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My Art Therapy Journey

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Even though the good times come, I wish they would stay longer.

 

I’m greedy with them.

 

I didn’t even share.  I was scared they would disappear.

 

Now they are gone and nothing to show.

 

Nothing to bring me back.

 

Just silent desperation.

 

And words.

 

 

Sometimes I get tired and seeking solace isn’t very solacing.  To expect is to work.  But still, I find myself doing it, even, or especially, in the hours of greatest exhaustion. Tiredness leads to forgetfulness.  And I don’t know what forgetfulness leads to…because I forget.

 

Growing is also work, but it is usually supposedly good for you.  Growing pains.  Is there anyone that doesn’t know about those?

 

I rise and fall.  I grow and seek solace.

 

My heart has a full ache and I try to fill it with more.

 

 

Here comes a confession: I’m not tidy.  It’s funny, I know, but my subconscious works overtime to the extent that I actually can believe that I might be for moments at a time.  But I’ve reached a point, now, where I finally cannot, not for even one single moment, really believe that I am all wrapped up tight in a neat little package.  I know I’m probably the last to find this out, but I’ll be honest with me…I usually am the last to find things out.

I need a Xanax or I need sleep or I need both right now.  Yesterday I slept away an entire drug induced day, which in reality, is probably not much different from many other days I’ve had spent awake.  Things are starting to line up.  Getting cleaned up, it’s tempting to say.

 

I’ve never been one for drugs.  I’ve never been the dependent type.  I’m the one who loves to take shit and turn it into something else, like I’m a human compost or something.  Just give it to me, I’m totally unphased by shit and can turn it into something else.  Art or a poem or something.  Or a shapely body from all the metabolic processes it brings on within me.  I can take on anything! 

So here’s my next confession:  I’m also a liar.  I can’t deal with shit.  I can’t take it on or process it.  I bury it and it goes nowhere.  It does nothing useful and I put on make-up, in various forms, to face the world.  I’m shit-faced, I could maybe say.  I’ve been living my life as an addict.

I’m addicted to the part of not being human, not feelings my feelings or knowing who I really am.

I might have even married my perfect counterpart.

But then….

Shit really started happening and I saw shit.  And I said, “Oh shit!”  And shit hit the fan.

 

Our household has a nicely splattered decor of shit all over in it now.

 

But that’s not the best of it.

The best of it is yet to be revealed.

I’m up to  * here*  in shit.

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It’s not always necessarily a person’s exact fault when life has gone to shit.  It can start at such an early age, the age before choices are really clearly made.  It’s the age of instinct and survival.  The age of not knowing any other way.  Like the age when you shit in your pants and that’s just the way it goes.

 

Then all the sudden you get a knock on the door and holy shit you’re, like, going on 33 years old.

 

“Fuck, you mean the shit is still there?!  ”

 

I’m sorry for the expletives.  I’m blaming it on the drugs (that are helping me breathe) today, but it might be something else tomorrow.  We will all cope in the best (and first) way we know how until there is another way, I suppose.  So judge me if you must.  I might not like it, but it probably won’t make that much of a difference if you do.

 

I have judged myself plenty enough, you can trust me on that one.

 

I’m behind on all of my ceramics assignments.  And what do I say to that, “Shit!”  Yes, it compounds.  It grows.  It does not go away.

So, I’m working on breathing through all this shit.  There are not readily available lessons for this.  I may be swimming in it, but the local “Y” does not seem to back the demand for this type of training.

I am off to the pool of coping which I am surfacing in.

 

Cope cope cope.  Sometimes all that’s left is coping an hoping and keeping the faith that one day, whether subconsciously or not, things will be much better.

 

 

 

 

 

Cyan Twinge

I (do)n’t Need!

 

It is hard to feel needy.  The only thing I might wish is for it to be a little harder, though.  Hard enough so that I wouldn’t feel it at all.

I thought I was going to be able to write about this, but maybe the moment has passed.  I’ve been distracted.

It won’t be enough of a distraction to not get back to needing at 11pm or 3am, however.

 

Personal neediness doesn’t seem to pay much matter to personal convenience or sleep.  It rears it’s head in the darkest hours of aloneness when the heart is searching and aching to soothe itself.  Or it stomps its feet in the between times of trying to care for a hungry toddler or a hormonal teenager.

When do I not need?

