Sober Art

I got nothing done last night, but I enjoyed my shiraz. Here's today's progress. I don't think I'll post any more of my therapy work for a while, these pages aren't finished and I'll be making many more, it'll get boring for you, dear readers.

Drunk Art is The Best Kind

I’m drinking myself into a stupor tonight because life stinks; but I will continue working on my therapy book as I do so and review the results when I regain consciousness. A real artist probably doesn’t show their work in progress, but there’s nothing real about me, so here’s my therapy book so far. I am actually enjoying it.

And yes, that is my parents' antique table I'm working on with nothing to protect it from paint splashes and glue....

Title Pages

Anger                       Defiance

Construction                     Femininity

Fear

Sloppy Writing From a Sloppy Girl

This week I have experienced the wonderful and the terrible, but following the pattern of my life the terrible wins. I had a thoroughly confusing session with my psychologist yesterday, all I took away from it was that if I’m feeling suicidal to go to hospital and if I want to go to the UK next month she’s OK with that. It seems I have to get my head around borderline personality disorder, a disorder that I don’t have as such, but have a number of symptoms of (on top of anxiety and depression – yippee). It’s a tough one to live with because it essentially puts the blame for my behaviours back on to me. The way I developed my personality was abnormal - though likely a coping strategy to get me through childhood and youth difficulties. This makes me very angry about my circumstances; I can’t do anything about my upbringing; I can’t go back and stop wrong thought patterns as they were being formed; I’m just left trying to pick up the pieces and correct my flaws, of which there are many. I’d like to thank myself for making me a thoroughly twisted and unlovable person. It’s time to buy 50 more cats to grow old with, at least Lester loves me.

 I wish fixing mental illness was as easy as a throat infection, or even gangrene, I could live without a few toes but I might like to keep my arms and legs.

Sleeping Blind

(I wrote this last night but blogger didn't want to upload images, so there may be two posts today)
I have a lot on my mind right now and could easily write ten pages about it, but it would be utter drivel and nothing you’d be interested in reading; so I’ll spare you the pain and instead share with you a picture of Lester doing what he does best, sleeping in strange spots. My parents are replacing their ugly vertical blinds with curtains, why waste the blinds...

Eternity

This weekend I went on the ladies retreat with my new church, I suddenly feel like a grown-up; it wasn’t a young adults retreat; I wasn’t leading on a youth camp; it was the ladies. Being there with 70 or so women was nice, the ages ranged from 18 to 80-something, which was good because there aren’t many older people in attendance at the evening service it was an opportunity to meet them. We learnt about eternity from a perspective I’ve not thought of before, and I have come away with two things to (try to) constantly keep in mind... In the light of eternity does it matter? And what’s important is that when I and others die that we know Jesus. These are both very simple statements, but if constantly kept in mind they will drastically alter the way I live and think. There are days where I desperately want to die, but the pain I feel now, both the grief over M and the pain caused by illness is temporary and in light of eternity will not even register as a little blip; but the offence caused to God by ending my life would be massive. One of the big turn offs of suicide for me is that I don’t want my last act on earth to be sinful, God made me  and I have no right to destroy his creation. I don’t believe that suicide results in being sent to hell, but it is a big two fingers up to God that will have eternal consequences; though perhaps it is different in the case of serious mental illness, where you are not really in control; just like we’re not going to be punished from dying of cancer I wouldn’t think we’d be punished from dying from the consequences of severe depression or if in a psychotic state etc. I can understand that many people will disagree with me there, but unless we argue that mental illness isn’t real and its effects are not devastating I can’t imagine how my statement could be wrong... I’ve drifted away from my initial point, I’m not even sure if I had one so maybe this post can just be a little rumination.

