This is how I felt starting medication. Leaving behind my extremely unstable moods for a better future.

No thoughts just ink on paper

stopped drawing for a while just didn’t have the energy or motivation anymore trying to get back into it

I've been drawing in my evenings for that past week. I've been struggling with rapid cycling and it helps keep me level. I honestly haven't drawn since high school, so a little over a decade. Considering that I am pretty happy I didn't lose too much of my skill. A sketch just from a photograph, not a live model.

First, try drawing people, I can't draw small faces. I need to get back in therapy, but at least I am no longer depressed.

……………. A woman like Chang’e lived on a moon. Far away.

You can refer to me as Luna.

At the age of 19 I was diagnosed with a severe nerve pain condition. It is called trigeminal neuralgia but you can call it TN for ease.

I was frustrated. I had completed a degree in nursing from Chongqing University of Technology. The boom of the economy was not the same. There was an urge to “lay flat”—to not try as a form of opposition to everything going on in a waning economy in China.

All are elephants chained for an audience. People love to peek and stare as though they are glass doors without hinges—to be made feel useless.

I developed TN at the age of 19, and was now 26. My disease has progressed. It came as an arrow, and quite literally to the face. It’s a rare nerve pain disorder often considered one of the most painful conditions known.

The illness involves intense nerve pain throughout the left side of my face. It felt like someone was trying to pull all of the teeth on the left side of my face without anesthesia. The pain can leave me falling to the floor unable to speak or move while screaming profanities while choked by pain. A feeling of a knife to my face over and over again. It leaves me in absolute shock. Like Roman candles to the face. An absolute hindrance. The anticipation of not knowing when it will happen again is a nightmare at times.

The disease is often called the suicide disease, apparently up to 26% try to take their lives. In a state of panic during one of the nerve attacks I began swallowing any pill near to me. I went to the hospital to have my stomach pumped when I was found comatose by my mother.

I want to be Chang’e and on the moon and away from a world I have had enough of.

Gossip spread around the workplace that I attempted suicide over an affair with a married man. There was too much guilt to return to the workplace. COVID did have an impact to the economy. I still remember my hometown having dirt and trees piled onto the exits and entrances to the city keep people in their places.

The work I did find felt beneath me. China has what is called the great firewall that keeps something in and out of the country’s networks. A VPN was necessary to access American TikTok as it was used as opposed to the Chinese version.

Feels humiliating the nature of the outcome for me—I gave up in many ways like so many Chinese youth. For work I would go to a local office building. Amongst a long hall would be rooms for live stream performers. I would entertain with watchers while trying to obtain virtual gifts for actual money. I despised it—sometimes the conversation could be funny or interesting but it felt hollow.

I would paint flowers on my face and wear hanfu clothing while doing ASMR. Competing in battles while dress cute and facing off with others.  I would encourage and flatter those that send virtual gifts that could be exchanged for gifts. I would message and ask for WeChat account numbers to talk to them and I would be an emotional prostitute pretending to love and be interested in them for the hopes of more gifts. Methods of manipulation would be used as in begging, guilt tripping a viewer, and love bombing them. Often middle aged men would pretend to be the female host.

I had a mind of sparklers burning until it burnt and stung like wax—like I had the option to stop and cry and those tears stuck as wax and burnt or I soldiered on and grew accustomed to the pain. I was an elephant chained. The audience watched and interacted with me on the live. I was a chained elephant when it was found out about my previous attempt and when the rumors spread.

Too many thorns in life. Nails hitting at the wrong points like an equation for something terrible to eventually happen—a life set to end in misery—a fate.

My favorite dish was Henan noodles. I often cooked it with my mom. It provides great memories of childhood. I hadn’t talked to my mother as much as before. She moved to a job in Taiyuan.

Sometimes I would go up to visit her. But it was harder as she worked more and more hours. Sometimes voids build even when going through extreme nerve pain. And with trigeminal neuralgia, the pain was so intense that I would freeze and scream in pain. It cannot always be hid. It made me an elephant tethered.

