emerging from the deep
This is me, emerging from several months of quiet. My lj activity is closely linked to a few different situational factors, I've realized. The major ones being: access to internet and level of comfort with myself.
There a few reasons that I write fanfic, and that I RP. The main one is for fun -- working out a story or a scene that I like, getting it down or getting it played out, is fun and appeals to multiple parts of my nature, regarding creativity, story-telling, performing, etc.
But the other reason that I write fanfic, is that sometimes when my mood swings down the best way to handle it is to separate it from myself, to strive to squash it down and to remove it from my being. It's like isolating a virus before it can spread -- sometimes to better results than others.
And when this is the case, the best way to get it out of me when I can't get it out of *me* is through a fic. Through expressing my emotions in the experience of a character, trying to mesh the -- the overall feeling of my mood through the filter of a character's mindset -- and while the cirucmstances are different in what I write from those going on in my life, and the reasons for the emotions that the character is experience in no way reflect my experiences, the resulting outpouring of emotions can go through my fingers and out, and I can unsually get them gone, and go on with my regularly scheduled life -- or, I can sort of know that it's time to batten down the hatches and go to serious work on myself pulling back to level.
(Being an unmedicated manic depressive requries a lot of internal upkeep, and is something I'm still learning how to manage as best I can until I get up the courage to go back to dealing with the medical profession -- anyway, that's a whole other long, long story).
This was something that I never really thought that I did, until I realized that there's a certain kind of fic that I write when I'm lonely, or when I'm working on maintaining my mood and staving off depression, then when I'm writing for the joy of the act of writing. And there's certain kinds of fic that I read that produce the same affect. And generally, I'm all Yay, Catharsis! Rock on!
But sometimes that purposeful crossing of idea of self with character hurts, because every now and again when I get pulled into that mood I can't get out of it, because it's not just a little slip but a big one -- and what was previously an excercise in a little self-administered therapy becomes a mental trap where the mood/emotions/etc won't let go, but instead whirlpools around together and sticks -- this is when I find myself identifying *too* closely with the characters that I'm reading or writing about, abd then I need to pull myself back, and to make sure that I can find that seperation between my own emotions and my characters' emotions -- because that knife cuts both ways, and there have been times when I'm screaming at myself to stop being upset simply because a fictional character is angsting in a story.
I do this with original characters, as well, when I'm cycling through moods. My moods have been fairly stable for the past few years, barring the standard reactions to major life events. As such, I've been able to enjoy my fannish nature in a way that was just that -- enjoyment, not need.
This summer was rough for a lot of reasons, and I found myself drifting back to that place again, where I was over-identifying with characters, and taking their emotions -- most speficially their pain -- into myself through some freakish fannish mind-vampirism. I recognize that it's special, that it's not actually real emotion that I was pulling into myself, but it hurts the same -- and it echoed and amplified the pain that I was already feeling at the time.
If I disappear, I will be back -- as I am now -- when I'm feeling like I can firmly understand the line between my own shit and that of fictional characters who have no emotional shit excpet that which others have chosen to create for them. It's a tool, but it turns in my hand sometimes when I'm not doing well, and becomes a hinderance.
Hopefully I don't sound too crazy now, and have at least a bit explained why I've been hopping in and out of not just fandom, but the greater LJ for the last while. I miss it, and am happy to be gearing up for a new season of Supernatural and all the goodies that's going to come along with it. It's been a long hiatus, but I got my roommate and roommaye 2.5 (she spends the majority of her time at the apartment but doesn't technically live there) into the show over the summer, and they're ready to go, and my SPNBFF and I are prepped and ready. Heroes rolls around Monday, and god help me but I'll be back from class in time to watch that. And I can't wait to watch the internet react to these things.
As always, love to the flist.