I have hope and I have a torch

We went back to hell for you, but you were gone. The gates were locked and there was a just a small glass rabbit at the threshold. ..walked around but in the burning silence we gave up and piled back into ourselves and walked away. It was hard to leave you, but it will get easier. Sorry.

I went to see a new therapist person who also does cranial sacral work.  She walked me through some visual imagery therapy while she worked on me and it like...unleashed some bizarre illustrated sequence in my mind that has not completely stopped. How odd. My mind, when calmed and then prodded, gives me white lilies and then strings to tie up the pain in my stomach. A floating window pane with 5 rocks floating in a row before it.  A seashell. Okay nice, but IT DID NOT STOP. i couldn't sleep that night, the pictures just floated and morphed and kept coming. Too fast to even sketch them out, to write...so I just watched it. let if flow, it was like electricity..i don't remember any of it now.

gone.

From the occasional text and email and facebook I assume my sister is doing well in the midwest. Although we don't communicate a lot I can feel her always. all the time, right near me, right in the air around my heart. my chest, my breath. Everything we are and wont be and never will be. We aren't typical. sisterhood isn't not what they write on the mug or the hallmark card or show in HBO dramas where grown women bicker over husbands and...i don't know... whatever it is they bicker about. We measured ourselves by each other, but not in comparison. We were enclosed, encapsulated, growing, breaking, mending....losing each other. finding each other in unsuspecting places. All three of us. Artemis hunts. Athena thinks. Aphrodite muses.

It has recently occurred to me that all of the packaging for my food is poisonous. The cardboard, the thin plastic..leeching toxic...I eat. My weight is up, I don't even care, I have acne scars in the lines on my face. I am aging without sound. The 90s were brutal, what can I say. July and it is 34 years old for me. This party is wearing me out. My confetti is raining down like ashes near hell, and i hope to see you all there with love and ice and fire.

June 9

Starring scarring fading falling…rising….burned out and then blinked back to life in a waking dawn new light filters through the old panes and across ….ankles, cheekbones and the gentle curve of stomachs.

Days weeks months. I wanted one more day with you.  Cold wind and then rain crashing down like teacups. Chattering like porcelain teeth. A baby cries in a dream startled awake the mocking birds .

Gulls casting shadows across the rippled sand. A ruined castle and a brand new plan.  A life bursting forth from a shell, cracked across the sea floor twelve times and then washed away again.

The broken vase in the garden of dirt and this concrete prison cell sold over and over with real estate signs rotting down to the core of a trashy river.  A River Rising without permission and a million landlocked knock kneed jaw thrusting punching pushing….

Up river to the lake, all for a glimpse at the stars home is this nest, wisps of thread and sticks and scribbled words faded into looseleaf. Then your lead broke. And your heart broke. And a thousand clichés tumbled out like bouquets.

The admission of guilt, the freedom moves up stream to a place were deer sleep and reflections are never seen in dew drops on pear leaves opening for mist at morning and all across the sleepy soft ground the grass pushes up, reaches for everything

You mean nothing to no one but that is nobody's fault.

"I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth / With a post-modern author who didn't exist
In this fictitious world all reality twists / I was a hopeless romantic, now I'm just turning tricks"

In our last conversation she mentioned the word "empowerment" as a way to get through life

i had heard it and read it in all this therapy/recovery stuff. empowerment. It's like sometimes you skim

the words that can't apply..(which is why i always have to re-read.) It is an Action word. something you have to DO.

Move. Act. Change. Being really avoidant,...well its a problem. I'd almost rather be terrified, frozen, prepared and

ready to fight this imaginary THING. You can't see it and i almost always can't see it but I know it is there and I have to obsess and do all these THINGS to like starve, for instance, and count and place things and cover them (ocd what have you)

suddenly you drop all that and go join an Animal Rescue Program. And you are thinking that you neglecting a small dark world that

is SCREAMING and begging for you to return but you say NO. I am putting on normal clothes and brushing my teeth and going

to pay a bill. or sign up for a class. or join an acting troupe. or actually make a friend and hang out with them and drink tea and NOT

become codependent and twisty and obsessed with their past and present and soul and brain. I am being normal. this is normal. great. now i am obsessing about being normal.

