So, I'm not here looking for forgiveness or sympathy or anything for how I behaved back in July. My callous meltdown caused a lot of grief for a lot of people and even serious distress for some members who were already in vulnerable positions with their own emotional health.
There's no apology I can or should give that changes the fact someone nearly took their own life because I dragged a discussion out of a semi-private space, without sufficient context, for the sake of an impulsive, scattershot, and victim-blame-y callout... one which I've since come to understand was even more pointless and unnecessary because as far as I'm aware YUMP 2 ended up being smooth sailing. I nearly caused irreversible harm because of unfounded anxieties.
In that sense I don't feel like I've really earned the right to engage with the community again, or if I even can or should be allowed to. One of the main reasons I left for two months was to get therapy and work towards getting my impulsive side under control for good, because this wasn't the first incident I've had on these forums and if I can't make it the last, above all else I at least have a responsibility to make sure that I'm the only one who suffers any serious consequences if I ever self-destruct again. But that therapy fell through, so now I'm resorting to trying an increased dosage of my anxiety medication.
And that doesn't feel sufficient. It doesn't feel right. One can't just take more pills to completely and permanently remove a dangerous side of themselves. One shouldn't just come back "after it's all blown over..." That's not how it works. I mean, that's what ends up happening in society at large, but that's not how it should be. That kind of thing is one of the reasons civilization has gotten to the awful state it's in right now.
And with everything I've been up to, with how much more involved I've gotten in the SMBX community in my time away from this fandom and how I've kept up with other projects... that especially doesn't feel right in retrospect. It feels like doing anything short of either properly fixing myself for good or shutting myself off from any social spaces where I risk being a ticking neurotic time bomb for other potential harm is irresponsible at best. I've been keeping myself busy, distracting myself from the real problems at the core of it all.
...
When I started writing this thread I thought I was ready to start easing myself back into this community, at least to a small extent. I thought it was time to get back to helping with A2XT2 and the advent thing and the Mosts userbar generator tool. But I'm not sure now -- not just emotionally, but ethically and morally. And yet I've created a situation where the community is now relying on me to help them with stuff I contributed over the course of a decade, especially a mess of spaghetti code with all sorts of quirks and bugs that not many other people know how to fix or work around. I owe it to everyone to finish what I started, or at the very least help get things to a place where it can be continued without me. But is it worth the risk?
On the flipside, I'm not a hermit. We're now deep into a year dominated by a pandemic and the toll of complete social isolation is that much more of a known thing, on top of all the other stress and negativity from society just kinda falling apart in every other way. Cutting myself off from everyone could end up being worse for my mental and emotional health and put me in a state where I might be even more of a danger to others or myself. If getting professional help to fix myself is no longer feasible, would it ultimately be more harm mitigation to stick with people I'm most familiar with and that knows me the best? Or is that just the selfish and impulsive part of me, give me an unwise way out that I don't deserve?
So... I don't know. I don't know what to do, what I should do. Writing this whole thing already feels like imposing on everyone, dragging people into personal baggage I should be figuring out on my own. But at the same time I feel like if I don't post this, if I don't open up about these fears and complexes to someone, things aren't going to get better. At the end of the day the most stubborn, deeply-rooted of those psychological knots is that everyone else's wellbeing is infinitely more important than my own, and in that sense the most irresponsible thing of all is to not keep pushing toward an optimal outcome in that regard (keeping in mind that bringing any serious harm to myself is going to hurt anyone that still cares about me as well).
I just wish I had any confidence or certainty in what that entails, and I hope to whatever higher power(s) that may exist that this skyscraper of text is a step in that direction and doesn't just make everything worse for everyone.