In flash scenes from “What about Bob?” and the thought of seeking comfort from another human suddenly becomes the darkest of devils.  Especially considering the convenience factor of when the feeling is at it’s strongest, which for me right now seems to be nearly all the time.  Just not this moment when I’m trying to access it to write it out of my system.  No, now I am totally self-sufficiently ineffective.

My lips have been frozen all day.  I googled “cold lips” and the first thing that popped up was a link to Yahoo! Answers from a person asking:

“My lips feel almost constantly cold my doctor says it is anxiety but i don’t feel anxious?”

The most popular response was that this person was, indeed, anxious, regardless of being aware of it or not.

I guess denial can only go so far.

But not only have my lips been cold all day, they have also had that slight twinge of cyan.

So maybe my subconscious is trying to help me out by not breathing.  Because, hey, it’s not like life and death or anything.

Which brings me to the topic of death.  And life.

But that brings me back to neediness.

And I am not needy at all.

For my Ceramics 2 class this semester I intentionally signed up for the section taught by an instructor who focuses a lot on figurative sculpture.  I want to explore and express the immediacy of what is going on in my life, but I am scared of it.  Our first assignment has a completely open ending.  I guess just writing that and seeing “open ending” gives me a place to start from.   Yesterday, in class, I was feeling blocked.  After many days of feeling full of inspiration class finally started and I couldn’t move.

Terror.

The assignment is meant as a warm-up exercise and I was dead cold.

 

 

 

Instead of starting on my real assignment I spent some time learning to use the clay extruder.  I think it’s going to make my ceramics life a lot better.  It will help in saving my hands and wrists and might be a significant addition to my toolbox.

Discovering there was this extruder in the school studio the entire last semester of Ceramics 1, but never being informed of it or taught how to use it is a little perplexing, if not a bit irritating.  But…at the same time I’m glad I didn’t know about it.  I learned things the “hard” way.   I learned how to do everything through hard work and determination and it got me more intimate with my clay.

It feels like life is that way sometimes.  Doing things the hard way through blood, sweat and tears and then someone tells you about something that gives you the same result with, essentially, the flip of a switch.

I mean, seeing this extruder machine in the studio is an extremely concrete “in reality” sort of thing.  I can see that it’s a lot easier to make coils or forms using this machine than it is to roll out coils tediously by hand.  But what if someone tells me an easier way to do something I can’t see or touch?

I have to admit, I even looked at that extruder with skepticism.  I didn’t want to deal with the anxiety of learning how to use it and, at first, I viewed it as a sort of “cheat.”  After all, shouldn’t everything be extremely difficult in life?

This seems to be one of my switched wires in my brain.  Why do I go around thinking nothing is worthwhile unless it is painful and difficult?

What if I can go about putting my creative ideas into reality through simpler means and enjoy the entire process?  Is it then, somehow, not as good???

It’s a little crazy, really.

 

I need to get over this idea that enjoyment has to be counter-weighted by misery.

It’s just a LIE.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The counter-weight of misery does NOT make joy any more safe.

 

And this brings me to the topic of Joy.

Joy is extremely risky, dangerous and downright chill-invoking without faith.

I might even believe that without faith there can be no joy at all.

 

This isn’t something I’ve thought about before writing this, but it just sort of dawned on me.

 

It’s all a part of letting-go and getting somewhere.

For me, it’s a part of getting unstuck.  That’s what if feels like.

 

There’s enough aggression and violence in the world without me needing to add to it through the creative process of my life.  Is it really needed?

 

What if I let the clay be soft and didn’t fight working with a clay that’s not workable yet?  What if I took the steps to help the clay work for me and not power through by sheer force that is only going to break me and not lead to the greatest creative outcome anyway?

 

It’s back to breathing.  Letting go, letting things be ok.

Accepting help.

Making a beautiful life willing to be made.

 

I have come to this acceptance the hard way and I wonder what miracles are ahead.

What other amazing machine I didn’t know about before hangs right in front of me on the walls of the studio awaiting discovery?

 

 

 

 

There are times that I wish I could let myself fall apart more.  Somehow,  those are never the times when I actually am falling apart. I will stop myself from falling apart even if it means a permanent ending to everything.  The times I fall apart are like the short breaks between bricks.  The places where the grout lays.

Clearly, there is more brick than grout, but without the grout the bricks most likely  would topple over and never stand or do the job they are typically created to do….and I’m not getting into physics and the possibility of that.  I know there must be exceptions to needing grout out there somewhere.  But I’m talking about what I know.