So, you know, what better way to be empowered that to be an activist for this thing you are recovered FROM?

Well, you know what? It is really hard to be an activist for a condition that no one believes you have. or had.

it is really hard to be surrounded by people who say they love you but when you form words your mouth is just

numb bc you cant make words that covey the slightest accurate portrait of what is inside you.

so you draw it and you paint it and your parents can't bear too look bc the painting are painful and 

most of the time i don't even think my therapist believes me. Anxiety. i have anxiety and i have fear.

Oh. Sorry. I thought it was God. (i really did)

i don't understand how anyone can love me if they don't know me. and i don't feel known.

i don't want to die unknown, but then in another way i kinda do. just crawl up and disappear. go away as if i never was.

that kinda sounds okay sometimes. That last love, he said, "you cant leave me bc no one knows you but me"

and it sounds like some controlling bs but the thing is, he was right. It was true. So sometimes he called me crazy but sometimes he

said My god there is nothing wrong with you. he said it so much. i got angry. i stopped taking my medicine. i stopped all of it. i didn't tell anyone. after a few months my skull was a living torture chamber for my brain. I tried to tell him what was going on.

"ohmygod see this is the shit you don't need to say. to anyone. this is the shit that is gonna get you back in the hospital.and you need to stop it bc there is nothing wrong with you. i'm going to call your parents... do they know how you are"  

i got back on my meds eventually but, like, i think everyone just kinda thought i was lame for doing so. So after that i just you know shut most people out except for my few obsessions. and he moved on and all which is great bc he was an amazing human being even though the was, of course, not equipped  with the skills to handle what the hell ever ever was wrong with  me. (NOTHING)

i "recovered" i eat. i got a job. it has been years now, since i recovered from nothing.

 i look an my paintings and  cry. i am numb and no one knows who i am.

It's where she lies

Brain in a Jar

Holey Moley I MADE it to my appointment and on TIME!! okaaaay almost on time..i was like 5 minutes late. But i was there and I felt like it went okay. I am going to start strattera AGAIN...in a different way and on a lower dose.
We shall see.
I had soooo many questions though.
about a TON of things.
But I don't even think she could answer most of them. I wish i could have tests done, i wish i could see and know what chemicals are spurting out and when and why. The roller coaster moods and the things i DO that don't even make sense to me.. Can i get a Manual for My Brain? Oh, well, it doesn't work that way.
Intrusive Thoughts? Bleh! I dont understand! i WANT to understand. I know that genius science brain doctors are still studying all this and there is no easy answer. This wanting to know, like, KNOW is a new thing for me. But if i could just see my chemical reactions during a panic attack on a graph or something... I don't know. Maybe i am grasping at threads...wanting a solid explanation for a fluid question? Ah do you feel separate from and curious about Your Brain?

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.

What I was tryin' to do...

was learn the difference between love and obsession. Gimme a break!
 I am trying to self actualize, here.
I have a less than stellar romantic history.

I have a roaring heart
and a wandering ghost.

I can't make either one
 wear a chain
of silver, metal, steel, gold or glass...

okay well maybe glass...

Worth...Can you see where i 'm not? APD Avoidant Personality Disorder

Can you see where I am not? A few lines in the book "Wasted" reminded me of this picture I made.  Marya wrote of becoming obsessed with the gaps, the space around her. I identified completely with that.

In an old sketchbook of mine I found a page where I had, at about 16 years of age, written a number. My weight at the time. Over and over I wrote that number. And below it scrawled "oh i have worked so hard for every pound that I am NOT."


How did I end up working in the negative? I am operating in the empty space. The Dead Zone. Go Away.

So yeah, I finished the book and then went searching for books on Avoidant Personality Disorder. Ha. These two events, finishing the book and searching Amazon, are a cause and effect. The twisty thought pattern connecting this cause and effect is quite stupid. And simple. and Lame.

