Rotten Rats Choir

03/04/2026

I'm down on earth after a three weeks long hypomanic episode. They usually don't last that long.
As always, the sudden crash leaves me exhausted and so very lost. Nothing ever prepares me for this, despite how long I've been dealing with this illness.

Just last week I had the world around my finger, everything I'd ever wanted could have been mine (or so my sick idiotic brain made me feel), and now I'm close to being nothing.
How am I supposed to interact with others when suddenly I feel like a pile of something old and dirty someone left in a corner?

I'm scared that something terrible will happen if I clumsily exchange words with someone, as if they're going to instantly see through me, all the cracks in the mirror clear and impossible to ignore, and it's going to be enough for them to decide I'm not worth one word more.
The anxiety paralyzes me. Just last week I was happily chatting about anything and everything with anyone, friends, coworkers, strangers on the Internet, and now all of this seems so out of reach. I feel like something has been taken away from me and I'm back to being my terrified usual self.

Except it's not true, this is not who I am and I should not let myself be bullied by my disorder.
...Or is it? How can I know what my usual self is when I'm constantly changing all the time? Am I going to collapse under the weight of this perpetual instability?

I feel like my balls of yarn, knitted with enthusiasm, forgotten after a few weeks, then frogged, only to be made into another project entirely. But never finished. I am my own forever unfinished project.
But isn't that true of all of us, in a way?

I hope this depressive episode won't last. I hope to find some semblance of normalcy again. I hope to return soon.

In the meantime, welcome back sad stranger, I am going to take care of you nevertheless.

29/03/2026

a light and joyful entry for once!
went to a friend's birthday yesterday in bordeaux and had a blast. since i moved out of bordeaux more than a year ago i really miss my friends. not in a we used to see each other all the time kind of way, but more in a they used to be close whenever i needed them kind of way. most of the times i don't feel alone where i live because i live with my wife and we hang out almost 24/7, but i miss partying with my friends, meeting them for lunch, and wandering in the streets talking about whatever.

i really don't miss bordeaux tho. too crowded, too much to see and too much to do, i ended up having fomo almost everyday lol.
seeing them yesterday really filled my heart with a quiet happiness, like coming back home and seeing your mother has kept all your stuff safe and loved in your room.
i spent all day hanging out with my best friend, it was so much fun. we ate at my favorite restaurant (rice with a side of plantain bananas, sweet potatoes and fried tofu with chimichurri dressing, didn't take a picture of my meal tho...), went shopping for gifts for our friend (i bought him makoto chan by umezu, he's kind of into dark potty humor, i think he's gonna like this one), sat our ass on the terrace of a cafe (it was extra windy), ate cheesecake and i smoked cigarettes that the wind finished for me. we ended up freezing so we went to a library and read mangas in the warmth and comfort of this small place for the rest of the afternoon.
we then took pizzas and met the rest of our friends at the party.

my friend got a kodak charmera for his birthday and by god am i jealous. how cool are these tiny cameras?? i want one so bad right now.

also totally unrelated but i'm thinking about getting back into drawing. i haven't touched a pen for years so i have no idea how this will unfold but i'm eager to see what i will create. to be continued...

anyway enjoy this pro-lesbian poster i spotted at a friend's house the past week that has absolutely nothing to do with what i just said.

27/03/2026

TW : grief, mentions of mental illness and suicide

twenty years ago my father died. i was nine years old and it had been months since i last saw him.
he spent his last moments alone in a sterilized hospital room i can't even remember clearly, for his stubborn pride forbade his own children to come visit. he could never stand weakness, nor in himself or in others, that he made sure was engraved in our childish brains, and the last months of his life were no exception to teach us a lesson he deemed so valuable.
this text was written for him. i let it sit in my drafts for three months, not knowing what to do with those feelings forever unsaid. seeing others being vulnerable on their blog brought me the courage to do the same.


father,

i have been thinking about you a lot lately. i usually don't these days, well not how i used to. i was obsessed with you, or at least, the absence of you, when i was a teenager and then a young woman. in more ways than one, your absence was the mold that shaped who i became.
i used to look for you in conversations with strangers, mentors, friends, lovers. for your approval. it had always been a matter of approval with you. in life and in death you taught me i had to be more and i had to be less. i was never just right.

i spent more than fifteen years of my life wondering what i had done to you that when death gave you the ultimatum you chose to erase me from your life. did you hate me that much? were you ashamed of my existence? was the sight of my face near your dying bed such a disgraceful one?

i used to look at the leaves, the rocks, the bugs, and the stars thinking you were amongst them. that if i concentrated my efforts hard enough they would start talking to me with your voice, sending me signs that i had been loved. that i had been enough. i fooled myself thinking that they would arrange in a pattern i'd recognize, one you'd send from where you were, for me and me alone to see and understand. a secret code of love transcending death itself.
they never did.

i remember growing up thinking it was my fault. that i was such a bad child, so prone to tears and outbursts of anger, so far from what you wanted me to be, you'd rather die alone than have me hold your hand when your time had come. i remember waking every day thinking the shame of being my father probably killed you.

you didn't leave us notes, no letters, nothing. you didn't even tell us we couldn't come see you anymore. your sister did. and after you passed, she erased us from her life too, like a confirmation we'd been a mistake.

i remember hating you for not even granting us a goodbye, wrath and guilt intertwining in my young heart. you were dead and i hated you. a daughter like this shouldn't even have been born.