I don’t actually know that much about construction and building materials either, but that also doesn’t really matter right now.

My point is that I need to fall apart, but I also need to stay together.  I have to be both the brick and the mortar.  (Oh yeah, I think mortar is what it’s called?  Grout is for stuff like ceramic tiles, right???  I don’t know.  But this is also not the point.)

 

I’m trying to understand myself.

 

I just know that sometime I lose it.  I fall apart and I fall apart Big.  But not often enough.  But falling apart just once is too much!

I feel so stuck.

 

Maybe I just need to take down the wall.  Maybe I don’t need more (or less) falling apart.

Maybe I just need no more walls.

 

Fear is the glue.  (Glue now, not grout or mortar.)

 

Fear is static and unmoving.  Fear causes crumbling.  Fear leads to crashing.

 

I know I’m speaking in weird metaphors that probably don’t even go together.  It”s hard to face where I am in this–because I don’t really know where I am.  And this is part of the whole issue.

 

Am I strong?  Am I weak?  Am I needy?  Am I too much?  Am I not enough?

 

I need help.  I can’t do this alone.  I can’t be the wall and decide about what to do with the wall at the same time.  There are too many directions at once.  Repair it?  Take it down?  Keep some, change some?

I don’t know what to do with me right now.

I’m vulnerable.

I’m used to being it all.  The brick, the mortar, the builder and the one who climbs on, around or over the wall when it’s all done.

The problem is…it’s never done.

It’s a lot of upkeep now and it complicates life rather than making it necessarily better.

But the prospect of subbing (sub-contracting) this out is end-of-the-world frightening.

It means trusting, at least a little bit, and not being entirely in control of where things go, at least for a little bit.  I can still sort of have a say about things, but, in a way…I have to step back.

I write this like I have a choice about doing this.

It’s really already happening without me.

The memories are breaking through my wall(s).  People morph in and out of the reality of who they really are.  It’s hard to keep track of past and present.

I’m rattled all the time.  I tremor.  My fine motor skills are already gone and I worry about it progressing to more major movements like even walking or standing.

So I write this like I have a choice about letting-go.

The death-grip I’ve had on my life isn’t working anymore.

 

 

 

 

I don’t need to read the Bible.

My whole life has led me God.

The Bible interests me for reasons other than knowing God or the idea of God.   Except for the fact that I see God in people…and people are what I find in the Bible.

I am drawn to the Bible for the purpose of study.  Nothing in the Bible has really led me to faith.  So far.

This is not to say that it can’t or won’t strengthen my faith in the future, and not to dismiss the Bible and its importance or significance in people’s lives.  But, given that, in all fairness I’ve barely read it, how can I not make these statements?

What does this have to do with my art therapy journey?  I don’t know.  It might have to do more with my journey, just in general.  But my language, inside, is art…even when what comes out is words in a blog that don’t look or sound the least bit artistic.   At this very moment, there is art forming inside of me.  These are my thoughts…and thoughts lead to actions.   At least, that’s what I’ve been told.  For me, at least some of that action in my life is creating art.

I guess I can’t tell you why I believe in a higher power, especially when an overwhelming majority of events in my life wouldn’t point to the God I believe in, existing.

I say all of this as I begin down a path of embarking on Bible Studies.   Along with my Art Studies.

Maybe I am putting this here as a plot point.  A dot on the map so when I start talking about something I’ve come upon 5 miles down the road it all connects better and makes more sense.

I’m fascinated by people and culture and history.  The only history class I’ve ever taken is Art History and it left me wanting for more.

Less, actually.  Actually, less.

It left me asking more questions and yearning for context.  It left me asking questions about how I came to be and how any of us came to be.

It left me with a plague of questions.  Most people don’t want the plague.

My intro. class answered nothing.

So I don’t know where I’m going with this.  I just know I’m going somewhere because this spot I’m in isn’t very homey.

I yearn for people and connection as long as they don’t get too close and let me come to them a bit on my own terms.  Any sudden moves scare me away.  And it’s like that with God, too.  And that could be why I’m so interested in all of this.  Figuring out what is psychological, sociological, anthropological and theological.

That is a lot of logic, if you ask me.

I never asked for this to be my brain.

And that’s why I have so many questions.

If I could change my passions I most definitely would.

Who in the world would choose this?

I think I would rather suffer in superficiality.  I want to be addicted to “Omg!” (the  yahoo “news” page) instead.

But that’s not the life I was granted.

The Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

–Reinhold Niebuhr