I loved the book, it was just as wonderful as all the gushing reviews said. Yes, this Book Could Save a Life. I became preoccupied with her MANIA, though.
I never read an ED book before. ever. I avoided them. I suppose in a selfish, yes-i -am -preoccupied -with -my- self- self -self- self -way, I wanted to read a book about ME.

A book that ended with a chapter on how to Save Your own Life. Yes, that is ridiculous, I know. God, i thought., Why are there NO books by Avoidants? Why are there not even but TWO self help books on Avoidants? (i ordered them both. used.)

oh. I laugh. I imagine there are countless books by and about avoidants stuffed under mattresses and behind couches and in closets with a matching terrified owner refusing to. Just REFUSING to.
Waiting for the Emily Dickinson story to play out.

(and it won't. ever)

or maybe not. Maybe no one cares. You "chose" to avoid (did NOT) and sitting your life out is not nearly as dramatic or interesting or much ANYTHING as a Prozac Nation type smart girl mania complete with screaming fights in public and blood and starvation and suicide attempts. Nothing for the APD but... Just the comfort of ISOLATION. Refusing.

bc really, you painted yourself into this corner. You blacked out the windows. You didn't even try. You refused to fill out the forms, take the tests, change locations, go to the meeting or talk to the person in charge. You refused to eat, or explain, or even show up. Or return a phone call. So there you go. And here you are.

The best book on APD was over 60 bucks so i could not get it but i'm going to try to get it through the libarary. This cinched it
"Avoidants are not simply afraid of criticism and humiliation -- the only reason for avoidance currently identified in the official literature. They are also afraid of being flooded by feelings they cannot tolerate, and of being depleted should they express these feelings. Most importantly, they fear acceptance as much as they fear rejection because they fear losing their identity and personal freedom. 

Yes, all the literature did say fear of criticism. I refused to identify with that. You can tell me I suck all day. I may agree with you, but i most likely also think you are no better than me. You people have pegged me wrong and i wont hear it. i refuse to admit this may be my problem.

Strange Aches. Unfinished Business

Marya is manic.  Im almost done with Wasted, so I look her up to see what else she has written. Her book Madness, which came out in April 2008, is about being diagnosed as Bipolar.  Everything makes much more sense, now. I was expecting a book about a girl with e.d.'s but as I was reading I actually thought, " can't believe no one diagnosed her as manic-depressive" (that is the old term for it, right?. Oh, but they did. Only it was a story for another day.
Her behavior in Wasted is terrifying to me. Mania is terrifying and fascinating to me bc I have most likely never felt a single drop of it....but it always seemed like a necessary something to counterbalance the EXTREME depth of my depression. After I emerged from the worst deep  and dark depression of my life, I told my T that my brain felt wounded...that i was actually waiting for an extreme upswing..something to knock the pendulum too far over into a realm of the OPPOSITE of depression..whatever that is. Mania, I guess. Instead I documented the time between waking up and having the first 'longing for death' thought. Gradually that time increased. Slowy, slowly crawling back to life. Once I had "but i don't want to die," run across my mind, and was so shocked and excited that I immediately told my T. My brain had only offered me misery and rather gruesome thoughts for so long...the first positive idea that floated up was stunning. An Organ offering thoughts was the only way i could describe My Own Thinking...I didn't feel like I owned my thoughts...My brain was just a sick organ rotting in my skull. Radiating outward the putrid god awful thoughts...
And nothing got accomplished. I avoided everything and everyone. I finished school, I painted ferociously, but i kept it mostly to myself and had shaking anxiety fits when I thought about a Plan for The Rest Of My Life. or Promoting Me. So I did nothing. And I become nothing.
So reading about People who had
a debilitating mental illness
and survived and
even achieved.
gives me strange aches.

Truth

drinking wine.
not drinking wings, although that would be nice.

can't type. never could.
hope will float up, i think it does.

