Jamie's Post

Hi friends 🩷

This post is here for my accountability to BKI and my absence. I want to get back to a headspace where I can return to working on this full-time, but I have to unwind the "knots" inside me before I can. This post is part of what that looks like for me going forward.

I want to set the tone correctly for this post, so there will be Trigger Warnings (TW) for each section I wish to discuss. 

Some of these knots are my experiences of trauma and the feelings I have from those traumas. While I would love to feel seen and validated for my experiences, I am not seeking those things at this time. Nor am I posting this for attention.

I am writing this because in my therapy sessions, my therapist and I discussed what returning to work writing and creating BKI looks like. And in those conversations, transparency about my experiences and feelings always came up. I want to and need to be visible in order to continue with this project, because some of those traumas are tied by my abusers directly to BKI. 

And I cannot continue until I physically untie them. So here goes.

-Please feel free to skip this post if you feel like the content discussed is too much.-

My mental health took a downturn after the last comic update post in April of 2023. Part of me is ashamed that I didn't share or post about it, but I didn't really know what to say at the time or anytime thereafter to be honest. I felt abandoned, but also alone even though I know that's not true. I want to try now, though, in the hopes that I can start to hold myself accountable again with BKI. I love this story and want to get back to creating more of it, but in order to do that I feel I need to be transparent about a few things. This is my attempt to do so.

[TW: homophobic abuse and other anti-LGBTQ abuse-based discussion]

As most of you know from previous comic update posts, I was dealing with severe homophobia and homophobic abuse from some biological relatives. It had been going on for years, but it felt like it got worse right around the time that conservatives in the US were ramping up their anti-LGBTQ narratives, legislature, etc in 2022. I felt this dynamic shift in my family based on the ramblings of some seriously disturbed LGBTQ-obsessed right-wing politicians. Suddenly, I was being targeted and made to feel like I was a danger to my family and others, but more specifically because of the homophobic conservative "groomer" narratives and groomer-adjacent bullshit.

I remember walking my dog through my neighborhood, literally minding my own business when their drama found me. I laughed at first because I couldn't believe it was serious, but then I cried because I realized it wasn't a joke. All of it was fucked up and it really fucked ME up. I felt like I was being betrayed and abandoned by the people that were supposed to love me: my family. But through all of the bullshit, I came to the age-old LGBTQ experience: not all blood relatives are your family.

Some of these relatives had been homophobic to me for years and I had told them to leave me alone. Explicitly. Throughout this new conflict, they discarded my boundaries as a means to continue harming me in ways I had demanded they stop.

The other piece that was hard for me was that some of my homophobic relatives started to insinuate that the books I was writing were further proof of my alleged depravity. LIKE SOME LITERAL BULLSHIT.

They used my work and my writing as a means to hurt me and justify the hurting of me. I hated that, and it consumed me. My drive to create, my desire to tell stories, and my will to persevere left my body like a lost helium balloon escaping into the atmosphere. I hate admitting it, but they definitely got to me.

It was like my righteous anger cooled off and became the quiet blue embers of my depression. Fueled by my desire to be treated better by people that once held the title of "family."

I'm an adult Queer author. I'm ALLOWED to write stories with adult gay and bi and trans and LGBTQ characters if I want to. I'm also allowed to write them fucking if I want to! I shouldn't have to justify myself or my existence as a Queer person, nor as a Queer author, storyteller, and creator.

(I wish I could say to their faces, but my body is out of emotional and physical gas when it comes to their bullshit)

😔

The next piece I want to be visible about is the fallout of an abusive relationship I was dealing prior to all the homophobic family drama. This ex-relationship turned emotionally and verbally abusive and resulted in low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and more of me struggling with BKI and content creation. 

I want to preface with a few things before I get into this one because I feel it is relevant information to my experience.

Throughout this particular conflict, I was diagnosed with MDD and was placed on anxiety, depression, blood pressure, and relaxation meds. Panic attacks became a very regular thing for me directly following this conflict. I have heart complications and issues lasting to this day because of it.

I really don't want to discuss this particular experience more than I have to because of the way that it affects me, but I want to at least say the part that I feel is relevant to my experience as a writer/creator, my healing process, and my struggle with coming back to writing/creating BKI.