sadness, anger and shame were all i was for years, so much that i became scared of living without them. almost convincing myself those dark parts of me made me special, i made a principle to smile as much as i could, only to explode into flames seconds later, left only with disgust at myself.
i was a tangled mess of emotions i would be taught years later had a name.

i learned as an adult your mother had the same condition i have, and that she took her own life when you were but a mere young man.
you had a tattoo dedicated to her on your arm. i often wonder what she was like.

if you had lived to see me grow, would you have seen her when you'd look at me? in the way my feelings are too big for my own body, in the way they crush my organs inside before exploding in bursts of pain? or perhaps in my moments of resilience, in the forced smile on my face whenever the worlds starts to blur in front of my eyes and the choir of insects in my brain start to chant too loud for me to hear my own thoughts? would my sincere laughter have reminded you of the sweet instants you shared with her when she played with you as a child?

i'll never know that because i'll never know you. i never have. you made sure of that.

in my memories you have the face of a stranger and it pains me more than your absence.

10/03/2026

I'm not a good writer, and i will probably never be.
This situation really saddens me, but I have absolutely no talent for writing. I read strangers pouring their hearts out on paper (or keyboard) all day long, but my brain has never absorbed an ounce of their ability to reveal themselves so raw and exposed to their reader. I envy the freedom they have to describe things as they feel them, whether or not they cloak them in pretty words and sophisticated turns of phrase, and to make those who read their words feel them too.

I'm jealous, I think, because writing has never been like a mother tongue for me; it's both a chore and a liberation. It's difficult for me to write, it doesn't come naturally, and I'm afraid people will sense it, that my words will seem artificial and contrived.
On the other hand, I feel so liberated after I've written something personal. Such a pleasure to have managed to untie my feelings and transform them into these little things so close to us that are words. It's like writing gives me access to parts of me I didn't even know I was made of, like it opens small kind of hidden drawers in my brain, and the more I write, the more I get to peek inside those little drawers and rummage through the files.

I belong to this category of person who is kind of drowning in intense emotions all the time, and it makes such an incessant jabber in my head and my heart every single second, it's difficult to even dissect what those waves are made of. Am I feeling afraid? Angry? Jealous? Happy? Alone? Grateful? Sad? I usually have no idea because everything is happening inside me all at once. And writing is hard because of that, my writings tend to scatter all over the place. I need to find a tight equilibrium between letting myself be lead by the words, see where they take me, and try to tame them a bit so that they make sense, and not end up a terrible unintelligible mess.

Paradoxically, even if my emotions often get in the way of my words, blurring the lines of what I'm thinking, once I reach those words it feels as if my mind calms down a bit and I'm able to see again. I guess although writing feels like ripping away a part of myself because the process of lifting that veil of emotions is painful, it also feels soothing afterwards.

As always, this text is going nowhere in particular and isn't structured at all, but I know it was not its purpose. My mind feels a bit quieter now, and it's what matters.

04/03/2026

someone commented that my website was artsy. i felt very flattered, this was a super sweet comment, but then i wondered, is my website artsy tho? what is artsy? english is not my first language so the nuances might be lost on me, but is it the same as artistic? if so, what type of creations can be considered artistic? and what is the difference between something artsy and something crafty?
i then had a discussion with my very smart wife about what makes art art, and our opinions differed. is it the intent of the creator, a will to express themselves through a medium, to share a part of them with the world and invite the public to engage with it that makes art? or is it the reception by said-public, unrelated to any intent of the creator but based purely on the feelings the creation provoked in them that makes art?
the first definition would accentuate a difference between art and crafts. art would be some kind of noble self-expression whereas crafts would be reserved to creations more utilitarian, based on skills rather than a form of expression. but isn't every creation a reflection of its creator in a sense, a part of themselves, unregarding of whether the creator is aware they're making art? the second definition has a broader sense of what is art and focuses on what the creation provokes in whoever engages with it. creations based on skills, or simply aesthetically pleasing (or unpleasing), can still move people and make them react. but this definition also blurs the line: what isn't art then? is content created for a commercial still art? is content made by ai still art if people engage with it, if it resonates within them?
i'm not much of a philosopher so my reflexions stopped there and i couldn't decide on what art was in the end. people have tried to define this concept for a while now and this humble rat does not think she has the answer to a centuries-old question.

anyway, enjoy this picture of my wife's cat, morille. she certainly knows nothing about art.

edit 05/03/26 : i hope i don't need to say that whether or not ai created content can be considered art, this is entirely irrelevant to the fact that you should definitely not engage with it. there are countless ethical and ecological reasons for this that i will not list here because others have already done that better than i could, and my reasoning was purely a philosophical one and in no way an endorsement of ai. ai is a fascist and capitalistic tool and because something can be considered art does not negate its potential unethicality.

02/03/2026

welcome to my virtual wanderings!
i have to admit i'm a little scared to start this blog. i'm filling it with embellishments because i'm afraid not only of the blank page, but also of the emptiness of what i might write.
i'm terrified of realizing that there's nothing interesting about me and that i'm just an empty shell. but maybe it's not so bad to only think about trivial things?
i want to take the plunge, and i'm hopeful that by writing, i'll be able to discern my feelings more and more clearly. what i feel is often confused, and i consciously avoid dwelling on it most of the time because it frightens me. i'll try my best to describe here what i'm going through, hoping to untangle the threads of my mind one by one.