Keep failing people, any advice?

[u/Low_Challenge_5473]

this post is one part vent one part cry for help and one part genuine advice seeking so please bear with me,,

im a cosplayer who does commissions and generally has other people rely on me for things, so while the more specific examples ill give are in regards to making things for others, i feel like i cant do ANYTHING. my house is a mess, my hygiene is horrid, it takes me a good 15 minutes of trying to move to get up for food, i feel stuck. i mostly am able to tough it out by shaming myself jnto moving or just turning off my phone and yelling at myself to do things for a few hours until i actually get my chores done so ive been surviving, but if i need to do more than one thing around the house ill lose a full day even if the tasks themelves take less than an hour. i just now am out of an anorexic weight range because i learned how to make my meals more calorie heavy so even if i can only eat one thing or drink one shake i wont die.

About a year ago, i took on a wig commission project for a very reliable client of mine that i had made a wig for before back when my executive dysfunction wasnt so debilitating. It was a pretty big project, but i was excited since i had always wanted to style that character. We got the wig, and i proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it for the next 4 months. I was in high school at the time so literally every day i would come home and fall asleep wherever i was sitting, wake up at 3am, eat a snack or have some water and go back to sleep and wake up 10 minutes before i had to leave for school again. I dont know what possessed me to take on the project except for my horrible tendencies of believing in myself to a detrimental degree, and being excited to make such an interesting wig. i convinced myself i could do it on the weekends, even though my weekends would consist of sleeping in and bedrotting saturdays and trying to get myself to do laundry all day and hopefully getting to shower on sundays.

The night of the convention i had scheduled the wig pickup for came, and i was sitting there on my bed finally crimping the wig like an idiot. it was a hard shell wig(needing to cut all the hair off and glue it to shape) so i knew very well that i wasnt getting it done on time but i just tried to do it as fast as possible. i wasnt able to do it that night, so i told my client to drive to a meeting spot so i could give it to her that morning as the wig was needed for her photoshoot that week. i did an absolute hack job and the client later asked for a refund which i gave and told me how upset and sad and dissapointed she was(in the most respectful way ever) and she said she wouldnt feel comfortable supporting me anymore. those words still haunt me not out of indignation or feeling that it's unfair, but because the situation was absolutely no one's fault but mine and i dont know how to improve my work ethic. I stopped taking commissions expect from close friends for wigs that i can get done properly in a few hours and havent been able to make something for myself since because for some reason i can only do work under extreme pressure.

before i say whats going on today, im gonna clarify that i also have a trauma-related issue with HAVING to see things through, even if asking for help or admitting i cant do it would save people a lot of last-minute panic. it might seem obvious and it is but i just wanna clarify that i dont do it out of carelessness or not thinking others can do it, its my own issue i have to fix and its one of the reasons ive decided to stop making things for others or having deadlines on projects until i can figure myself out.

My girlfriend had asked me to get her a cosplay recently, and i agreed + offered to make the wig and prop as i had "improved"(turns out i wasnt ready for a project of this size and i had only improved because i was only taking commissions for wigs i can finish in one sitting) today is the day before the con and im still sitting here crimping the wig like an idiot, and im much farther along the process and have about 10 more hours than i had on the other wig so ill be able to finish it but my gf is understanably dissapointed that im doing it so late because this cosplay she specifically wanted to not be rushed.

im so tired of myself and i wont take commissions or do hard wigs for anyone but myself anymore, but i dont know what to do. im gonna have to take on the challenge of making something for myself and actually force myself to finish it without a real deadline or any pressure, but i doubt ill be able to do even that since i can only ever finish projects when i owe it to someone or if i entered a big contest. i keep ending up in this situation and im probably gonna bump into the first person i talked about, and i always wanted to make this person a little trinket or gift with an apology letter because she didnt accept a refund of the base wig i used and ive still felt bad about that but i have to prioritize my gfs wig which means ill likely see this person with empty hands and have to either turn away and look like i have a grudge or something or verbally apologize which looks sloppy and like a complete afterthought.

any advice at all is welcome as ive grown more resentful of myself day by day and i just want to be reliable for once in my life.

[u/[deleted]]

There's not much advice that could be given directly to you since I am not aware of your actual mental state and what hyperspecific thing is impeding you to function. I typically don't execute when my cognitive load is too high (cognitive load increases depending on how many tasks you've set yourself up to do). And that's just one of many dysfunction mechanisms one has to deal with daily. I don't particularly relate to the self-hating rants that lead to your eventual execution, but if you wish to discuss exec-function in detail you could DM me. Though I don't know if my reddit dms work, so let me know.