Where have I been?

TL:DR at bottom
Hey all. I want to apologize for the lack of activity here. Maybe you've also noticed I haven't been active as much as I used to be elsewhere. It's a bit of a complicated situation in regards to both my health and mental health.

To begin, I've been experiencing chronic fatigue. I've always had this sort of chronic fatigue for as long as I can remember, it's only this year that it's gotten notably worse. In 2018, I found my body couldn't handle gluten (my favorite meals were mostly gluten), so I had removed that from my diet and found notable improvement to my health. Although that was apparently only half the battle in finding my health issues.

If I can paint a quick picture of how a week goes:  One day out of the week I'd feel fine, with the rest of the week, I'm having this insane pressure in my forehead and eyes, and needing to take frequent rests in bed. Energy would just tank and be replaced with this need to rest, as if my body was trying to fight something. No symptoms of anything major, like coughing or sneezing, just this strange sensation of a strong allergy coming over me.

Well apparently, over the course of this year, I've learned that I'm sensitive to e212, also known as potassium/sodium benzoate. This was interesting to learn, because it's also in almost everything I consume on the regular: diet sodas, juices, syrups, sauces. Around April, I've begun a diet to remove this preservative from my diet. And for a while, it actually worked! The strange allergy sensation went away, but strangely would come back, but this time at random. That's where I decided to look into this ingredient even further.

They still use e212 if the labeling on food contained "natural flavor". This was super duper strange to find, but it's been roughly a month now since I've removed EVERYTHING related to e212 from my diet, and I'll tell you, I feel completely different. It's very strange to go days without needing to take days to rest. I'm up, and I work, and it's been consistent.

This diet is still very hard to keep up. You need to be vigilant for this ingredient, and it's in EVERYTHING that you can find at the market. It's absolutely insane how this preservative can stay when it has a lot of toxicity to your health. I cannot drink 90% of the drinks offered at the store. I can't buy any sauces, or even eat out on the chance (which is high) that a food joint will use sauces with e212 in it. I don't understand how this is so pervasive in the food market.

As for being gone though, is something I don't have much of an excuse about. I was very scared to start anything, or promise content due to how inconsistent my health was. I was only hearing how I've let people down, and as a result I just couldn't really face logging into SubscribeStar before I just felt this incredible guilt. I still needed the help, yet I couldn't keep consistently working on the things I have promised. It's sort of why I started taking my health seriously to begin with. I knew being out for days at a time wasn't normal. I know I can do what I set out to do, but my health was holding me back. I didn't want to feel sick for days on end anymore, I wanted to draw, and make my ideas. So I decided that there was something wrong and actually do something about it. And it took months. But I think in the end, I've finally found what was the issue.

Sometimes I come back and think, 'Is it too late to set out and make things right, and fulfill the promises I made? What if I let people down again?"

Regardless, even with my health issues, I've been pretty hard on myself. Knowing that I was actually sick periodically while trying to finish stuff, I can see I was unfairly hard on myself. I'll keep making stuff because it's what I enjoy doing. And now that a major obstacle is gone, I know I fulfill the things I wanted to finish. I've lost lost of people I used to think were friends over just not making them stuff, or disliking an opinion I've had in the past... But I'd like to thank everyone who stuck around and actually believed in me. I don't think I would have stuck around without you guys. I'll do my best to keep myself healthy, and keep going. There's so much to do.

TL:DR - I was sick, I didn't know I was getting sick. I managed to find what was making me sick, so hopefully art work will be much more consistent from here on. I've been pretty hard on myself and feeling guilty for not making the stuff I promised, which is why I never really came here to upload, which made me feel even more guilty. But I am grateful to those who still believe in me. I really means the world to me. I'm not going to give up. My ambitions are still high, and I have so much I want to make. Lets hope my health stays stable, and this is the last I have to do of figuring it out.