Lester, My Lifeline

I mentioned in the 12/7/10 post that I thought having Lester living with me would cheer me up, I was right. Lester is the light of my world, the precious ball of fur I have raised from 11 weeks old. The move was hard on him, it was painful to watch him visibly frightened for the first few days, but he’s now well settled. My brother is angry with me at the moment and my dad is very careless, my fear is that my brother may let Lester out purely to hurt me, or that my dad may accidentally let him out. I don’t think Lester would run far, he’d be too scared, but this road is busy and I wouldn’t be surprised if I got home to find a squished ball of fur. In the event of Lester being squished I would like our cremains scattered together in a nice isolated forest, a recluse doesn’t belong in a crowded cemetery and nor does my lovely Lester. 

Fatty Fatty

Given everything I’ve been through lately I haven’t really been thinking long term. I’ve been trying to get through each day without landing myself back in hospital and some days that is very hard. I’m putting on an excellent act at home, they have no idea what’s going on in my head, they just see how often I leave the house – or some days my room – and that I’m not constantly crying. They don’t see the disgusting amount of food I’ve been eating, the fresh damage I’ve made or all the organs which have been ripped out of me and nailed to the walls; they see the slightly grumpy and moody, but relatively together K. If I continue to make it through the days, weeks and months until I am in the future, being insanely fat and scarred is not going to benefit me; it will push me closer to the periphery than I already am. Complete self destruction is useless. With this revolutionary idea in mind I have tried to exercise a little self control in the last couple of days, by not eating as excessively as I have been (but still considerably more than I should). I think this is a good first step, maybe step two can be eating only a little more than I should, before finally reaching a healthy daily amount. I am not going to diet or eat less than I should to bring about weight loss. I think my goal should merely be not to gain more than I already have. As for other forms of self destruction, their turn may come, but for now I’ll tackle food.

That's Right, God Made Them Too

I constantly have to remind myself that God didn’t just make me and all those other lovely people who fill - or partially occupy - the churches every Sunday. God also made the woman who stank of cigarettes and filth; he made the pharmacist who messed up; he made the people who can’t drive. Maybe these people, filth and all please him more than I do with my strong opinions and self loathing. You don’t have to smell good to have faith. 

How to Self Destruct Completely

My parents’ bathroom scales are broken so when I went to M’s house on Tuesday I used his; it was the first time I’d weighed myself since a few days before going to hospital... I’ve gained 6 kilos, and I wouldn’t be surprised if all 6 of them have been gained in the three weeks I’ve been here. I went for a walk most days when I was in hospital, and while I was snacking more than I should it wasn’t too bad. Since being out I have not done any exercise; it’s too ugly and windy out here in the West. I don’t want to walk in this environment and I’ll probably get murdered if I do (though that could be viewed as a plus at the moment), so instead of reducing my intake of crap to make up for the lack of movement I’ve gone the other way and given in to every whim that comes my way at any time of the day or night. At the rate I’m going if I don’t want to look out of place standing beside my next boyfriend I’ll have to get acquainted with those trying for the worlds fattest man title.

I’ve just returned from the local supermarket, where my belief that the world is best viewed through a closed window whilst seated in a corner hiding under a blanket was confirmed. Every person I laid eyes on looked stupid, you know how sometimes you can just look at someone and tell that they can’t count past 20, it was like that, and they kept standing close and getting in my way. One huge woman walked past me stinking of cigarettes and the distinct aroma of I haven’t showered for three months combined. The pharmacist screwed up my prescription and people in the car park clearly didn’t know how to drive, they just sat there clueless. I’m now sitting on my bed with my warm laptop on my lap (of all places) and lovely Lester beside me, why would I ever want to go outside again.

                                                       Reunited

Grip of Fire

I wish I had a good scanner it would make doing this so much easier... When I was still an inpatient I made this out of some cut up postcards during a therapy session. It was one of my first few days in hospital; I was still a little scared of the place.

First Dog On The Moon Comic

Crikey's First Dog On The Moon comic for today. (Click for larger view)

 http://www.crikey.com.au/firstdog/

Therapy Class Poetry

In creative arts therapy today we did a little writing for a book that’s being published for this year’s mental health week (in October).  We first had to fill a page very quickly by stream-of-consciousness writing about anything that came to mind. As I’m currently excited about Lester moving in on Friday, he is never far from my thoughts. I quickly filled a page about him and we then had to underline several words that stood out to us and based on these singular words write a few three or four line poems. I am no poet but I thought I’d share these with you, just remember there were rules about words I had to include etc, hence the randomness and repetition.

