OMG the Big Easy

so i made it and i am pretty much finally settled. I have internet and a bed and stuff. This is crazy adjustment time. I pretty much have a new body, a new place, a new job and a new city. and thousands of more people that I have ever been in contact with for an extended period of time and that, my friend, is absolutely bizzaro-land to me. All these people....like, 20 feet away -  all the time, even while I am sleeping. Seriously, I have visited cities bigger than this, of course, and even stayed a while, but to build a semi permanent Nest in the middle of more than a million people is against my natural instinct. But I am okay. I like it, it is new and different and hopefully a step toward a better career path bc the small town newspaper was crushing my soul to bits. I understand that for some people a city can do the same, and maybe I won't be here forever but for now, I am soaking it all in and remaining relatively sane...no real panicky stuff or anything. Well, except for the body which has gotten massive and foreign and uncomfortable. I won't allow myself to dwell on it, though. That is not easy, but I have been rather stern with myself about it. One thing I have realized is this has been an exchange. I had to gain this weight to make this move. Really, I did. I was too weak physically mentally and emotionally before. The super underweight sick symptoms are different for different people, but my brain suffered first and worst. The panic was so strong. The extreme cold and joint pain and all that was there but my thinking was so strange and twisted. I could not have been vigilant enough to live in a city this dangerous. Anyway the odd thing is, I feel like I am in Recovery 20.0 or something but the people at the new job have already commented that I am thin and I never eat. On the other hand, people who knew me before have commented on how much "bigger" I am now. So strange how the (my) body is SO PRESENT. I have a painting of a mangled abstracted  body that says this body is my battlefield. And so it is.
This city was a battlefield too. More than once. The post-katrina stories I hear are  horrendous...unbelievable. That horror is still there and I can feel it. Panic swells inside me when co-workers re-tell the story of the evacuation and the fire fights that took place here after most residents left (most of those stories remain unreported bc a lot of illegal things happened) However, living here is worth it, returning to this city was worth it for so many, and the recovery is worth it. Recovery of the city and of me.

Our Recovery In Progress

Moving to New Orleans

I am moving to New Orleans on Tuesday, starting new job on Thursday and bringing all the big stuff down Saturday.

Amazing and crazy and wonderful.

I have been needing this change for so long. I got a job with a company that does Cultural Resource Management.

I weigh more than I have in years and I just keep telling myself that it is worth it bc I feel stronger inside than ever.

I am continuing phone sessions with my T since I will be 7 hours away from her.

My first memories of New Orleans, are the 1984 World's Fair. I was four years old. I loved it, and later I always sort of planned to live there, but love and life and school and money and health and mental stuff and broken hearts and bone lust got in the way..all that but yeah. So now i am almost out of this old tiny town and..well almost. Cross your fingers that i can pull this off!!
s

Soul Implosion

This is the flyer I made for my Graduate show several years ago. I found it digging around in the digital ash of my past. I have decided to revamp  my other blogger blog, which is solely artwork with very little commentary.
If you are interested, you can follow me here  shawnaatkinsart.blogspot.com


I desperately want to keep this blog going, just lately it has been difficult due to job searches and my volunteer work at out animal rescue group.

I hope all of blog-land is peaceful......

Shake out the Ghosts

 i feel the keys beneath my fingertips....swirling.... words are senseless. I am at my parents house deep in the woods and when i am here i feel like I don't exist...like i have transferred to another realm. The only safe place on earth.
There are some things i have always suspected and one was that God didn't like me very much and the other one was that I was meant to be alone. Quite possibly, I made this up. Regardless, the adventure of The Self Fulfilling Prophecy can NOT be denied.

I have been writing stories in my head but they don't make it to paper. Or pixels. Stories about Stella and a chance meeting with an old friend at a cofeeshop downtown. In a town i have never been to. She criss-crosses an unsmoked clove cigarette between her forefingers in an effort not to smoke and has a sandwich in her purse in an effort not to eat. Over strong coffee she discussed the possibilities of a strange love that she has been denied. He leaves her alone with her sketchbook. In the story i can't decide if hot tears splash down her face, if a girlfriend texts her, or if she shrugs him off and sketches his stupid fading face.

So I just leave her there. Sitting at the table...with messy hair and a dark haired boy heading toward his car in the parking lot..after squeezing her shoulder on the way out. "Take Care, Stell" are the words he leaves her with.
Stella and her sister Gypsy Rose. Hanging out in my head reliving their childhood and their parents' death and the old pick up truck and the dusty road and countless fruitless love affairs...an overdose and  walks in the cemetery.

oh well. Sometimes i mash my fingers into my face to feel my cheekbones and jaw bones. My babyfat face has gone. Sometime in the past 4 years it flickered away. Sorry you didn't get to see it, she was a sweet girl. I feel my father in the bones in my face. My cheekbones match his. and I remind myself that i want to become Wise like him. and Just. and Fair.