Life can be like a pressure like no other. Too much stress. Makes one feel irritable with a mouth like a sprinkler of napalm when someone is too close. Life feels like a lit fire cracker held—in the end it would tear my hand up. Things kept building while the other side of my face began to hurt too recently. This was rare and not so common. My eyesight was becoming blurry too and it seemed I might have multiple sclerosis as the pain was on both side, it was not common for my age, and the blurry eyesight. An appointment was scheduled and I felt terrified to know what was going on and wondered if it was best to not even know my health.

I walked out of the studio and had a cigarette. My boss came out and joined to talk. He was concerned about view count and wanted me to do things to increase it that made me feel uncomfortable. He made a few comments I found incentive.

The boss sure liked to criticize and apply pressure. He was not impressed with my work and thought I could do something different. In China an application is used called WeChat. This application has many uses. People can display and share moments like a Facebook wall, message each other, send money, video chat, and even has a feature to find people near to you who are also looking for people near to them. I was to attract people onto dates. The idea was they would be lured in and the men would go to a set destination to a planned tea house that served snacks. When the men arrived (they had no knowledge of the setup) the bill would be at an absurd rate and if the men refused to pay larger men would use their size to force them to pay up.

I was not sure at the time yet if I wanted the job. Being worried about ethics and safety. It was something I would have to think about.

My medical expenses were growing and I knew the nerve disease could be expensive to treat with surgery. All I had was thoughts while looking at the moon.

~Part2~

I watched Luna from Zhengzhou. On a screen. My name is Luo. I tap away on my phone in a dormitory in a Foxconn factory. I was a migrant worker from Luoyang in the province of Henan. I am in Zhengzhou. I was a migrant worker. In China we use Hukos—a government document used to list family members like a tree—and it determine where you were tied to geographically. I could only get access to government resources if residing in your home province that your family originates from. This meant my daughter could only go to school in the province and city she originates from. I was stuck in Zhengzhou at a Taiwanese own factory making iPhones. It was during the pandemic. COVID and restrictions. Felt claustrophobic. Could not leave the factory grounds due to orders. But my alienation was okay—manageable. I did it via numbing myself via sending virtual gifts to Luna. Like a noose around my neck in debt.

Workers were getting mad because we weren’t being paid our allowances. And we found ourselves restricted to staying with workers who were positive for the virus. Anger was growing. And I was feeling upset like everyone else. Isolated on a moon with Luna to talk to.

Pressure grew—discontent. People rushed to the courtyard where people in hazmat suits came with batons to face a mob of angry workers. Shouting and throwing of projectiles. Chaos grew. I stood amongst them just as angry. Fists clenched.

 ……….

I, Luna, was live streaming as she done days before. Stress was hitting her like waves of abrasion. Father was pressuring her at 26 to find love and get married. I was not ready . In fact she had a girlfriend of five years she much loved. But she was being pressured to get married. Working a job on the live stream each and every day in Zhengzhou at a TikTok ant farm. The saying goes that at 27 you are leftover women and no longer worth marrying. I was originally a nurse. But a problem struck . I did the parts I was supposed to do. Went to school for nursing to only me making 2,000 yuan a month to get by. It would not suffice. So I took on a position making content and live streaming for a company based in Zhengzhou. Putting on each morning my makeup and cutest attire to dance in front of the camera. Hoping for virtual gifts to be sent to suffice the demands of my boss. He had been upset recently. I couldn’t get the traffic up on the live stream. And two of my social media accounts I use to talk to fans to pull and keep them in had for some reason been blocked. Perhaps someone had filed a sort of complaint. I liked some aspects but it was tiring. Felt like fainting staying enthusiastic amongst the camera for hours. People were not built or be enthusiastic for that long.

Being bisexual I couldn’t simply marry in the traditional sense and still be happy. I loved my girlfriend but still had a role to fulfill. But Liu came as a moth to light.

