I am tired of being well.  I am not sure this trade-off was worth it since my body feels horrible despite my best efforts at HEALTH. The world is poisoned, I have little faith in diet and exercise and all that jazz. All that jazz, all that jazzmine, gardenia, wysteria and hydrangea.  That is what I need, a sea of scents and soft light to carry me away. That is mostly what I think about lately...I am plotting an escape. Not sure how or what from or where to but I am. Something has to change. In a way that does not involve giving up.

obsidian

Let me make one thing perfectly clear as obsidian.
I have no idea what I am doing....but I am glad.
My (godawful) job has taught me what i am NOT....and I don't fit in there and I am so HAPPY. If i can withstand this without gettin' bitter or losing my shit, then i can possibly, hopefully become a better person..right? RIGHT?
Making money has not ever been an obsession of mine...sorry I guess i'm a  bad capitalist. whatever. Maybe that is a luxury.... that i was able to not be obsessed with money but these suit and tie guys with there 8 jillion rules JUST FOR THE SAKE OF MAKING A RULE just depress the living hell out of me. How can we get anywhere meaningful? I made the mistake of an internal journey instead of an external one. But i will tell you one thing.
i am liking what i am finding...after i dug through the gore and pain...there is something in here. something worth saving.
inside of me.
s

muffin tops are cute, sorry but

i think they are. I am not totally comfortable with my body or whatever but...it is annoying that people think of names for body parts just to be jokes. like why is that funny? or bad? now 8 million lil girls are terrifed of the "dreaded muffin top." lame. I think muffin-tops are cute and i think my spider veins are pretty like lavender threads holding together the network of blood and hope that is me. Sorry Mrs Vanity. I still hate my saddlebags if that makesyou feel any better.
love,
me

A Solitary State

Sometimes i wonder what it would be like to have like 89 people telling me how awesome and spectacular and cool i am just so like, i could make it to my measly job. I'm pretty sure, knowing me, it would get real annoying real fast and im probably spill my coffee on someone and then curse. I forget that like, most people frown on cursing. I kinda invent a new curse word every time a pencil lead breaks. So once im going on and on to my theRapist and she said something like, you never really had a real support system. and i kinda trail off like...what? My family is all knitted close like a sweater. But...there was a lot of hiding there. No one knew or knows most of what i did or do. I went to therapy and all that to deal with it. I have a friend in rehab. I am freaking out, ya know? talking to her and calling and worrying and i think how come no body ever did this shit for me?
No body ever babied me. Of course for years I held my girl friends away and was like a parasite on some dude i was demanding be my BEST FRIEND until they demanded i be a WIFE. (um oops no sorry bye) Did i push people away? do I? To engage in an eating disorder and a self injury obsession and even a magical thinking twisted up depressive episode you have to hold people BACK. bc they can't know. bc for one - You cant continue the behavior without their judgement and 2 - well it is embarrassing. Or worse no one will believe you. Most ED sufferers think they are waaaay too fat to have an E.D.
When i opened up about things, very early, it was met with awkward rejection. so i just learned to stfu ya know? I had to hold on to some sense of self - I didn't pretend to be something i wasn't i just refrained from revealing much of anything...to anyone.
until art school.
that paint brush was  a wand that did not lie.
No one understood really,but that was okay.
This was my reality. soooo confusing to critique a painting that the professors thought was abstracted reality and I thought it was ACTUAL REALITY.
I see dead people. ha,ha no really. i am dead.
I will not allow myself to ever get that depressed again.
Will I have to sacrifice my art? creativity? i don't know but when people compare mental illness and creativity like it is some novelty i get real aggravated.
bc it is hard to say if was worth it. I did some of my best work in a horrible state of
starved paranoid stoned death lust panic....
was it worth it?
i wont do it again. if i cant help it, i wont do it again.
was i healing? yes. was it cathartic? yes.
Was the suffering and fear unimaginable to the point i feel terror at the thought of going back?
yes. Am i much better now? yes and more open with people, too.
I still won't admit things that happened. to anyone. ever. hardly.
but the thing is  - i mean no one really cares anyway.
sometimes that is a good thing. the anonymity of modern life.
im okay with it ,i have a thousand gods inside me.

It's where she lies

Is this my Mask?

