Some of you may have noticed that I left quite suddenly and haven't signed on in a while and have not responded to any PMs sent my way, and there's a reason for that. The short answer is: real life kicked my butt in more ways than one.
The long answer is too personal to put on the internet where everyone can read it, but I will try to explain anyway.
This whole 'disappearing without telling everyone' stunt is something I've done more than once and it's not something I'm proud of. I'm not a very social person, far from it, and when things get too hectic or too stressful I pretty much just shut everyone out and withdraw into my own little world because that's the only place where I have everything under control. I can't deal with instability in my life very well.
Not just here, I've been avoiding my friends on AIM and Skype for nearly 2 months as well without telling them why. It's a very very bad habit I haven't been able to overcome yet. Makes me feel very quilty.
Basically, I'm struggling with a number of things right now. I used to have a severe depression years ago and I got over it but my biggest fear has always been it coming back because it took so much control away.
And it seemed like that was happening to me, that it was coming back. My friends started noticing changes in how I behaved and talked even before I did. Shortly after that I blew up against a colleague from work for no real reason (and he didn't deserve it). It seriously terrified me because I hadn't lost my cool like that in years, and the panic attack that followed when realization set in made me even more determined to cut contact with everyone until I had pulled myself together again, because panic attacks are things that I haven't experienced in years as well.
It's still not right, I'm not there yet but I've been getting professional help again since last week so things are looking up. The end is not in sight yet but at least now I feel like I'll get there one day. And at least I got myself help early this time so I hope it won't be as difficult as the first time to fix everything and make it right again. This behavior, the way I am, has to have a reason and my mom and I have our suspicions about what's causing it, but nothing is official yet. We're working on it.
I feel well enough to at least write this and let you guys know why I left. I won't be active yet; I'll probably stick to lurking and perhaps post occasionally. As for fanart, I haven't drawn any Animorphs stuff since I left. I have drawn some things after that but that was based on original stuff or based on other fandoms and I'm not sure if you guys are even interested in that.
I do plan to draw more Animorphs in the future but I don't know when that will be.
So... that's pretty much what I wanted to say. Now you know. I can't promise it won't happen a second time but if/when I do feel the need to 'disappear' again I'll at least try to put up a notice here.