Lester, my love
Scratching my heart
My parcel of excitement and hope



The yeti in my heart
Is soothed by you
Lester, my love



Excitement and hope
Feelings unfamiliar
But not to you
Lester, my love

First Study

Last night I attended my first Bible study with the new church and I really liked it. Every week this particular group has a meal together prior to the study; I like that they dine together, because so many groups I’ve been in have been so business like, no one cares about one another because there is so little time to speak. We dined for about an hour and then moved on to the study. This week the study took the form of a discussion about missions (this week at church was ‘Missions Sunday’; where we heard from a number of missionaries, both cross-cultural and domestic), the discussion was quite in-depth and this pleased me because I now feel confident that meaningful and informed discussions will be the norm in this group. Usually the study would be a little more structured and follow the passage taught the previous night in church, but as I said, church this week was a little different. I look forward to next week when I can see what to expect on a more normal week. Everyone in the group seemed to be genuinely lovely, quite intelligent and knowledgeable about the Bible and church history. Maybe this church is too good to be true; or it could be that my inner cynic is on a holiday; or maybe God is giving me a helping hand, He knows I need it!

Leg Warmer

I write this from M’s house, I’ve come to visit Lester for the day while M is at work. I wish I had my camera with me, Lester has slumped over my leg and fallen asleep in the most awkward position I’ve seen him in. On Friday Lester will be coming to live with me, I look forward to it very much.

Leg Warmer postscript
Okay, so I know you don't care, but this is my blog so tough... I may not have had a camera on hand, but I do have a crappy webcam, so that had to make do.

Lester, My Love

The last week has been particularly hard for me, nothing I can think of has happened to trigger it, but since Wednesday or Thursday I’ve been feeling much worse. I hardly left my room on Friday, and on Saturday my mum practically dragged me out of the house. I’m constantly having to apologise to my mum for my behaviour; she’s tasting my wrath the most because she’s the only one who checks up on me and tries to get me out and about. I know she is trying to help and I shouldn’t be lashing out at her, but I do. I pushed her on Saturday because she was standing too close and wouldn’t move, immediately I felt terrible and apologised. I’m not a violent person and it came out of nowhere, she took it in her stride and didn’t seem to mind, making me feel even guiltier.  As well as all this pent up anger, my anxiety has increased and mood significantly decreased. I’ve needed more valium to control the shaking that comes with anxiety and that also helps with the sharp mood changes, but not enough. Despite seeing four friends in the last week I’ve felt lonelier than ever, thank you to C.O, M.M, C.M and M.S for taking the time to spend with me, and sorry if I was bad company.

Given my decrease in mood and constant feeling of loneliness I have asked M (the ex for new readers) if I may bring Lester (cat) to live at my parents while I am here. I was reluctant to do this because I will have to give him back when I return to my own house (no pets aloud), unless I am able to find somewhere else to live where he can come; Also I fear that he may escape, my dad isn’t very good at shutting doors and Lester is an indoor-only boy. I might have to put signs on all the doors as a reminder. I expect M will have no problems with this arrangement, and hopefully having Lester with me will brighten my world; I love him dearly, to the point where I used to miss him when I went out for only a few hours, let alone these weeks I’ve spent away from him.

Read This

If you're anything like me you'll see a link in someone's blog and not bother to follow it, you're more likely to read something if it's shoved in your face... Read this, it's from The Age, link's at the bottom

