Ten of the faces.

(marker on paper, 22" x 42.5", May 31, 2007)

Untitled

(pen and ink with marker on paper, 11" x 8.5", 2005)

"...some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent."

(pen and ink with marker on canvas, 5" x 4", 2005)

Wasting me.

(pen and ink with crayon on paper, 11" x 8.5", 2004)

"We found in the hour"

(mixed media, 9" x 15", 2005)

Face it.

(marker with colored pencil on paper, 8.5" x 7", 2007)

"After" drawing.

(pen and ink with marker on paper, 6.25" x 5.5", 2006)

He raped my body, my mind, and my HEART.

I spoke to a male friend of mine not long after I posted the above photo and he said he thought it was "provocative". I was immediately angry. I was furious that he could make any kind of sexual connection to the image because all I can see is pain pain pain. And about two hours later I suddenly thought of the picture I have hanging at the foot of my bed. It is a copy of the poster that Valie Export made for her performance art piece in Munich in 1969 titled "Action Pants: Genital Panic". The image is of her sitting on a bench wearing a long sleeve shirt and a pair of jeans with the crotch cut out from them. She is holding a machine gun and she looks like a person gone almost wild. And when I thought of the above photo (of myself), my anger towards my friend when he used the word 'provocative', my RAGE towards my father and then of the poster... I almost laughed out loud. Strange that the things right in front of us are sometimes the most difficult to see. (To view the poster search Google Images and to read about the performance piece search Google with: "Action Pants: Genital Panic".)

Paper dolls, paper dolls.

(pen and ink on paper, 11" x 8.5", 2004)

Untitled

(pen and ink with marker, 8" x 8", 2006)

The sickest knowing.

(pen and ink with crayon on paper, 11" x 8.5, 2004)

This drawing is so disturbing to me I feel like I can barely even look at it let alone think of it's meaning. I am always wishing that 'none of this was true'. 'None of this' being: the insane amount of abuse that I lived with/through for 14 years. I do not want to look at this drawing because it is part of this nightmare-true story. I would do anything for all of this to just go away- to make it disappear. The pain of real knowing hurts so much I feel like it is going to kill me.
I want to scream and vomit and then scream more and more. I do not want to keep going- to keep suffering so much everyday if I am not really going to make it anyway. I mean: It feels impossible to survive this- to survive the recovery from this. And I just wish that there was some way that I could know if it is ever really going to get better. Everyday feels like an eternity and if I am never going to feel better than this: I want to die now. This kind of suffering is insane.
A high school age girl from the town where I grew up walked out into her front lawn one day, doused herself in gasoline and burned herself alive. Burnt herself to death. Everyone said that she must have been crazy- she must have been insane to do something like that. I am confident she was neither and it makes me sick now to think that I know the feelings that would drive a person to do something like that. The things that would drive a person to literally set their body on fire and burn themselves to death.
This suffering is so seemingly circular and endless. And it feels like there is not enough water in the world to put these fires out.

Cat constellation.

(pen and ink with marker on paper, 8.5" x 11", 2005)

It was raining.

(paint on paper, 10" x 13", 2006)

There was rain on the day of the second abortion (the final one). Flannel gray everywhere. I remember being in a car and then walking to a building in rain and attached to this memory there is a sound and it is a man's voice and he is saying, "Are you ready?" "Are you ready?" And after it was over there was a huge amount of blood and I almost start to remember wondering if I was going to die... But then all I can hear is my mom. And she is saying, "You will be fine." "You will be fine."

Distant relation.

(mixed media on fabric, 13" x 10", 2004)

I am the knife.

(mixed media on paper, 13" x 10", 2004)

Before speaking.

(paint on sewn canvas, 13" x 10", 2003)