In a few minutes, I am going with my mother. We are going to clean my grandmother's house. My grandmother is 90 years old and she is coming home from the hospital soon. My heart is heavy. I love her so much. She is 90 years old and she is tired and I know this.

Her father worked in the oilfield. and so did her husband. and her son. and so did my father. and my husband was supposed to, I'm sure, but i left without him. Left  the idea, i guess. It wasn't what I wanted, and hey, it's not my fault that he didn't exist. That times changed so fast and I wanted paint and poet and rock n roll. My future is so unknown. I want to go to New Mexico. The farthest thing i can imagine from a swamp. I have no idea what i am doing and i feel the past slipping away ..years, decades, a generation gone....the stories I forgot to gather have scattered away...i drip paint like tears down my face in an effort to remember what we have all lost.

I didn't fit the mold or follow the path. My heart pumps out love and hate like oil and water.

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

Recovery #4 - Rely on Reactivation (Rusted & Busted)

 So i went to austin this weekend (for the first time in years) with 2 friends and let me tell you. I hate being carsick. but other than that ( 7 hours) it was pretty cool - I went to an antique car show. Okay, No, I have never been to a car show before but i love an antique and i love improvisation and i love expression. So there you go. St-st-steeeeeped in rockabilly culture  - it was. Pretty cool. Weather was perfect and everyone had a dog, seemed like. Very inspiring to see women with their own booths selling vintage clothes and shoes and handmade purses, photographs, handmade corsets. Female make- up artists were selling sessions.....I was thinking okay i could DO this. I could Do art fairs and stuff. Usually, um, the thoughts i have about myself are not so proactive....Anyway, here are pics from the show and! How brave am I for wearing a striped skirt that accentuates my new poundage? Right, bc i am at the point in Uber recovery where i look down and have no idea whose body this is but it sure ain't the one I've been carving on for years....so then i freak out and begin obsessive rituals. One way i combatted this was thinking about how cool it would be to function as an artist (this takes energy) - promoting myself ...doing stuff for the Animal Rescue group i joined, getting a job i like (i hate my job btw in case i have not mentioned that ha ha) or going back to school.. i can NOT function when i am curled up hiding away nurturing addictions....

 some people can still live and GO and DO in that state... but not me. sigh. Ive proved it.
So i was surrounded by a lot of activity and i found it more inspiring that than gnawing pain. for once. heh.

a disordered past...an addiction..is...like slipping on old painful shoes...the familiar ache, sharp pinching is an old friend, throbbing ....such comfortable agony... forcing yourself forward every step, a movement, an orchestra of hurts....
Let it go. Shut it Down. Time to run.....

Rusted and Busted!!!

iam in austin blogging from my phone. someting i have never done but i got a fancy new phone....traveling is stressful right.i get excited to leave my normal environment but having a jumbled routine with people u have never traveled with ups the anxiety. generally i am laid backbut i am used to traveling with my girls and i miss them. it is comfortable bc we understand each other. anyway god hotels ick me out id rather go camping....

sneaky post

New blogger lay out is like, frrrrreakin me out,man. I have to upload pics to picasa first?
been really really  busy hatin' my job. My work environment has plummeted....it is loud and obnoxious....the management is terrible and it just trickles down. This place is a perfect example of how hard work is rewarded with long hours and more work. On the other hand vapid, thoughtless chatter and non productivity is rewarded with praise as long as the worker dresses provocative and flirts mercilessly with management. Things have changed for the worst...unethical....to say the least. I work til 7 some nights....and I am not valued here at all.
To add to my feelings of frustration - there are no jobs that I am qualified for in a 200 mile radius. I am broadening the search but even so...
I really want to go back to school but nothing I want to study is in a employable field in the ENTIRE REGION. (art, folklore, material culture, museums, oral/written traditions) We have a RICH assortment of these things, but no money to support the study or preservation.

Still sortin through inherited items from my friend donna, who passed away. drawing but not completing anything. I have missed the blog world and i am ready to catch up. I figured i would be forgotten but I had received several lovely comments that were truly meaningful to me and much appreciated. I have many blogs to read but! I am currently packing for a road trip to austin this weekend.... a break I feel I need. Chin up! **This post brought to you by SneakyBloggin Atwerk

Tending the Ghosts

 I am sleepy and old. My room is messy and I need some coffee and some cartoons and some colored pencils and my dog. Color makes me feel better. So does sugar. Most people probably don't believe that your mental illness, the one you take pills for, is real. Oh well. The Pharmaceutical companies can have my soul. Sell it to jesus.
Saturday I tried to clean my room. It is coated in clothes and shoes and drawings and cheap makeup and stuff. I went through the box of clothes that Donna gave me before she died. I try them on and take them off and put them back in the box and sort them out and then mix them all together and stare at the mirror. I stare closer at my pores and eyelashes and beginning wrinkles and lines and acne and scars and hair and I sort of dissolve into a reflected mass of tiny pieces.