Sometimes I feel so tired..inside
This painting is old... a few years.
But it still rings true.

my brain is churning and these waves
of panic keep going over me.

I have to figure something out
I have to figure out whose mask this is

Sometimes i mourn the loss of each day
I know you have to look forward and
everything...
but i remember who I used to be and
it seems like that person is dead somewhere

the good of her
and thebad of her

life is about lettin go, i keep learning that.
I keep learning that i HAVE to let go...
 i have not learned how to do it and not let it HURT.
Do you just let the pain wash over you? do you just sit with it? it hurts SO bad.
I told someone two days ago that i was not depressed anymore but...
I think i was just not depressed at THAT moment.
each moment feels like a whole new mood. This is very exhausting.
I see the doctor tomorrow.

I believe in a bone fragmented memory

I am 14 years old. I am thinner that I have ever been and I am in the bathtub staring down at my body with the usual feeling of intense alienation. I am full grown; I was full grown by 12. I found this repulsive so I tried to stop it. Now I’m older but smaller…and I only want even smaller. Staring at hipbones  beneath water…beneath skin. I want to see them closer. Really really see them. Are they really there? Are they white? Staring staring….It occurs to me quite suddenly that there is really NOTHING I can do to change the shape of my bones. Bones are solid, right?  ….and wide and thick and strong. They won’t be shrinking well they? I Stare. Immersed in water and complete powerlessness. I am a helpless soul trapped in this uncontrollable bone machine.  Is it true? …at some point there is nothing else you can do?….You can’t go any farther. Right? I begin fantasize about breaking bones and re constructing them. This seems horrible and I shudder and get up. And I dry off.

And I  get better

And I get worse

And at 17 I get hospitalized and diagnosed.

And at 31 I  write this.*

*This is supposed to go along with this drawing . But I can’t get all these bits and fragments of thoughts and images to add up. I know now, that Bones can be damaged to the point that they shrink, and surgeons can and do alter them. But as a kid I didn’t know it. I imagined them as steel. And it’s a good thing I did. It’s a good thing I believed in bones. 

Witched and Stitched

Gotta dark spot right here on my soul, ya wanna see it? it may make you grow old la la la la
So one thing i am not afraid of is the dark. My first love is the moon, tattooed on my stomach right beside a stitch with five stripes....one for each member of my immediate family including me. This ink is not supposed to be pretty or fancy...just a symbol that I wanted... that I needed. A stellarscar had to have had a stellar stitch. i need beauty. beauty and is truth. and the truth it almost always has a black spot...that I can't ignore, or look away from. Maybe it's my chemistry, my past or this world, but please don't ask me to lie.

So one thing I am not afraid of is the light. I saw some angels floating, arms up, healed and holy.

If there is a sun (god) so bright, then how can i continue to Hug My Sadness Like An Eyeless Doll?

I need this pain.

"Oh don't be so mello-dramatic. " my T said that to me once. Yes, for real. But it was okay..like knowing her and her coolness and the timing...It was perfect. Like, it might have changed my life.

So strange those moments...that come together. Stitched in time. A seam a crease a moment that SOMETHING happened

In my head i go back, and pull them apart and see if there is anything in there. I am headed straight to that dark corner to see what is in there, straight to edge to see if anyone has fallen over and i'm headed straight to the river to see if there are any snakes....and there are.....

( i took that pic today - it is a Banded Water Snake)

usually.

Im headed under the consciousness too. Like the Jung lover I am, i want to poke around in there..terrified of what i won't look away from.

Then i get bored with myself.

So I make up someone new. Some mothlike and drawn to the light, someone who will leave the darkness alone.

someone with..an apple core star heart made just for you

Margaret Atwood: “Is it necessary to suffer in order to be a writer?” aspiring writers are in the habit of asking.  “Don’t worry about the suffering,” I have tended to say.  “The suffering will occur whether you like it or not.”

Strattera VS Prozac Part II

6 weeks of Strattera. I don't have much of an appetite, I am not eating much, i am GAINING weight.

My mouth is the sahara desert.

My stomach hurts and feels full all the time.

i'm just like wtf, man?