31 years and i figured one thing out
you have to believe in yourself ... u really do.

bc no one else can. What they believe in
is their perception of you...
and it is very likely..well... Wrong.

What goes around comes around, and yeah
i did some dumb things.

ususally bc i was afraid
of the truth.
Can't tell the truth..dont know what it is.
Isn't the truth just whatever you want to hear?

no? oh.

well i have magic mirrors sewn into my skin
and what i am
is whatever you want me to be.
but that spell wont last very long.
and when it wears off..
you say, "i never want to see you again"
and the bad thing...
the bad thing is
i understand.

I Don't Draw I Make Pictures

I had been imagining everyone in their own little suffering sacks, tied away, unable to escape or really connect with anyone.
I imagined myself like that...in a Bell Jar of sorts...but made of a thinner substance...and more smothering...

I have my entire life drawn in black bound sketchbooks and lined up on the shelf.
Now, I find some of the pictures from when i was sicker very painful to look at...but they were all true, nonetheless.
So funny, several times throughout my life I had well meaning teachers suggest that art was not my thing, not my gift, and maybe i should focus on something else. and maybe i should have but I just couldn't stop. I tried.

and then later well meaning professors suggested I make art that was less morbid. But, really..i tried...i just felt like I had to tell the truth.

and the truth seemed kinda morbid.

I had really sort of made my own little world of pictures and hunger and hurt
and I gazed out...really terrified and confused...and sick.
But I mean, i never really gave up i guess. Or i wouldnt be here.
and that is good, right.? right. okay.

..find a place to level out

i am still moving
and packing
and cleaning out.
i have found tons of stuff i wrote and drew when i was sicker.
oh my god i am so glad i have gotten better.
This was a letter to my lover that was never sent...

" If it didnt affect you i am not so sure you would care what sort of atrocites went on in my head.
bc you stll dont believe me. no one believes me. i wish i could make you see
i wish i could cut open my stomach in front of you and maggots fall out and then you will know
i wish you could feel it, the pure horror pumping through veins for hours days weeks, maggots in veins,
the morbid visions,the deathlust, the hate speeches, i want to watch you try to stop it..for months to no avail. and then have the one person who is supposed to be there for you say, "you must like it, you never try to stop it"



The thing about mental illness is that you can't always SEE it so people tend to discredit the pain it can cause and the lives it can ruin.
The one thing, though, that I wish I wish I could advocate for is that YOU CAN GET BETTER.

healing with a star, i mean scar.

and it is a lot, of work
and it is more than medicine. things like exercise (tho it is hard) and nutrition and schedules force your body to set a rythm and to make chemicals that fight the disease.
and the medication can help too.

I really cant believe how far I have come.
and I cant believe the people I have met
and the people who have helped me ....and the people I have hurt


it is really hard to be what everyone wants you to be
to be there for everyone
esp when you have serious screws loose and are unraveling in places
and people keep pulling on you to be there for THEM
and you try and you try and.....
it is really hard to hold anyone else up
when you are falling down yourself

and you  never measure up to their expectations.
exhaustion.

So one thing that totally motivates me to get and stay well
is that when i can be mentally and emotionally strong
I can be there for the people around me..
esp the ones that were there for me at times
(even if their motives are questionable and often times demands were unreasonable)

Make a Great Witch

im gonna make a great witch

out of clay and ribbons
and give her to you.
i forgot who i was so
i asked the girl next to me and
she let me borrow her eyeliner.

Everything became so clear
when looking through her
smudged eyes
Later she showed me her hip bones
"arent they beautiful"
and danced away
with some lover.

i continued my search for god
searching my hip bones this time
he loves a scavenger hunt,
God does.

Noah's wife didnt get a name
and Lots wife got a salt lick
just for remembering.
I love disobedient women
Was it Jezebel? Eaten by dogs?
"Hey mister man my body is NOT a temple
its a god damn time bomb"
she screamed at the preacher when
she was nine.

Surely that is a false memory
like most of them.
connisseur of memories, I am.
Mine and other peoples.
All those dirty walks
down Bourbon street
Drunken talks
Days i spent
sewing animal bones together with ribbons
hanging them all over.
Yes, that was my attempt at a conversation.