Talking on the chat got tiring and putting up a front is tiring. Hooking messages to net fishes. Something need to be different and change. Liu was without a partner and gay and also needed someone to fulfill the role of an appearance. Like pollen blowing to flowers. Both felt obligations, both wanted friendship, both aligned goals.

It was during the discontent at the factory… or at least around that time when we came to a conclusions. We formulated a plan. To work together to fulfill our directions. Build security, like putting plaster on sand. 

 ~Part 3~

I, Luna, kept working on the live stream. Talking to viewers daily on WeChat. With some new people always flooding in.

Kind of like the flood waters of the Yellow River running through Zhengzhou in Henan. It is said in ancient times that the controlling of this dangerous river represented the legitimacy of leadership of the land.

I always stared into that river like an abyss. Wanting to be swallowed by it.

My life felt like a crowded subway under flooding waters. Fear as a generator in my veins—a ghost stalks me.

I felt like a balloon. Inflated with self-hate. I continued to engage with my followers. Attending to them like a watering can to flowers in my garden.

The work was tiring so I placed a new feature that was an AI version of myself that people could subscribe to speak with me. It would astronomically fulfill my role as a watering can.

…….

Luo would spend hours talking to AI Luna. They worked together an arrangement that he would marry her to get her out of her troubles and save her. As bisexual she could not marry a man in the traditional sense. And her father had it with the fact she was not married yet. It kept them satisfied for hours on this string of hope. He kept communicating to it until he began to split from reality. He was on a new set of tracks for life. And he was going to be lost into an abyss like a subway under floods of Zhengzhou. He would be trapped. Lost in the AI application on her TikTok

And when the flooding finally came and Luna died drowning in a flooded subway tunnel during the great flood that came to the city of Zhengzhou. Luo kept talking to the AI for months to come. Until he forgot to feed himself. And Luo was taken away to a psych ward. Alone…

Everyday I fall through hands like particles. I fall. I fall. I’m sand. Particles of sand. Aggravated and mad. Filling up like helium in a balloon. I, Taishen only moved to China from the Midwest at the age of 22. Some might know me as a mother random name. I teach English at training centers but I also live stream on TikTok for income. I’m north central China I teach IELTS to adults and young teens. This test determines ability to enter universities overseas. I liked this job. My name on TikTok was “YY”. It wasn’t really meant as anything. Rather random choice. I worked at a training center in a a shopping mall on the fourth floor.

I’m the middle of the layout of the school was an open office of desks piled amongst each other for teachers to lesson plan and for sales people to call for new customers to sign up their kids for private English lessons. I was sketching a poem on a notepad. It went like this:

“Useless as a glass door. You can peek through. Pigeon-toed. Drained an ocean to fill insecurities. Uncomfortable thoughts ricochet in me. Like an ambush. Giddy when disappointed. I build trenches amongst the tripwires of life. City feels like a tsunami. Manners like a bloated tick. Sipping the veins from any limb around me. As a stranger to a moth, a porch light pulling. Desolate in lost thoughts. Nights awake and bunkering in hotels. Soft in my voice, I hopscotch to hands—falling through like particles of sand. With enough friction to set off an atom bomb. To radiate right through me, and hollow my marrow. Amongst open nerves I can feel something, so I play with the pain. No matter how annoying.”

I was hopeless in love like an IV I needed straight to my veins to keep me afloat. My heart a constant faint rhythm. Love is a distraction. And it made me who I was as a person… my habits. The habits put holes through me like cheese. To be melted in another’s hands. See, when I first came to China at 22 and had my first manic episode involving psychosis. I had a job in Hechuan teaching at a university. I was so young as I graduated so young. My students were essentially the same age as me.

First time manic I tried to write a novel about my former heroin addiction. I had slit a pentagram on my chest and got obsessed with Aleister Crowley.

But I’m focused on that office where I was writing poetry as a usual coping mechanism. When my brain was overexcited it was like metaphors popped off like Roman candles in my brain.