I have no script for life and nothing makes sense and  I feel trapped

Oh wait. Maybe my script is the pharmaceutical insert in the strattera box. :C

ON THE 'NOTHER HAND..... i have accomplished more things, my focus is better, i can do my - not-even difficult-in-the- first-place -  job without

feeling like a wild raccoon being forced to do long division for 12 hours with no breaks.

I am more depressed. not terrible, but more.

Apparently Prozac and Strattera are not friends. They block each other.

in my brain.

sigh. so whatdoido?

Pretty New Drug.(and more lotus pods)

Some people dont have proper boundaries. Between themselves and other people or places or events or nature and it just gets so intensely close that the damn sunset might as well be INSIDE your heart. 
like jesus. 
but not really. 
This is the south. I can joke about jesus. and fishing. and dipping skoal and marrying your cousin. bc i do, in fact, work with a woman who is married to her first cousin. But the lady at the local college is a published poet who studied under Anne Sexton. This is a weird, jumbled up town.
Between the plantations, and 2 strips of fast food joints there is the moldy movie theatre and the 18th century graveyard.


The tattoo shop opened near a historical marker for the First American Fort ...located between the 17th century french fort and the spanish fort. and then down the road, near hte newspaper where i work, is where they put a marked down for the Native American burial ground the archaeology students dug up. I pass it on the way to work. Usually while i am eating breakfast. I eat in my car. I always do. Makes it less real. I would rather have lotus pods in my stomach than granola high fiber low fat sugar free all natural what-have-you.


30 Days Of Strattera. That is the movie i'm starring in right this minute. I called the doc to tell her that the sample packet was used up and we needed to plan a new course of action. I had a 3 page report in my head called What Strattera Did To Me and was ready to deliver it. Instead of the doc, i got the receptionist who said, "look, is it working? bc if so, we will just call you in a script." i stammered, "yes but..."  "okay, what is your pharmacy?"
oh yeah. I forgot. No one cares so much about the 2 lists I made; one of pros and one of cons.
"Rite Aid." "Okay-we'll-call-it-in-right-nowthankyoubye."


I understand that my neurotransmitters are just a very small facet of your JOB but, jesus, lady.
This is serious business for me. I dont take drugs lightly (anymore) esp not Big Giant Heartless Corp Manufactured drugs. Okay one more month. 30 more days. We shall see....


....until the lotus blooms inside me.

WASTED

I am reading Wasted…by Marya Hornbacher.(finally) I have sort of avoided it. E.D. related books give me alls ort of weird and conflicted emotions but I was ran across it in the library and couldn’t leave without it.  I was in the library bc I have been reading about the Celts and I picked a few more celt books (one history, one fairy tales) and a movie about archaeology digs of Celtic burials. I love all that..anthropology, material culure…of Others. Not Mine.

My culture is Wasted… And the ADD book self help book I picked up.

{LOSER.} shut up I amtryingtoimprovemyself

So anyway, Wasted, is on one level, something I can related to, and on another level, absolutely maniac terrifying.  The counting, the repetition, and the disassociation, the body image issues I can TOTALLY relate to. The fearless wild child ….I am shocked by and in awe of. It rings true though. All of the bulimics I have known, have been  much more fearless and outgoing…aggressive Risk Takers than the AN.  Surely, that is not true in all cases, but just the few I have know. 

The An part of me is absolutely terrified. Of. Everything. Any Change is upsetting and makes me quite aware that we are all going to die. It took an act of God to move across town… All the strength I had. It was like closing my eyes running off the edge of something. In reality it was. NO. BIG. DEAL.  So I find her experiences of fighting, drugs and sex and trouble to be absolutely mystifying.

I enjoy her writing style, how it flows almost poetry-like and has the rhythm  of a voice.

Gazing at her face on the cover, at her body..i wonder what it be like to talk to her…..to have known her in 1984, 1995, now.

What kind of brain does it take to make long series of cohesive complete sentences (NO FRAGMENTS) and express present tense thoughts about painful past tense.events?

A good one, it seems like.

The book is not a trigger so far, although I secretly hoped it would be. There I go, setting traps inside myself. Another Protective Chain Link, a Wall, a Silent little Cage. So besides just enjoying the artistic merit of her words, Maybe I'll learn something from this book. Somethin’ about getting free from this wasted cage.