for perspective

Everything in me (bold and italicized pain)

Everything in me or all of my ways of being or thinking or most or some or a main one... I almost, no, I DO, want to start a new blog. A new blog without messy posts about half memories and wishful wished for unclear thinking. I really do feel like I want to start a new blog tonight. A place where I could write about things... from a new place. And 'HOW I SEE IT ALL NOW'. But 1. It would really be just exactly all the same shit as this and 2. It would really be just exactly all the same shit as this. This fucking blog makes me sick- the meaning, the writing- the way it adds up each day to be a big picture of who I am that I have not been able or wanted to see. I mean, it is not so much the parts about me that I find myself hating. It is more this: If this blog of writings and photographs of my drawings were one huge self portrait it would not be the picture of me that is making me sick- that is making me want to die. If all of these writings and photos were collaged into one big image in that image there would be two people really and it is the second one who is breaking my fucking mind/back/body/heart. If this whole blog were turned to its side and all of the pieces added up into one picture-story there would be me and then my father; my father nailed onto my back.
There is no fucking escape through this FUCKING PLANET OF PAIN. I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF BEING ALIVE AND HAVING TO REALIZE MORE AND MORE EVERY DAY THE EXACT THING I HAVE WORKED LIKE HELL FOR ALL OF MY LIFE NOT TO KNOW ABOUT.
I spend all of my time now tolerating and getting through. Since my choices are very simple at this point: live or die- and since I have chosen to live- I am in pain. PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN. I am in a crazy pain. I am in the pain of a 31 year old woman who was raped by her own dad for 17 years, betrayed by her own mom hundreds of times... on and on and on and on. I have just changed the font here to help describe the enormous amount of pain that I am in. AND NOW ALL CAPS. I AM IN EXTRA-LARGE FONT, ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, BOLD AND ITALICIZED PAIN.
I feel like I am sitting around just waiting for pain to pass. Or drawing and waiting for it to go. It all feels fucking impossible.

images 3, 4, 5, and 6 (work in progress)

(marker on paper, 84" x 63")

I am delivered from Thanksgiving unscathed.

(unscathed: adj. Not injured or harmed: escaped the hurricane unscathed.)

Ok... Well I am glad THAT is over. Sorry I have not been posting much in the last week. Lisa went to Germany last week and so I have been busy trying to take care of the dogs, cats, raccoons, birds, house and my self/selves here. I AM SOOOOO HAPPY THAT THANKSGIVING IS OVER. I was just dreading it and now it has passed. Christmas will be much better because Lisa will be here and just a few days after that I will be heading back to Italy. I want to write more... or in some way I do... but my head is such a pile of thoughts- nothing can seem to get out in the right way. So I just wanted to say a quick 'hi' and apologize for not posting much. I just thought I would write a quick post now though letting people know that I am back out of bed struggling to be real in the real world again.

I just have to keep my sunglasses on...

A. (image 2)

(marker on paper, 84" x 63")

(A.) work on progress. (like me.)

(marker on paper, 84" x 63")

Hell (test)

(48 x 36 inches, marker on unprimed canvas)

hurting hands (cut-AWAY)

What I hate about love.

Wednesday died today.
Wednesday had feline HIV and the vet thinks she probably had an embolism and died very suddenly. I called Lisa from South Carolina this morning to tell her my flight was on time and she told me that this morning she found Wednesday already dead. We were all completely shocked and when I got home tonight I got into bed and just cried and cried. Since Wednesday had feline HIV she had to be separated from the other cats; the past few weeks we have been living in the same room and she has been wonderful company. She slept under the sheets right next to me or under the sheets and right on my chest. Even though she always looked disgruntled she was completely sweet and we all loved her. I feel terribly sad that she is gone and she will be missed greatly. Here is a drawing I made of her earlier this year. She really loved playing with water and was always sitting in the sink or walking around the shower.
Goodbye Wednesday, I love you.

All of us.

Here are a few more pictures from my trip to South Carolina. Jessieh and I had a great time together and it was fantastic to get to see her perform in the play.