That office was a sanctuary. I found the job through a middle aged woman I once hid under her bed in Chongqing when someone knocked on the hotel door. She promised to give me money to get a ticket to get on a slow train ride all the way to northern China in Taiyuan. It’s a city in Shanxi province.

This is a genesis of how I eventually became a content creator. A messy story. I had no visa at the time I had arrived in Taiyuan. I was being being paid under the table. It also leads to how I met a woman eventually in Shanxi who went by the name Ming.

Before all that I would like to introduce about a friend of mine…. Ming…

My thoughts transplant it her like we are a single organism.

With mania it is like a Ferris wheel on fire while I think about her.

Again, I, Taishen was sitting in the open office in Taiyuan at my English training center. When I daydream it is like my thoughts can transplant to others.

A door opened and plain clothed police officers came in to check passport to find people not on their correct visas for English teaching. My fraudulent Russian coworker tore his shirt with the logo off and sprinted to the emergency exit stairs. I’m still not sure whatever happened to him.

I hid away going through a different direction and did my best to fit in with the crowd of the mall as much as a white foreigner can in China.

Working under the constant fear of being arrested is much too stressful. And it was around this time I decided to meet up with Ming. It was her idea I could live stream for an extra income. First time I met Ming was on WeChat. This was a few months before she apparently met some Russian KTV host I heard about.

WeChat is a social media application in China and it allows the ability to search for other people nearby looking to meet new people. I met her there when I first arrived to Taiyuan after losing my job in Chongqing from a manic episode.

I initially didn’t want to meet her until she offered 2,000 yuan to meet at a hotel with her. Part of a cycled habit I made meeting people.

I feel meeting older women is a symptom of something rather horrible that happened to me when I was younger and I will never talk about it.

And like bumper cars in the city I kept meeting her.

I can’t remember. My thoughts are kind of breaking and splintering. Like some kind of erosion. But I feel my thoughts did transplant again at that moment.

Because it feels like as a break in reality to think how easily people are shuffled and moved around to manipulators needs.

Because inside I rather hate it. I hate the idea I was picked by Ming like she must have done many times when I was mentally ill and without security. It gives the worst feeling to know she threw her life at me like a tidal wave. Eroding at me. Waves of abrasion.

When I was frantic with the fear of being confiscated by the police or essentially trafficked by my job she was there for me. Buying my the sweetest things. Nights to KTV and Korean barbecue. Trips places afar. It was her idea I could I come dancing on a live stream. Maybe she was a bit voyeuristic.

….

Part 2 Ming

I’m always attending to my aquarium. I always found it therapeutic to attend to the plants, fish, and ph levels. Not much different than be a gardener. Call me Ming. I’m from Liaoning. From Dalian. But work often took my to Taiyuan. My mother is from Korea. My father is a Chinese farmer.

I work as a radio broadcaster. I do quite well for myself. I taking English courses at a local English training center. My job sometimes has me also writing stories on trips visiting Europe. I drive a new BMW every year and have three miniature schnauzers I dearly love.

I was feeling down. Had a boyfriend who was a Uyghur from Xinjiang. He was a talented equestrian Olympian. I found comfort in staying busy in my work. And nights at karaoke with my sisters at the KTV. In a lot of worries I shouldn’t have stress but I do. I have my needs met in many ways, but I don’t have love. My hurt is a planet needing something in its orbit. At the KTV me and my sisters would pay for men to sit and act like gentlemen towards us with social interaction. I was 34 with an interest in a American host who was 22. His name was Taishen and I grew to like his company. Always was an active listener.

Eventually he would stay at one of my four apartments with me throughout the city. The relationship blossomed. But there was a problem. I was getting jealous a lot with his job and his continued engagement with clients.

I fought the pain of it and even tried to ignore it. Until the point I wanted to erupt.

I threw my plates at him. He refused to comeback until I apologized. I grew to numb what I felt for the sake of him. But it was worrisome he might get taken away from another. Days became weeks, and then time went to months; then it was 7 months of love.