I take clothes off and put her clothes on and apply lipstick carefully. My hair is dirty. Her clothes fit and yet they don't. They are her clothes formed to her shape. I laugh bc her shirts are too short and my belly shows. She was sooo tiny and shorter than me.

I don't know if it is healthy or normal to keep re arranging her stuff but I suppose there is not really a "normal" for grief. In another era it was normal to make lockets of the deceased's hair and take their photos. In a study across cultures, I suppose, the death and grieving rituals could fill  libraries. So I wear her shoes. They are too big but I wear them anyway. Walk a mile in your shoes, lovely lady.

People like me rearrange pain, also. Maybe you do it, too. I fasted the week after she left. It was part of  - grieving, i guess but another part of me relished the hollow shield of protection. the dizzy numbness...this is not real, this is not real....
Tied my hair up too tightly, needles and pins and little blades...

I go home. I stare at this huge house that IS my parents...flesh bone cedar and soul....with lots of windows. Am I suppose to MANAGE this one day? Im lost in a no-where generation between a butter churn and instant messenger. Someone has to feed the cows. I don't know how to make money. I wonder what New York is like. I pull the laces tighter. A thousand memories are my sweetest friends and I rearrange them carefully in my mind, I tend the ghosts.

Live and Luna

I have not had many words lately so here is a picture. I inherited some casein from Donna. It is this opaque creamy water soluble paint that i have never used before. It is so different from acrylic but i really like it.
Honestly i have been down, but I am fighting....some days there is just this deathlust. I am exhausted from trying NOT to want to DIE everyday. And its not like I  - well it is not this adolescent angsty rage. Really, living seems so impractical sometimes. Living as in SURVIVING in capitalism with this - my-  particular set of values, brain chemicals and upbringing. haha... "I am not longed for this world"
Well instead of climbing into my starry coffin, im making coffee. walking the dog, continuing the job search...drawing painting...

But as many negative experiences as people have with therapy, I will say that the time I spent in counseling and hospitals when i was a kid ...has kinda paid off. It sucked then and didnt seem to matter one bit but now that i am older and sober so many of the things i learned back then are still in my head. Oh yes i can do THIS (positive) instead of this (exacerbate pain) It took a long time, for real y'all, a long time, but listen dont give up. and don't stop now. Bc you don't know what kind of treacherous landscape (lifescape) lies ahead. Gather up all the psychic tools you can while they are available....and of course be skeptical. Live and learn, right?

i have missed you

I inherited colored pencils from my friend Donna, who passed away.
This is the first drawing I did with them.

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.

Tea cups and fish: a death story

Death makes me feel....


panicky
terrified
horrified
overwhelmed
distressed
nauseous
regretful
mournful
sorrowful
reflective
paranoid
resentful
confused
shocked


for starters. and the emotions roll in like tidal waves. You steady yourself...and then there is another. You know you have been in therapy too long when you  grab a pen and LIST your EMOTIONS by name..or wait Are those feelings? gah. nevermind. I think i failed Therapy.


So who falls in love with a dying woman anyway? not love. but love., that is


i do. i did. Bc i need her and i don't want to her do die.
but she is going to.
I almost met her by accident. we seemed to love the same men. not in the girly catty way, but really -  we found the same gold souls and by touching them, touched each other. I held her hand in mine just last night and was so reluctant to let go..to see her slip away into the forever. 


It was HER art that saved me...that stopped me from giving up. When no one could understand what i was trying to express...when i was so lost, and scared and shy and ...One of the professors showed me a few images of her work. After the intense shock of just how GOOD it was (better than textbook-art-history-museum-stuffs and this woman lived an hour away?!?)I was eerily aware of our similar images. Mine were like, crayon scribbles, compared to her excellent technique but holy mary. Tea Cups and Fish. i mumbled, "tea cups and fish....and bones, she paints bones"
Symbols that mean more than words can say. Symbols that came so naturally to me, that when asked for an explanation i would just make one up. To protect the actual meaning. Nothing stronger more intense or strong or fucking fragile than teacups and fish bones. And she thought so too. she understood.
So i suppose her work gave me strength, and it let me know that what i was Painting,Seeing, Expressing, Feeling, was not  WRONG. It was Art.
Years and years later i fell for a person who was, unbeknownst to me, her best friend.
So we all became friends. And it felt like a family that i fit into even when i was covered with ghosts and paint.
And i have to remember. i HAVE to remember the strength i saw in her
bc that is the strength that is going to get me (us) through this...strong like teacups and fish.

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

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.

Unfinished Dream...

Pretty sure I suck right now...pretty sure i gained 15lbs since the wii post. pretty sure i said the wrong thing...like repeatedly. Pretty sure diuretics are harmless. pretty sure my therapist hates me. Okay, Not. Really.

I just screwed up my times and missed some appointments. and rescheduled and then missed those.

I sincerely wish that i could be the Strong One when everyone around me collapses but honestly
really
truly
i'm ready to fall most of the time.