This morning on our way to the airport we stopped at the "Jesus is Lord Bargain shoe store"... Mostly for the photo op. :)

Hello from South Carolina. :)

So I am here with Jessieh. She looks totally silly in this picture, but for some reasons preferred it to the one where she is actually both looking at the camera AND smiling. :) Right now she is in class and I am digging around the great library at her school looking for images to draw from. Tonight I will see her play for the first time!!!!
Here is the other photo:

That's right. It's Lloyd.

Why is this picture here? Because the last post I put up makes me want to die.
So here is a picture of my Lloyd. Lloyd up close and personal and with a little water-beard.
I am putting this here because this is what I do to keep going. When I feel like I am falling into a black hole I have to lean out- and in another direction. Something better. Something from 2008. I have to remind myself of the year and my age and... and all of that.

Last night I got into bed early because I just felt so awful from the day and I began reading "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold. I ended up reading the entire novel and going to sleep around 3AM. It was a good book. My favorite line from the whole novel was this: "There is no condition one adjusts to so quickly as a state of war."

Tomorrow I go to South Carolina to see Jessieh. (I am leaving just after a therapy session.)

See you soon Fritter!!!

Two.

These are the last two images I will post from this book. (The rest are here.)
The first is a photograph of the book cover and the other is a picture of two pages almost at the very back of the book.

On the left is a picture of me when I was young and on the other page is my very favorite picture of my 'dad'. (I cropped it to protect his charming identity!!!!!!!!) He is standing right on the edge of a huge cliff (barely visible there at the right edge of the photo). I took the picture when I was young and we were on vacation. I used to stare at it for hours and pretend it was the last photo taken of him before he fell over the edge and to his death.
Wishful thinking.
I can hardly even look at the image of me from when I was young. In the photograph, I am sitting right on the bed, my bed, where he raped me hundreds (literally) of times. When I look at it for more than a few seconds I feel sick with a kind of crazy desperate want/need/wish to run back and rescue that girl.
My small army of toys are lined up behind me. That was my best defense. Stuffed animals. A dog, some dinosaurs- that is what I had against a forty-something aged man (MY OWN FATHER) who would steal into me at night.
Thinking about any of this is so painful- looking at this image makes me feel like my head is going to spin away... But one quick thing.... I have thought for a very long time now that all of the rape was never about sex- it was always about power. I guess I always knew that.
Right... it was about power...
And what a grand challenge it must have been for him there. Can you imagine? What a war that toy army must have waged against him there.

He could hold both of my arms together and pinned up over my head WITH JUST ONE OF HIS HANDS.

just a few more.

Here are just a few more pages from this book.

The choice I make over and over and 100 times a day.