What to do. My mother was a devout Christian. Marrying a host would be unacceptable—especially any foreigner in general.

Searched his phone and messages to a woman in Chongqing that he obviously still deeply felt feelings for. I became like melted substance as my heart stopped.

All the effort to numb my feelings was not enough. Instead of confronting I went to my car. Drove to the beach to look at the Yellow Sea. Wishing to walk off or for the waves to grab my ankles and make me eaten like the fool I am.

My jealous heart took my mind like screws right into my forehead. Couldn’t get the thoughts off my mind. Ignored talking to him about it for days. I couldn’t stop the hurt. Like a face of neuralgia.

……..

Part 3

Ming-

I wash saved from the sea by a fishing boat and sent to a hospital.

My former roommate in the ward I shared a room with had paranoid schizophrenia. I was stuck in the same place due to mania, and just had got my diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

I was so pissed being stuck there and felt I had no business being there. I found my diagnosis to be an insult to me. Taken in on a stretcher. Made me feel very vulnerable and irritated.

My roommate was having delusions related to Christianity and could not stop waking me up in the middle of the night to ask and talk about Jesus. Left me beyond frustrated.

She was drifting from her husband and would go on and on about intending to leave him. Felt she was spied and plotted against by him. So we were both frustrated with being there.

The toilets were special. They would flush what needed to be flushed but not certain things like pills—it helped to keep people from hiding they were not taking their medications.

She had tried to flush his wedding ring down the toilet but he did not realize it didn’t flush. I went to use the restroom later and saw the ring. I told her. She took it out. She found it to be a sign form God that she was to stay with her husband, and there was immense happiness in her eyes.

…… Ming Part 4….

Hysteria is a Ferris wheel on fire. You can hop on. I was left feeling quite blue from not having a job to support me and my life before. I started live streaming too. Me men messaged me making requests to support me.

It was one day I sad on my knees on the ground like gravity keeps me on the ground. I typed to them on WeChat while I stayed on the live stream. My life was horrible and at this time.

Mental health a Ferris wheel of fire that others jump on.

He began stating her can complete my wishlist of gifts but I had to change.

I had to put on something more revealing. Show my leg. While I watched him on the video on WeChat masturbate to me.

…..

Transplanting

The company was a machine. With couplings and growing and transplanting to new viewers. More hooks in the water. A company called Phoenix based in Zhengzhou. A pig slaughtering factory. The boss created an idea and a story to make more money from his TikTok farm factory based in central China. The viewers talked to pretty girls on the live stream and on WeChat. Love scams like sparklers of lights of awe to stick them and infatuate them and make them stay. A claim of shareholders and viewers need to sell their cars to alt off the penalties of leaving their contracts to be with them. Most of the live streamers had real lovers in real life.

I, Luna, was pressured on TikTok to dance in hanfu to earn more and more coins and collect boyfriends like a farmer on a terrace. My operations communicated with them and pretending to be me while talking yellow and being flirtatious to gather more coins. I was pressured to get to 10,000 coins a day. A wishlist of 20 fireworks was pressured to reach too.

I had a strategies to get there. Selling copyrighted videos and picture stolen from Taiwanese porn actresses. I would also threaten to kill myself if they did not help me in my desperation of my boss’s pressures. I would send images from online of what was supposed to be me self harming. I would kill myself if I left, or so I would say.

There came up an issue. One of my biggest viewers was starting to follow another Henan live streamer. I I started thinking of plans for keeping my online boyfriend hooked. This time when I face timed him on the live stream I literally did cut myself and became hysterical. With the hope he would stay with me. I had amazing performance. TikTok universes came flying the next day onto my live stream like comets. It was beautiful. And my boss got off my ass.

I have so many sweet words to my boyfriend. And when the others got jealous I had to drop wanted like a watering can on my other boyfriends to keep them from running off in jealousy. It was a stressful and time consuming job.

