Dear past self Vela, you have been through a lot. It's been impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel, because nobody has told you what you are going through and for how long it'll last. Maybe because doctors are incompetent and don't make this research easily accessible if they even do know at all what it is.
You are strong for trying to tell people about your (overwhelmingly convincing) true supernatural/spiritual experiences. Don't worry about the losses, those who will want to hear your stories of magic will stay. In this confusing and often dark, strange times, you have soldiered onwards and carried these experiences close to your heart.
You survived darkness tempting you in March because you are strong and didn't want to die. Even that attempt is not shameful, as you realized at the last minute despite how unbearably evil the voices in your head were, it wasn't worth it giving up.
You are not broken. You are going through a once in the world situation that seem to not have been documented. It is your job to document these truths as much as you can. To document this pain so maybe someday others will be less overwhelmed by their psychoses and dances with the supernatural. To document your art as it may shift, but also all this hard work is simply training with weights on, becoming stronger than ever for working with an impairment. Waiting for that day when those neurons finally find their place and attach, letting all that forbidden information you rightfully earned come flooding back to your artist hand.
You will have more stories to tell than anyone else. Like listening to music, the ability to draw will pour forth, and you'll finally be able to convey the colors, sounds, emotions, people and places that have shaped you during those profoundly strange years. It may be excruciatingly hard to draw now, but someday it will get easier.
Old Vela was used to things falling perfectly into place, like neatly organized buttons and stickers at a convention stall, everything was possible if you worked hard. Or so you thought. Only with losing your mum, the attack of psychosis and loss of your art, did this worldview get thrown around, just a bit.
This fire burning inside you, a desire to create and communicate, will never be extinguished. It will live on in you for as long as you do. Try not to fret about careers and jobs and your place in the world, before you know it things will again fall into the palm of your hand.
What happened to that big dream of opening a shop/studio in some country nook in McLaren Vale? Where you could be creative and sell original artworks and merchandise, a big step up from the many anime conventions you did with mum? All these dreams may seem on hold at the moment, but they will come true someday. Trust in yourself, that you are a hard worker and that psychosis didn't destroy your life forever.
You may be drawing at only %10 out of %100 right now, but even this art has worth.
Someday you may have a gallery show with all of your work, that is yet another dream to keep you going, if you believe in it. Your work even now is a vivid representation of a mind healing from intense trauma, regardless of how well it is drawn. Someday other people may see it too, the value in your stories and characters that have gotten you through the darkest and most hope-deprived years of your life. If many don't see the value that is ok too, it doesn't mean it doesn't have value to you or someone else out there in this vast world.
Above all else past Vela, you have to be kind to yourself, even when it seems impossible. Try not to compare your life to others, in terms of art or everything else. Remember you have people in your life that love you for you. You went psychotic because life got too much to bear, you are not completely alone as darkness happens to other people too. What matters is how you deal with it from now on forwards. Even in the abyss of misery, self pity and shame, you will find strength to get through it.
Signed,
Future Vela.