Wait, what?

i hate cleaning i hate cleaning i hate it. i have no idea how things got this messy in the first place but in addition to hating cleanin i hate being messy. i hate putting things in ORDER. It hurts my brain like math i dont know why. And the harder i try to focus on one thing the more frustrated i feel....except for these few things i can super zone in on like drawing or tweezing hairs or peeling paint and then i can zoom in and do it for hours. Is there a name for this? Or if it is normal may i please have a manual to how my brain behaves so i can accomplish all the normal things in life like paying bills and finding my paycheck bc once i left it behind the seat in my car for a week and didnt even THINK about it for days. Dont know how it got there but i suppose things like MONEY are not a part of my immediate reality (tho it should be) bc in my head i am thinking of impossible things and painting. Therefore I..need to grow up already. BUT I TRIED. That is the thing everyone says "just get organized, just focus, just PAY ATTENTNION TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING." well dammit - i am TRYING to! i have been TRYING to since the THIRD GRADE. and i still move things around and wonder if someone broke in and moved things around bc i dont remember putting that there. or ANY of that really.

So I worry about having a roommate I worry about moving i worry about everything. I remember my ex saying "you cant make it without me, no one knows you like i do" and then i go off and leave the STOVE ON or go to bed WITH THE BACK DOOR WIDE OPEN or go out to run errands without my wallet and i wonder if he is right. And i wonder if all the energy i put into trying to be remotely in order is really worth it bc it takes alot of energy and i need that energy in other areas of my life.

and when i suggested to my mom that she has ADD she laughed and said i try to make excuses for people but people are the way they are and you deal with it and go on. Reasons or excuses? what is the differnce? I think it is just bc i want to be better. i have a quirky perfectionist sense, i want to be kinda perfect or at least better than i AM.

Or i suppose i could just "do the best i can" and accept me for me. and hope ya'll accept me for me.

So yesterday i took my dog to Red River with my professor friend and his dog. He got a new camera lens and took some pics of me. I like modeling for him bc it is very comfortable, he feels like family and bc we both have asimilar artistic vision. More about truth than beauty. anyway this one pic was kind of fun so i am posting it.

also, i started drawing a rib cage laced with a ribbon and tied with a bow on the sternum last night but fell asleep before finishing it, so that hopefully will be my next post.

okay back to cleaning.

Dear Ghost of Me

Dear Ghost Girl (that's me),

we have more important things to do than read your self obsessed blogs. we dont even know w hat you are talking about. Of course your blood is not frozen in your veins, that is impossible bc, see, you are moving about and apparently...hyper-vent-i-lating.

Love,

the rest of the functioning world and all of your exes.

bwahahahaha. i crack myself up.

i'm losing it. nuts. bananas. fruitcake. batty. anxiety attack-0!!

no im just freaking out bc they are coming to appraise the house i live in monday at 10 am.

so i can either buy it or move.

and i cant buy it.

so ill be moving.

and i cant afford it.

and i dont know what to do.

and

and

and

i hate eating. i hate an appetite. i hate feeling like i have needles and needles in my veins when i don't - i cant possibley. i hate that i transform ANXIETY into things that cant possible true.

chill. out. now. self.

i hate that i only ever wanted to marry a person that i could never possible marry

i hate that i dont trust anyone else to love me

i hate that i even WANT anyone to love me. I wish i didn't.

i hate that i do not make decisions until there is no other possible choice.

and life moves me over slightly to the left.

and on a larger scale, there is war or two or three and a new president and a bunch of angry people bombing things. and lots of pollution. hi! welcome to earth.

i wish the damn lowercase i would capitalize itself. i swear, ya'll i can spell i just cant TYPE>