If only we could all hear views of migrants

CATHERINE FORD

MICK the Syrian, as he's known, sells excellent vegetables at the Queen Victoria Market. Usually he's to be found smoking and flicking through wads of cash and flirting with customers, like the louche, art-house actor he so closely resembles, but last Tuesday he was reading from a darker script.
Lying almost prone over his leafy greens, he argued with a boy, a young student with a clipboard, sent to gather opinions on the federal government's policy on asylum seekers.
Perhaps the teenager imagined Mick, with his droopy, Dennis Lillee moustache and Driza-Bone accent, was the usual laconic, stuffed-if-I-know, stuffed-if-I-care type of Anglo-Celt, someone who could furnish him with quick, anodyne answers to drag back to the classroom.
''OK, get this down in your survey,'' Mick told him, shifting his weight to a pile of capsicums. ''The government has very, very seriously f---ed up on this.''
The boy blanched but began to take notes.
''These people aren't coming out here on leaky boats because they feel like a little holiday,'' Mick told him. ''They're coming here because they're terrified of what's going to happen to them if they stay. They have no future where they come from. Do you understand?''
The boy nodded and scribbled.
''Now, what I can't understand,'' Mick continued, his voice rising, ''is why we want to make them suffer all over again by putting them in such a remote place, way out in the middle of a frigging desert, where nobody can reach them, hoping that most of us will forget about them. Again, why are they doing it?''
The gathering shoppers, the schoolboy and I stood silenced, galvanised by his urgent, honourable, incandescent questions. The boy fielded them, literally, as it occurred to me every last one of us residing in this country should be made to. Impressively, he wrestled with the subject, and before an audience of impatient, attendant strangers.
''They put these people there,'' he answered Mick, uncertainly, ''because they have to process them. And a desert's probably a good place to process somebody, isn't it?''
''Processed?'' Mick cast around at his customers. ''Can you believe this? They've got kids talking like this now! That frigging word.''
He turned to the boy. ''You ever heard of Villawood?'' The boy shook his head. ''Villawood's in Sydney, mate, right near the city. It's a s---hole, and I'm not saying put them there, but at least people can visit it. Who's going to drive to the WA desert to check on these people?''
The boy looked befuddled. ''But we have to put them somewhere, don't we? They can't just come straight in off the boats. They're illegals.''
''They've brainwashed you!'' Mick barked. He'd forgotten, it seemed, the real object of his anger, or else, like those of us who are similarly provoked to frustration and despair by the uncertain fate this country has consistently dished out to asylum seekers, he'd lashed out indiscriminately. I felt for the boy, taking the weight for something so grave and serious, a matter that properly belongs, after all, with mature, compassionate and politically engaged adults, men and women who have agency enough and a sense of moral duty to act on the matter.
''I want you to take your survey away and have a think about this stuff, OK?'' Mick said briskly. ''Take it home, go into your bedroom, lie down, and think bloody hard about it, because it's not right how we're treating these people. We have to let them quickly into towns and cities where they can start working, start living again.''
The boy put his pen away, shaken. He murmured a hasty word of thanks to Mick and turned and walked. He didn't stop at any of the other stalls, I noticed, but made his way, dazedly, out.
''Jesus,'' I ventured, ''you've traumatised that kid for life. If he didn't eat his greens before,'' I joked, ''he certainly won't now.'' But this was cowardice speaking, a manoeuvre brought about by shame.
Too upset to answer, too affronted to laugh, Mick lit a cigarette and retired to the mudguard of his truck, from where, with a despondency I hadn't seen before, he watched his Indian staff serve those of us who had stood about listening awkwardly, shopping lists in hand.
Pissed off with surveys and done with talk, he'd made his message clear, and that message, it seemed to me, deserves a wider hearing than just those in the market for fruit.

The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/if-only-we-could-all-hear-views-of-migrants-20100709-1040m.html 

Challenge Complete

I did it, a whole week without my precious Age. For seven days I have read nothing but The Australian and Crikey, and it was a massive failure. The Australian is a little better than The Age in its omission of junk but not as much as I was expecting, it’s just national junk as opposed to Victorian junk, and the layout makes it look a little more sophisticated. A lot of the national stories were scandal pieces that wouldn’t be amiss on A Current Affair, and if I wanted any Victorian news I was ushered to the Herald Sun’s website, and there’s no way I’m going to read that without several massive grains of salt. What I have come to realise though is that a lot of the news just doesn’t interest me; Australian politics is given more coverage than it deserves - although to be informed voters I suppose we need information, but that said a lot of it is just spin – and the few issues I am interested in at the moment are getting negative, brainless coverage that is making me angry. I think the general populace, and those in parliament forget their heart when it comes to asylum seekers. We have a (closet) mildly racist population who don’t take the time to think about the situations asylum seekers are fleeing from, or to look at the tiny numbers we actually receive. This is an area where votes should be completely disregarded and the right thing done by those seeking safety. This Wednesday's Hack on Triple J showed me this week just how insensitive and uninformed some of our population are.

