Tumgik
#these are actually kind of style experiments? idk i was struck by the urge for a sillier style
onebarofsoap · 3 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
tastefully ignoring shibuya arc by drawing happy and healthy jjk 👍
43K notes · View notes
mathematicalghost · 5 years
Text
celeste, anxiety, and me
Tumblr media
A couple of notable things happened this week:
I started 428 Shibuya Scramble on PC
I finally dusted off my Twitch account to stream for the first time in months
I finished Celeste
And, most frustratingly, I had an anxiety attack.
I don’t really talk about my anxiety all that much, or at least not nearly as much as I should. I got diagnosed with it in the height of my GCSE’s, so absolutely no prizes for guessing exactly what flared it up. I didn’t really do much about it in a medical sense - I never took medication, saw a therapist, or really had much interaction with a healthcare professional at all after a diagnoses. I just… lived with it. There were a whole list of very clear triggers for it, and I worked through them and figured out how to cope using mechanisms that were both good for me and uh, less good (if you’ve ever seen me at an all day event where I’m new to the building layout, I am almost definitely dehydrated). The laundry list got smaller, and I claimed I “stopped” having anxiety just before I went to university. Hrm. It didn’t quite work out that way.
Let me jump back to Celeste really quickly, because I’m not just unloading all my trauma onto an unsuspecting reader without a reason for it (I swear!). So, I really enjoyed Celeste - evident by the fact I bothered to actually finish it, a rare feat that is becoming increasingly less rare as my free time is now more predictable and less guilt-wracked from education. It took me a little under 18 hours to complete, although this doesn’t include any strawberry collecting, I don’t have all the B-sides (I haven’t played the B-sides levels yet either), the Crystal Hearts-based level is currently locked off to me, and includes the fact I made liberal use of the Assist Mode function. I’d imagine if you were any better at platformers than I am, it’d probably take 12 hours or so to do a single run, but equally if I went for an actual completion run I’d still have a good extra 30 hours left to me in this game. I’m still pretty new to short platformer games, spending my time caught up in RPGs that all my friends played and not realising how little I actually care for that style of gameplay, but Celeste was so addictive to me just because I could play in the stolen chunks of time I’d find on the bus to work. It definitely made me more alert when I’d get into the offices in the morning - nothing like a good bit of frustrating gameplay to get your brain going in the morning, I guess.
Celeste is such an easy game to recommend because there’s already so many people raving about it - I don’t need to rehash why the gameplay or music is so good when there's plenty of work out there already explaining it. I loved how the Strawberries held no actual mechanical weight to them other than “idk if you want to I guess”. I loved the mini rhythm levels to achieve the B-side cassettes. I loved the Assist Mode, where I could add an extra dash or switch on invincibility when my hand started to hurt and the thrill of the challenge was replaced by pure frustration. And, above all, it’s pinned by the most amazing story.
So, the basic premise is that Madeline decides to hike up Celeste Mountain. She’s not much of a mountain climber, or any kind of climber at all really, but the mountain calls to her in an inexplicable way. She has to prove herself, prove that she’s able to do something. Madeline is pretty open about the fact she has depression, and the Mountain exploits this to split the depression “Part of [Madeline]” into a ghoul. She looks like Madeline in every way except that she’s purple, floats, and is constantly trying to kill Madeline. At times, she’ll even sabotage Madeline’s relationship with other people, causing them to to turn on Madeline, too.
Part of what really struck me about Madeline’s story is the fact that the depression ghost didn’t actually hit her at first. She’s nervous, sure, but she actually gets part way up the summit before this ghost even appears. She doesn’t have her first panic attack until long after the ghost has established herself as a nuisance, and it crops up even when danger doesn’t seem to be around (such as at a campfire). It takes different forms at times, and affects people differently (Mr Oshiro and Theo both have times when their own demons affect them, and it’s not the same as Madeline’s ghoul). It mirrors my own experience with anxiety, especially as it moves to the final chapters.
So, back to me, I guess. If Madeline’s depression looks like a ghoul version of herself, floating menacingly and pushing through outbursts, then I’ve always described my anxiety as an overtired toddler. The main wave of anxiety has passed now (Anxiety attacks for me can last between three days and, during a particularly bad February of this year, three and a half weeks), but I think the main thing to trigger it was a stomach ache I had on Wednesday. If you’re thinking it doesn’t make sense, then try asking a screaming two year old why they’re crying and deciphering their nonsensical string of an answer. Maybe there was something deeper to the anxiety than a stomach ache, but that doesn’t mean I can articulate it to anybody else, least of all myself.
Anxiety attacks are slightly different to panic attacks in that they can last longer, and don’t always have an obvious external symptom like hyperventilating. For me, I was in a loop of nausea, irritability, fighting back the consistent urge to cry, and heart palpitations. I didn’t quite hyperventilate, but I was breathless at the height of it, manifesting as a cough as my body fought to breathe. All of these symptoms made me tired, which made me anxious, because I get anxious when I’m tired, which made me more tired, which made me anxious, and so on and so forth. Stomach pains and nausea make me anxious too, because I don’t know if I’ll be sick, which also in turn make me more anxious, and get me trapped into a building cycle of pure dread. Three and a half weeks of it wasn’t exactly the best way to spend my February of this year, and it certainly wasn’t my chosen method of experiencing the past week.
Madeline asks her ghoul at one point why she’s being attacked. Surely, if Madeline’s fear is that she’ll get hurt on the mountain, why is her ghoul trying to kill her? Much in the same way I wonder why I’m getting anxious over nausea if it’s only a symptom of the anxiety in the first place, the ghoul isn’t on the mountain to follow logical reasoning. Theo tells Madeline that she’ll only get hurt if she tries to help Mr Oshiro more, and that her existence on the mountain is already a proof of achievement. And yet, Madeline is determined to stay in the resort (to my Switch left joycon’s horror) to help him regardless of whether or not he is grateful. I do things to prove something to myself long after it’s necessary, even if I know I’ll pay the price with my mental health later. We do things that aren’t always objectively logical because ghouls, and toddlers, and crystals, and weird Mario-esque ghosts, aren’t always things you can objectively reason with.
Initially, Madeline tries to swallow her fears and just climb. To ignore the ghoul she saw in the cracked mirror. Further up Celeste Mountain, Madeline concludes that she needs to destroy her ghoul. She needs to get rid of the “Part of [Madeline]” that seeks to hurt her. Then later, finally, Madeline realises she needs to talk to the ghoul. To embrace it and utilise it.
I once was deep in an anxiety attack when I went to a fencing match. By mistake, I’d had too many coffees that morning and the combined caffeine and anxiety pretty much clipped me through the sky and into another plane of existence. We won the match, and in turn I figured out that if I move more in a match, I get more points. Was it healthy in the moment? Absolutely not. But I doubt jumping into an abyss and hoping your ghoul is going to throw you the rest of the way is that healthy either. But you can take from it and learn.
Ignoring my symptoms of anxiety didn’t help at all. Avoiding all sources of my triggers helped a little, but not that much either. Recognising when I’m having an anxiety attack, managing the symptoms, and letting it pass like a wave works so much better. It’s only my second anxiety attack of the year, but if I get a third one I know what I need to do to get through it.
I’m not going to climb a mountain to prove I can do this, but I’m glad I followed Madeline on her journey as she did.
2 notes · View notes