OrANGE IS NOT for ADD Addled brains

I have some dumb fantasy that if i get some ADD medication that i will be able to salvage my life. I'm sure that is not true...for instance, I thought the same thing of cymbalta and that was a WRECK and night sweats and prozac is doing just dandy right?
So why am i all jumbled up and why do i feel like the transmission in my brain is BROKE like i cant shift gears and all my thoughts get jumbled and then I schedule five appts for the SAME time and try to leave the house w/out shoes on the coldest day of the year but i was IN a hurry....

and i supposed i will continue to be misunderstood and way too sensitve but really im beginning to think that everyone ELSE is just as senstive as me. i insulted 8 people in one blog - a blog that was totally self absorbed and all about ME.
or maybe it was the babykilling joke. yeah i'm sure that was totes lame. Sometimes i joke about things bc they are too horrid to deal with otherwise. Like when i told my dog that i would hate to drag around a mushed puppy patty so she better stay back off of the road. And then i laughed about plastered puppy patty all day bc I LOVE MY DAMN DOG. okay god, back to work. im totallly LOVING ORANGE TODAY

oh the humanity

So i posted the previous blog to my mypsace and then i was immediately like i wonder if that was offensive i should totally AMEND that so as not to offend anyone with children or religious beliefs, etc, and as soon as i did an old friend posted that she LIKED my post bc it was honest and she liked me bc i was TRUE and i replied that i thought the same thing of her..but then when i got back to this blog i had lost a follower and i was like ohmgod what'd i do? and that is one of the many weird things about being on the internets and blogging and total strangers and being a person like me who has waaay to many opinions to be so sensitive about offending anyone.
but the thing about ME is that i grew up in a TINY RURAL TOWN IN THE DEEP SOUTH and religion and family structure and tradions were EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE almost to the point of being ridiculous. and i can imagine that that is, in fact, a unique point of view if you are not used to it. The simple act of being vegetarian was - no IS STILL - like...groundbreaking...in this area so when i seem aggravated or angry and like a bit of a godless liberal (well...wait) it is bc many of the religions around here do not believe in watching TV or dancing!! or even birth control!! and they want the government to enforce these beleifs!! And i grew up not fitting in. and there was only like two options you could choose or you were "WEIRD". and yeah it was aggravating. This is not really the place for celebrating differences. which is why, yeah i should probably leave. but of course I totally believe that everyone should be whatever religion they want to be as long as it isn't forced on anyone else. and then again i dont know that i really have followers at all bc some of htem seem like spam. crazyness but ive gotten SPAM comments on my blog. really. okay i went out to run errands and forgot my wallet and so i came back and went out again and i bought two canvases so now im going to paint. for real. god i love humanity.

Flew Five States (with a wounded wing)

I gave my sister a painting of a bird for xmas.

She took it back 5 states away and hung it up in her house.

merry xmas my tall lovely sister

I had my tests for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome today... Totally unaware that these tests involved NEEDLES. and of course before it was over i was white as a sheet and about to FAINT.

Now my arms have small purplish bruises from the jabs and i feel squeamish just remembering but..the final outcome is that yes i have some swollen nerve things on the ulna side and i wonder how much of this came from computer work and how much came from years and years of drawing daily small scritchy pictures one after the other for hours and hours..drawing furiously as if stopping would result in my total disappearance or fading away...drawing in order not to talk, not to deal with anything drawing in social situations drawing at parties drawing in class drawing at the bar drawing in church drawing at work in the margins in my car on napkins at the table.. i still make art but it is less of a compulsion now. i don't know if that is good or bad. It is sort of good that the overwhelming urgency has gone.. the pressure and fear but...i wonder how much i am missing out. I wonder about the pictures that ARENT being drawn. and if i owe it to prozac. and how much art balances with prozac. and how scary a thing that is to think...and how life is better illustrated, i think. and life is better with prozac. i think. here is prozac bird. Art with an anti d.

Prozac it makes you fly straighter! if you are an art bird, that is. with carpal tunnel syndrome in your wings.

Another Tattered Torso

Healing humor healing imagery

healing oil, incense, church and bone.

However we heal...

however we recover

together or alone

soul serious singing

laughing earth in unision

we are.