I have been wanting to write more on this blog. Or at least I have been thinking about it... But it feels impossible and also just crazy. I have so many different thoughts and many at the same time. Nearly all conflict with one another- so I have no idea how to write here. But I want to say something- I mean- I want to try to write about what happened in the past and about what is happening now; how I survived it (the abuse) then and how I am surviving it as it all rolls back over me now in memories that make me think I am about to die. I was abused for fourteen years. And that just seems beyond the outrageous. That just seems beyond the impossible. And it is and it was. But it isn't and it wasn't. There is no good way to start to tell the story of a massacre. A massacre is a bloodbath and by definition it is a mess. There is (was) blood and every other bodily fluid everywhere and so it is (was) impossible to see clearly the whole mess. It is impossible to find the beginning of this nightmare story when I can barely even find myself in it. I guess I will try to explain here the disaster I survived the same way I am trying to tell it back to myself now; which is that I can only walk up to the blood and shit stained mess and try to uncover a tiny little bit of it. Then I have to stand back- way back- run far away from it even. And I have to remind myself that it is over. I have to tell myself I am ok now. I have to cry and scream and drool and literally lie on the floor in a lump and heave and sob and want to die. And just when I have recovered- just even enough to be able to walk again- I have to go back. And I have to uncover another small piece. Another tiny piece so enormously huge that I every time imagine the very weight of it alone will make me die.

The fall of the dissipated jockey.

(pen and ink on paper, 8" x 5", 2004)

Horse (cut away).

(mixed media on paper, 7.5" x 8.5", 2004)

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now." -MLK

Rescued by C.

(pen and ink with marker on paper, 11.25" x 6.25", 2006)

Break her face.

(pen and ink on paper, 13" x 10", 2004)

So much lost.

(watercolor and pencil on paper, 10" x 13", 2006)

It must have been enormous. Something too big to see.

(mixed media, 12" x 18", 1998)

Tonight I am filled with my usual "pre-therapy terror". My whole body feels 'sick'. I am in a floating state of nausea and fear. I feel SO scared and SO angry. I was looking through past sketchbooks again tonight and I started reading these different dreams I had written down from about nine years ago. I had these dreams SIX years before I would meet the therapist I have now. SIX years before I would tell about what had been done to me. And SIX years before I would ever speak about the TWO pregnancies lost. I am going to write them here exactly as I wrote them in my sketchbook nine years ago. Now I will have to focus on not killing myself over any of this.

2.5.98 "Last night I dreamed that I was pregnant- I was in my bed and my mom came in to see me- then she left to go do something- then I actually gave birth to this beautiful child- it was a perfect child- then the afterbirth came out - my mom came back in and she looked down and the afterbirth was like a huge purple colored sack of fluid and it popped and left a stain on my bed, but the stain was clear- then I must have left the room or something, because when I came back the baby had turned into a puppy- it looked like our dog Z., only smaller- I was confused and upset and I didn't understand what had happened- I told my mom and she had some big explanation for it, but I can't remember what she said- I woke up feeling very sad; and I was very hot and I had kicked all of the blankets off. The dream has been on my mind all day. I wonder what it means."

7.22.98 "Last night I had another dream that I was pregnant. First, I remember that I was pregnant, but my belly was not very big and I was disappointed because of that, it was not large and tight, but only slightly swollen and flabby. I showed my father my stomach, how small it was and he told me he thought it was quite large. I knew I was going to deliver soon- I knew it would be soon even though I had no contractions and I was wondering why my water had not broken yet. I was in the hospital then (before I was at home), when I was at the hospital I was then telling my mom I didn't know why we were there because I had no contractions or broken water. Then we were walking somewhere, on a sidewalk and past old brick buildings. (I think my mom and dad were walking behind me and I was walking in front of them.) Then I delivered the baby, it just came out and I felt no pain, at first my mom and I were going to put it back inside me until we got to the hospital, but we didn't think we would be able to, which is when I realized the baby wasn't really a baby at all, but instead a was a long, thin, child. The child was curled up and it was incredibly thin- I remember holding it in my arms, looking down at it and realizing it was a boy. I remember looking at the penis. I was disappointed in my dream because it was a boy and also because it was not really a baby. I remember feeling very sad about both of those things. Then my mom put the child into a blue plastic tub/basin thing and she took it to a church/hospital where where she signed some forms and took the child to be checked out by a doctor. I remember telling my mom or maybe my dad that I was disappointed because the baby was so large- and then they told me this was normal, that it happens and that I shouldn't be disappointed. Once my mom took the baby to the hospital, I went out wandering around by myself and I was feeling somewhat panicked because I was not sure how I was going to get the afterbirth out of me. I knew I had to get rid of it, I kept walking- I finally came to two people (an older man and a younger man) and they told me they could suction it out for me, although it would hurt. I remember being on a table and the older man putting something in my vagina to take the afterbirth out. I was scared and very afraid and I wanted to scream but couldn't. Then I woke up. *The removal of the afterbirth seems more like a combination of rape and an abortion, the suction tool the doctor used was shaped like a penis. The correlations between this dream and the other preg. dream are very strange."