I’ve just realised that in all this I’ve completely forgotten the ABC; they’re good for national news, but again not great for Victorian news. Maybe from now on I can read the ABC and Crikey and just check the Victorian section of The Age. Or not read anything and submit a very informed donkey vote at the end of the year, something I’m seriously considering since both major parties seem to be made up of heartless fools.

Bad Blog Day

I cannot get this blog to a point at which I can be happy. I’ve changed the layout many times, and I’ve changed the header a few times and I will continue to play with that. I hate the background because it makes the links hard to read, but I like it because it’s pretty without being overly girly, though you may disagree with that. I think in order to get exactly what I want I’ll need to better learn how to manipulate this nasty beast that is blogger.  So watch out blogger, here I come with all my powers of manipulation combined... I am captain K-let.  hmmm

Tagged

A little play in Paint.NET
I'm annoyed that I can't align it properly with the blog layout.

Main images:
Constantinople Girl
Jose Manuel Merello,
http://www.merello.com/index.htm

Watching The High Wire Act
Maria Pace-Wynters,
http://www.mariapacewynters.com/

Outpatient Program

Prior to being discharged from the hospital my psychiatrist decided that I would benefit from the hospital’s outpatient program. The outpatient program provides therapy sessions similar to those run in the hospital, which is just upstairs. I will be attending a young adult program on Mondays, and on Wednesdays I am doing creative arts therapy. I was also supposed to do understanding depression, but I hated it so requested to swap groups, there aren’t any spaces in the other groups running at that time so I just dropped it. I couldn’t cope with the therapist, she speaks very slowly and the people in the group wanted / needed to go over the same things time and time again. Depression affects concentration and I guess they’re worse than me, but I just couldn’t exercise that much patience, I understood what had been said and wanted to move on. Creative arts therapy was really good – one woman wouldn’t shut up, but I can get past that. We were each given an old art book from a collection thrown away by Kew library, they are well bound and we get to ‘make it ours’ by cutting out images and putting them elsewhere in the book, playing with the words, adding images we’ve come across and generally whatever we want to do. It will be a 12 week project that we can work on at home as well. I think I will enjoy that group and having done creative arts therapy as an inpatient I know it has genuine therapeutic value, especially if it is well facilitated.

35 Revisited

My post from last week entitled 35 makes me feel very uncomfortable. Prior to hitting ‘publish’ on 35 I wondered if I would regret it. I read it over and over but decided to publish it because I thought all it would do is make clear what I’d already suggested in previous posts. I want this blog to be a place where I can be honest about what is happening and maybe in a small way educate people (I know I’m often amazed about what’s going on in other people’s heads)... What I didn’t count on was the post causing offence to someone who loves me (other than my mother). I’ve apologised to that dear one, but somehow I don’t think it will make a difference because I’ve essentially declared that my mother is the only one who gives a fuck about me, and that she’s the only one I’m worried about hurting. The truth is that I don’t know who loves me and what, or who I’m worried about, I’m just trying to exist at the moment and it’s hard. 35 will not be deleted because the damage is done and it was a very honest post that I’d like to leave here. If one day I get better, this blog will serve as a reminder of where I’ve come from. I know that at the moment my head is a big mess and because I’m thinking stupid things I’m going to say and write stupid things. Maybe I should re-name my blog “One Depressed Girl’s Stream of Consciousness, Readers Beware”

Church Test Three (there was no post on #2)

