All The Best Artists Have Family Issues

Medium (920px wide max)

Wide - use max window width - scroll to see page ⇅

Fit all of image in window

set default image size: small | medium | wide

Download (new tab)

by difl

Gallery

Alterships

« prev 30 in pool next »

Cy: Every time we go to visit family, it takes us a few weeks to really come back. We've made several sketched comics about it, but never finished one because we were too worried about subjecting our followers to our retraumatizing experiences. This last trip broke us, or more specifically, it broke me, an old version of Nancy from when we lived with them.

[Transcript:]
Alterships (by DI-FL) With: Cyde & Nancy. Title: All The Best Artists Have Family Issues.
P1: Human woman wearing all black laying in a bed with the curtains closed, holding a cow plushie.
P2: Cyde, hugging herself on the edge of a cliff overlooking a forest, mountains, and an ocean.
P3: Nancy, waving: Hey, hun... You've been up a lot lately. What's got you front-stuck?
Cyde: PIss off, Nancy. I"m not in the mood to have my feelings invalidated and told to go hide away.
Nancy: Well it's a good thing I'm not here to do that then. Just tell me what's got you feeling this way, I promise we won't get mad.
P4: Cyde, closeup looking back to Nancy: Our fiance's right! Every time we visit family, we're miserable! Our abusive step-dad and shitty grandpa, hell, even our uncle ruin every visit! Why do we even bother? It's why I exploded!
P5: Closeup of Nancy frowning.
Cyde: You know, when we got our own apartment and went no-contact, we weren't doing the best, but we were doing better. Now it feels like we've regressed. And for what? To see them before they die as miserable old bigots?
P6: Nancy and Cyde sitting together on the edge of the cliff, looking back at more mountains and forest behind them.
Nancy: Sounds like you've been the one holding onto these feelings we've been having about them... The only alters who are mad at you for your outburst are strill traumatized from living with our family. We needed to say what you did. I'm proud of you. We've been too complacent with them... And we keep thinking that we can change them by being patient with them. It's a childish fantasy you helped us realize that we can't keep entertaining it. There are other members of our family we value because they respect us. So I don't know if the system is ready to go no-contact yet. Maybe if things keep getting worse we will. Bur we can absolutely set our boundaries. We can reduce our exposure to the worst members of our family by visiting them less and for shorter visits. Who knows, maybe by not relying on our family for social validation, we'll meet more people in our community.

Keywords