[TW: domestic abuse and other relationship-based abuse discussion]

I was in a relationship around the time that the first book was being finished. The relationship ended very badly.

This person was somebody that I often shared BKI content with while I was creating it. I wanted them to like it, to like my work, and to like me because of my work. I was proud of BKI and I wanted them to know I trusted them with my content creation process. This trust was misplaced.

One of the most abusive things I experienced in this relationship was the usage of BKI (again, referring to the family drama stated above) to harm me. In the fallout of the relationship after I broke up with them, this person started to insinuate that I was or was going to steal ideas from them for BKI and future BKI projects. I don't recall if they ever explicitly stated that I was stealing from them, but I remember the beginnings of that kind of language. They kept trying to post on the BKI instagram and send me direct messages with the beginnings of that kind of narrative. It felt like they were attempting to create a damaging and professionally harmful narrative around intellectual property theft, even though none of that was occurring. I never stole any ideas or intellectual property from this person.

BKI contains a Black woman character, Jazmin. In the beginning, she was written briefly into the story in such a way that she unfortunately fit the harmful "Black best friend" character trope. It was never my intention to do that, and since I have been working on creating a story for her so that she is a character and not a tokenized piece of the story. However, the ex was often someone I would consult with about what I should do with her character. To which this person would often respond politely, "It's not my job to educate you about that."

So I took it upon myself to research writing Black characters as a white author. And I made it my goal to fix the problem I created for Jazmin so that she has an independent place in BKI apart from the white characters like Norman.

Then, after the breakup, I find "I do not consent to you using my ideas for your work, specifically about Jazmin." comments on my pages. I also receive messages in my DMs from this person (and their friends) that felt like this person was insinuating IP theft about Jazmin. This left me feeling very confused because they told me to do my own work about Jazmin. But it felt like that wasn't the point. It felt like what they were really trying to do was hurt me where they knew they could hit below the belt: my written works. Because they knew how much those works meant to me.

This person continued to attack me primarily in my BKI communities as well as my Twitch and Discord video game streaming communities. It was this special kind of gaslighting where it felt like this Ex only attacked me in my communities because they didn't like the love I was receiving from those spaces, especially if I was no longer in a relationship with them (and they were no longer included in those spaces).

With BKI though, it felt far more nuanced.

Throughout the relationship, this person often asked me if they could co-author BKI with me, to which I would always respond "No. Respectfully, BKI is my work and I want it to remain my work." But in the spaces where it felt like this person was trying to create harmful narratives of theft around me and my character, it also felt like they always conveniently forgot about those conversations where I asserted my desire to keep BKI solely my work. That or they intentionally left them out because those conversations didn't serve the harmful narrative of me.

More than that, the dynamic this person made me feel was "If I can't have you, I'm going to destroy you and everything you love." Which was fucked because it almost felt like they were poetically using my own words from Chapter 6 between Belphegor and his father. I felt like they did this intentionally to hurt me.

[EDIT: 2/8/24]

After reading back through once more, I wanted to add a better conclusion/resolution section to my thoughts, feelings, and experiences I've mentioned in this post. I don't want this post to come across as a trauma dump.

The place that both of these traumas hurt me the most was my value. Specifically, my self confidence/esteem as a creative. I felt that in both instances, my abusers sought to strip me of my worth and replace it with doubt, self hatred, and other forms of psychological harm. They may not even have known that their behavior had that kind of an impact on me, but I still suffered that way because of what they did to me. It was like they kept trying to mold me into the shape of whatever narrative they needed. When the truth felt like they weren't even talking about me; they were just projecting their own traumas into and onto me. It was never about me. It was about how they feel.

I didn't deserve what happened to me. What I deserved was peace. What I deserved was love. And I'm going to seek both in creating BKI going forward. And not just out of spite, but because moving forward is actually quite literally what I have been craving for YEARS.

I want to go back to the person I was before these things happened to me. I want to enjoy the blissful existence that comes before any of these traumas and start over there, but I know I can't. So I choose to carry my baggage with me, not as heavy luggage but as informed pieces of my soul.

I kept trying to think of a way to conclude this post other than "That's all folks!" from the Looney Toons. Something corny and light hearted that detracts from the depth and raw harshness of my experiences and feelings. But the only thing that came to mind is the power I can wield by moving forward beyond it all.

Thank you for reading and for letting me be visible.

J