(The seven images below this post and the one at the top of it are from the sketchbook I wrote these the dreams in.)

gray flannel sketchbook (2)

gray flannel sketchbook (3)

gray flannel sketchbook (4)

gray flannel sketchbook (5)

gray flannel sketchbook (6)

gray flannel sketchbook (7)

gray flannel sketchbook (8)

Suicide slide.

(mixed media, 17" x 12", 2006)

"Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news." -Chögyam Trungpa

Fake awake.

I spent so much of my 'growing up time' in a pretend state of sleep and now I spend much of my time in a state of "pretend awakeness". Every morning when I get up from bed I am in an immediate state of 'fake awakeness': Like a heavy fog blanket that I keep over myself; my blanket of "not-knowingness". (It must be a good indicator of how little people know about dissociative disorders based on the rather large number of words and sayings that I have to invent to try to describe living with it.) I woke up about two hours ago and like every morning I want to crawl right back into bed. So after I walk the dogs and feed them I usually DO get back into bed... unfortunately that never feels very good either. When I do get back into bed I am "too awake" and the room is "too light" and my mind and my body feel "too aware"... I told myself I was not going to write on this blog- that I was just going to use it as a place to post my art work (several reasons for this...). In large part though I thought I would not write because I feel like my writing is not good enough, eloquent enough, well-spoken-enough. (Case in point....) I also know that not talking about sexual abuse is the exact thing that allows it to keep happening- secrecy is a main ingredient!!! So I am going to try to write on this blog and not get so hung up on every sentence and word that I become unable to speak again at all. I don't really want to write about having been abused honestly... but who would? People don't want to talk about it... and most of the time neither do I. A lot of people don't want to listen (understandable since it is so horrific). That said: I would rather suffer a little more trying to write some of my thoughts onto this blog than I would to just keep silent and let the exact thing that got me here in the first place (silence) continue to hold me (and other survivors of abuse) in a "pinned place". So this blog is largely about my art which is largely about my life... which unfortunately the first 17 years of which did not 'go so well'. *And by 'not go so well' I mean: a whole lot of abuse. Followed by another ten years of struggling in silence until I would finally meet a therapist whom I could tell EVERYTHING to and that brings me to the present- in which I spend a grossly large amount of time trying to deal with and accept what really happened to me in my past. All while I work the full time job of not killing myself (literally). And also (in the present) I try to actually BE IN THE PRESENT and recognize that I am safe now and I can live a totally different life. Like I said- I don't really want to write about these things- I wish none of this had ever happened to me- but it did happen and when I turn to others looking for support and I do something like type the word 'incest' into a blog search and find about 95% of the results lead to porn.... Well, I begin to feel obligated to use both my art AND my voice. Not only in the hope of saving my own life but as I said to my friend yesterday: I feel like if all the art I make from now on and everything I write or say about my past- if somehow any of it can help one person (even a little bit) or if it can help to alleviate even the smallest bit of suffering from one survivor or somehow prevent one person from from hurting ONE child- it would be worth a life time of work.

Her flesh-box. (April, 2007)

(mixed media on paper, 7.25" x 5.5", 2007)

I recently wrote the following into one of my sketchbooks: "I hate this place. This skin-trap. This "her flesh-box". I feel so desperate. Desperate to cut myself away from myself. Desperate to shave away all that feels filthy and bad. But it scares me because I always imagine that there would be nothing left at all."

Pain on paper.

(pen and ink with marker in paper, 8.75" x 7", 2006)

"Like red dye poured into a can of white paint, incest would color every aspect of my life." -from Marilyn Van Derbur's book Miss America By Day

Reply to the question; MONDAY MAY 7, 2007

(pen and ink with marker on paper, 9" x 8.5", 2007)

"It is estimated that up to one in every four trapped animals escapes by chewing off her own foot." (PETA factsheet)

(mixed media on paper, 11" x 9", 2004)

the saddest dusk

(mixed media on paper, 8.5" x 11", 2004)

upsidedown nightS

(marker on paper, 13" x 10", 2005)

call a doctor

(marker on paper, 10" x 13", 2005)

The May-June sketchbook. 5 images, (2006)

(mixed media, 11" x 16", 2006)