I think I have found a church to settle in. I have now attended said church three weeks in a row and am very impressed. I am yet to attend any bible studies (I think they are off at the moment due to school and uni holidays), but I was invited to the young adults weekend away (which was this weekend) I reluctantly declined, thinking it would be a bit too much for me at this stage. The sermons have been consistently good and on a nice chunk of scripture each time, they are currently going through Hebrews about 10 verses a week. I can cope with the Anglicanisms, they aren’t too intrusive and I’ve actually liked the few I’ve experienced so far. I can’t discern what the congregation says after the initial scripture reading though, the reader says “this is the word of the Lord” or something to that effect and then the congregation says something in response, what that is I don’t know, it just sounds like mumbles overlapping other mumbles to me. We had communion last night, I liked how that was done, didn’t have to be officially an Anglican or anything (I didn’t really think that would be an issue, being a Christian should be enough anywhere you go).
 The conversations I’ve had with people after the services have been really nice, I obviously don’t know any of them well at this stage but from first impressions it seems that the church culture is one where people are quite genuine and where fitting in is not a problem. I actually don’t think I’ve been more warmly greeted at any other church, I’m talking about beyond the performance of a hand shake and introduction. Hopefully despite my social awkwardness I can settle in well there.

Challenge

Okay, I’m setting myself a one week news diet challenge of The Australian and Crikey only, oh and Arts Hub, but that doesn’t really count. News corp is evil, that’s for sure; but The Australian is pretty good and I am starting to loathe The Age, I just need to kick the habit. I shall report back next Saturday, or when I make my first desperate trip to The Age.

A Confusing and Messy Argument With Myself (for you to read)

I like a good read and I hope to read something of interest when I go to The Age’s website several times each day; increasingly I am finding myself dissatisfied. It doesn’t matter so much at the moment, since I have the attention span of an infant and can’t follow an article, but there are fewer and fewer articles I can even be bothered clicking the link to open. Below this post you will find screen captures from the sites of three major papers, plus Crikey, a news site I also read. If I were to rate these sites from the screen captures for tackiness and hype (and therefore lower interest from me) they would come in as such: 1st place:  As expected the Herald Sun for their football banner and ‘pig in heat’ headline. 2nd place: I am sad to give this place to The Age for still going on about those spies, for the Chaouk story (it seems like the people involved are begging for attention) and of course all the celebrity crap. 3rd place: The Australian, not too much hype there, there often isn’t.

Despite these results I just can’t seem to make the switch from The Age that I know I should. I’m not sure where to place Crikey on this scale, based purely off the screen capture it would have to sit between The Age and The Australian, but I prefer Crikey to The Australian since they are not owned by a major corporation and so can provide links to any site worldwide that has interesting, good or even especially bad/laughable articles. Crikey also host some great blogs, some of which I frequent. This is starting to sound like an ad for Crikey, it isn’t meant to... Months ago I proclaimed on facebook that I’d had it with The Age and was going to source my news purely from Crikey and The Guardian (I’d already decided that The Australian isn’t for me). I promptly removed my bookmark for The Age and stuck to my resolve for one day, if that. The problem is that Crikey only does one major update per day (I think) and The Guardian is also a little too fluffy, plus it’s hardly useful for local news. So then that takes me back to the question why the hell don’t I read The Australian?????   News corp, that’s why. Who can suggest a solution?

35

My mother cares about me more than - prior to my hospital admission - I thought she did, and it is hard on me knowing this now. It was not my intention to end up in the emergency department 35 days ago, on that Friday night; that night that simultaneously feels like this morning and like a distant memory. No, I had no plans for that night, my plans for the following days, however, had been made carefully but they were thwarted by a spontaneous act performed out of despair. I’ve had 35 days to cool off, I’m no longer determined to carry out my plans and I know that if I did they would really hurt my mother. I didn’t think anyone would care very much, a little upset maybe, but nothing life changing. I’m angry with my mother for putting this burden of love on me. For the last two years M has been the only thing keeping me here, not because I wanted to be with him, but because I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting him. After M ended things I had a brief window where I thought I could have been free of anyone’s love, free to do as I wish without fear of causing significant pain to anyone. I missed the window because of that stupid act 35 days ago, that stupid act that in a twisted way saved my life.