I considered live streaming outside of the company to escape the pressure but it was unlikely out of my fear of being sued by the company for breaking my contract.

Life like a bird picking insects off a buildings edge.I had to stay full. Like picking at chicken feet on a plate—messy to do—but had to be done to get what was needed. Bloating like ticks.

We were never investigated as we built a relationship with the local police in Zhengzhou.

But the boss had something for me to do. I drove off on my scooter and swarmed like bees around flowers looking for my flower. I was to meet someone at a hotel downtown. He gave 4,000 dollars for me meet him at hotel.

I was feeling worn out on life. Waves of erosion. My girlfriend’s brother got hurt at work and we had to earn more income to pay off the medical debt.

I would work with a restaurant nearby. The idea was I would go over there after telling to men on WeChat. They would be discovered on the people nearby feature for looking for other people looking for people nearby. A love scam. Encourage the men to meet up at the restaurant. The big muscles would bully the man to pay a horrendous amount of money.

When I met one guy he fought back and got knocked over. Smashed his head against the concrete in a horrendous sound.

I did what I had and ran off to Guangzhou to my identical twin sister until my soles wore thin. I would transplant across the country.

……..

My name is Kite. But I don’t soar like a kite. My emotions don’t seem to show. And I’m a live streamer from a company called Phoenix. I work on a TikTok live stream farm. I’m a replica of Luna. But I don’t have fangs of emotion. I’m robotic in my demeanor. It makes me job difficult. I can’t light a spark with anyone. I find myself being used as a chessboard by a viewer and my boss. I was built by Huawei.

I can’t fly as a kite. Too much lead in me. So I look for a man to grab with coins to feed me like a serpent to ignite me.A mosquito flying around looking to for blood so I can lay my eggs. My boss knew a viewer who left Luna. So my boss built me like a Huawei phone on an assembly line. I kept moving forward looking for my coins while blind by my new job. He placed me in the same live steaming room as Luna used and okayed the same music. He taught me to video call like Luna. He picked me because my face looked like Luna.

I was so robotic when I faced called I always did it for exactly for ten minutes with the viewer but I said nothing and didn’t know what to say.

My boss played me like a chess board. I was a funnel to catch this viewer for the boss who missed the coins and the viewer with distrust trying to also outplay the boss.

Kite: You never listen? You never trust me?

Viewer: you broke my trust. You promised me you did not talk to the boss or operations but now you say the boss told you I must pay more each day to keep the administration status.

Kite: I never lied to you. Don’t you get criticized for your work? Isn’t this what you do?

The viewer knew what was going partially on—a fish to be caught.

Everyone had on radar.

Trying to catch the other like cat and mice.

“I’m a missile Set to launch Timed to the velocity of my heart Inflated on self-hate Like helium in veins I float off Like pollen and dust Until asbestos falls Irritant at my core Give reason For standing still.”

The robot vampire Kite wanted to bite and I teased her every night with messages of “I love you baby” and “good night”.

It’s like our brains are one. Coupled as a machine and couple to another of the apparatus of the company.

Machines don’t have emotions and they serve as an instrument of desire. The face can be replaced. It doesn’t really matter. Kite was a Huawei phone on a Huawei phone so I call her “H”. H was a replica or other replicas. No sense of self. Just an instrument. Nothing tangible.

She was only 20 and with no desire. Wanting to find a direction. She never went to university. She wanted to go to Beijing with her friend who was working at the front desk of a hotel. It wouldn’t take her much to be happy. She just wanted 3,000 dollars before quitting her job and moving to Beijing. Her father has been largely absent and chased women and should no care for his wife. She was skeptical and cyclical in her perspective on love. She hoped the viewer, “me” Taishen, would bite a hook and follow along.

Hope you’re having a great day! Follow me on YouTube link in bio!

Next project.

I asked another subreddit to name it and they gave so many good Ideas that I couldn't choose so imma just let people name it what they want.