artistic and authorial chops to address the idea head on and I think it’s an extremely important issue. It’d be great if you could create an actual comic for this, instead of only a comment on your site. I’m not fat myself, but I think explaining it could reach so many people who might not understand and I’m betting there are a lot of fat and depressed people who wish they could have a handy way of explaining it. I suppose this could be kind of awkward, as it’s possible neither of us knows the exact truth, but I have faith in your ability to get feedback from the right people to make this happen. 🙂
I hope that doesn’t come off as insulting or irritating to anyone btw… I just feel like we should know more, instead of ignoring a very obvious part of her life. Being fat doesn’t define her, just as being depressed doesn’t define her, but the way other people react to her fatness and her depression is pretty relevant to the comic, I think.
The lack of support or just the way even doctors look at me when I come in looking for guidance to lose weight stops me from trying mixed with the depression. I have a hormonal imbalance but I’m at a point in life where I qualify as poor and medications aren’t something I can jump from new thing to new thing to try to fix it.
Making it worse is doctors who won’t take me seriously. I eat healthy and not a lot of fast food. I walk and try to be active every day and it helps some but not enough. It gets old hearing people assume all of us are lazy or just eating take out. It’s hard to be motivated when you know most the encouragement you get is half-hearted and judgmental.
Yeah, it’s genuinely hard for most people to lose weight and keep it off. We as a species are at least somewhat genetically predisposed to stocking up on calories for the future. Several countries have an abundance of food, like the USA for instance, but that’s not the way it works for most other animals. Most of them don’t know when their next meal is coming. Once upon a time, humanity was in a similar situation, so is it any wonder that we’re good at storing fat? That’s not even accounting for whatever might go wrong, like a hormonal imbalance.
And in the USA, even healthy foods can have an overdose of added sugars, for example. It startled me the first time I saw some bread marketed as fructose free… I didn’t realize it was that widespread… 😛
I’m sorry the doctors don’t give you the benefit of the doubt. They really should, but the cynic in me thinks because you can’t pay much, they’d rather get it over with quickly and shuffle you out the door, so they can latch onto someone who can fund the drug companies they’re tied to.
As for everyone else, well, I’m not perfect. I’ve had the same flawed reasoning in the past, that the fat person is the only one to blame, when the truth is much more nuanced.
The same thing applies to depression. On the one hand, we’re the only people who can fix our own lives, so of course nothing will happen until we try, but that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it. We have a genuine problem, involving bad coping mechanisms and bad body chemistry, and we can’t do it alone. No one got here because we wanted to be this way. It’s not as easy as turning off a light switch and hard work alone is useless without proper guidance. We need professional help to improve our condition, and if we can’t pay for it or we can’t find professionals who truly understand our predicament and know how to solve it, then things rarely get better. 🙁
That’s why I think spreading some awareness could help? Even if it didn’t change anything directly, maybe it would make things a little easier?
I’m sorry I don’t know much about your situation, other than what you’ve told us and my own conjecturing, but you’ve got my sympathy regardless. Please correct me if I got anything wrong. I know I’ve made a lot of assumptions. :I
Does that voice ever go away? It is so annoying.
oh, Clay, you re so good at what you re doing
Do other people really feel like this? For me, suicidal thoughts aren’t intrusive or invasive in any way; they’re just part of my thought process every now and then, and it always confuses me when my counselor asks how often I have suicidal thoughts and how long they “last.” They’re just there—they don’t noticeably come in or go away.