I have been alluding to darker themes in my life as of late, and with that I’ve been putting off an equally important thing to note. It’s incredibly personal but it affects my work and overall, I think you all deserve to know about it more than I deserve my privacy. I ask that you read this post with an open mind please.

Twice over the course of the past month I have tried to end my life and ended up in the hospital. The second time I was much closer to successfully ending my life than the first. I suffer from suicidal tendencies when life gets rough, and over the course of the past few years my life has been so wonderful that I forgot those thoughts even exist. In the past two months I was given a bit of a rude awakening. Not only have I been hit with a slew of bad events, but without breaking too much privilege, I’ve lost both my partner and my closer friends. So not only have I been having a rough time, I didn’t and don’t have a support network.

I really don’t want to be having this conversation in the first place, but this is where I need to address the issue of if I succeeded at a suicide attempt. If I succeeded, I’ll have given my viewerbase no warning and you all will, hopefully, just assume I got lazy and never finished my work. This is more nice to think about than the truth, but the truth is what you deserve. If I suddenly go silent and stop posting blog posts, responding to emails, or posting stories, then 99% likely I’ll have committed suicide. I post a blog a week on average, so I would say that if I don’t post for two weeks in a row, that should be a bit of an indicator. I miss one week occasionally from time to time, so I don’t want people thinking I’m dead just because a new blog hasn’t gone up by Friday. But if I’ve been silent for a month and you email me, and I don’t give a response, I don’t want anyone holding out hope that I’ll come back.

Believe me, this is as hard to write as it might be for you to read. And hey, there’s a possibility that there could be another reason that I go radio silent at the drop of a hat. That said, I’ve been mulling over this blog post in particular for a while now. Given the uniqueness of my situation, I’m fine without the ‘I’m here if you need to talk’ responses. Even if I did want to talk about my personal life, it would jeopardize however much of a personal life I have left and can’t afford to blur the lines between my writer persona and real self. I also promise to the best of my ability that if I ever do take a break from being Bashful Scribe I’ll be warning you in advance. As well, I gave a real-life friend the password to my Patreon so don’t worry, if I end up dying, it won’t mean any negative financial situations for you all. I appreciate you all so much, I hope you’re not too worried reading this. I’ll talk to you all next week.