I feel like my thoughts are really all over today but I wanted to write here about one specific thing. Before I started therapy and began telling about all that my father had done to me I was absolutely adamant about NOT taking medication. I was constantly being urged by friends, 'family' and different doctors I went to over the years to "just try" taking antidepressants. I took them a few different times but only when I was almost being forced into doing it and as soon as I felt a little 'better' I would immediately stop taking them. Anyway- after I met the doctor I work with now and right after I started telling him about the abuse my father had inflicted- I was ready to try taking medication. I was not just ready- I was desperate for relief. I needed medication to help keep me calmed down enough not to hurt myself in a way from which there would be no recovery; until I could get to the point where I could manage the feelings myself. It was very clear to me- after I started explaining for the first time in my life what my father had done- that the reason I had fought so adamantly to NOT take anti depressants was because I WAS JUST WAITING TO TELL THIS SHIT STORY AND I WAS F*ING DETERMINED TO DO JUST THAT AND I REALIZE NOW THAT I JUST WANTED TO BE FULLY AWAKE AND LUCID WHEN THAT MOMENT FINALLY ARRIVED. So it did finally arrive- my moment to finally tell the truth and let me tell you... after that I was ready to 'try' the medications. I have taken medication for about five years now- almost the entire time of my therapy work. I started taking less more than a year ago and in the last year I have reduced the amounts again. In the past few days I have been wondering if I could might maybe be ready to go off ALL of the medication now- if I could be without ANY medication now. Right now I am taking one antidepressant and one antianxiety pill (before I go to sleep at night). I used to take higher doses of both of the medications I am still presently on and now I do not take very large doses of either one. So I started wondering if I could stop taking it and I have talked to my doctor about this (of course) and he said a few months ago that he thought I was probably ready to be with out the meds. I remember when he said it I thought, "Are you joking?!!!!!!!!!!!". Of course he was not joking and I have thought about it on and off but it scares me a little because it sort of feels like one of the last 'buffers' that I am still able to use. And while I used to just hate the idea of medication it really has been a huge help to me. But anyway- yesterday I took half of my regular dose of the antidepressant and in a crazy, wild leap of faith moment of sanity or insanity- I am not sure which- I took half the dose of the antianxiety medicine last night before I went to bed, too.
Today I have felt sad for most of the day. I have felt both sad and anxious. Except there is a huge difference between how things were five years ago when I started limping down the painful road to recovering and the striding walk/run I take now. I am SO much more aware that the feelings I am having- like wanting to get out of my skin- or feeling like my body is not my own- I am able to stop when I have those feelings and instead of just feeling the first part where I feel freaked out and panicked... I am able to realize WHY I feel freaked out and panicked. For the majority of my life when I felt like my skin was on fire or my hands- how could they even be mine?- I used to just feel terror and then run circles in terrified thought with no exit. Now everything is just... everything is just so... clear. And while I still feel freaked out and anxious and terrified by my own body- i am able to not hurt myself, not have a panic attack from which I can not recover from without crawling into bed and sleeping for some hours and I am able to BE SAD. Today I have been feeling really sad and anxious... depressed and confused... and at one point I started thinking that I absolutely am not ready to be without medication. I still need it, I was thinking. Because I am still so anxious, I was thinking. Anxious and depressed and sad and so hurt and.... and I realized that all of that is 1. Totally normal considering what it is that I am dealing with/ working on now and 2. It is all just feelings. All of the anxiety, the panic, the depression, the sadness- almost all of it comes from the memories about the past. The memories, the flash backs, the nightmares which are not so much nightmares as they are thinly veiled pictures of the truth about my life when I was growing up. Anyway- I think I probably do not need the medicine anymore now. It is scary to admit that and weird to image still having to deal with all of this shit story and not having anything to turn to except myself. I realize today I am sad for a reason. I am sad for MANY reasons. I am sad for a list of reasons so long it could take me a month just to try to write it all out. But it is not impossible and neither is it unmanageable. It is just a feeling- a bunch of feelings. And while most of the feelings are horrible they are still only feelings and they are not going to kill me- they are in fact going to pass. And I think they are going to pass once I have really allowed myself to feel them which is exactly what did not happen the first time around (when my father was actually abusing me) because it really was too painful to tolerate and I really did need to dissociate and at least 'pretend' I was out of this skin- in order to just survive. But anyway... now, and in the name of trying to go through this in the most direct and thus least painful way possible- I am going to take this, another step towards reality. I have really loved for a long time the quote by Winston Churchill, "If you find yourself going through hell keep going.". That is always how this work of recovering has felt. It feels like going through hell. And it is clearly the best choice to not sit down along the side of the road of this hell of pain and hurt but to keep walking it until I come out on the otherside. I am so tired of hurting and of being tired and sad and in pain and scared... I am just so sick of it all. But I have worked for SO long and I have made it SO far- I have never felt more determined to get through the rest of this then I do now. I am still terrified, but I am awake and alive and all of this shit mess of hurt really is going to pass- I KNOW it now. I KNOW it.
My father won almost every battle- almost every single one.
But I am going to win this war.
I already am.

The Fritter and Jenny Show.

In a few days we will begin filming for the new documentary about the enormous amount of silliness that occurs when Jessieh and I get all of our "ways of being" into the same physical space. And what I mean by that is:
I AM GOING TO SOUTH CAROLINA ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT TO SEE MY LITTLE FRITTER! :-)
Last night when I talked to Jessieh she said, "Are you going to write on your blog that you are coming here to see me...?" OF COURSE! :-)
First, I just want to say I am really grateful I do not have to worry about forgetting which day my flight is. For about a week now I have been waking up to a text message (that was sent several hours earlier) notifying me (with heavy usage of exclamation points) the number of days until I will be in South Carolina. And while there is a lot of excitement in the air about me going to Waffle House for the first time, the real reason I am going is to see Jessieh ACTING!! She is in two plays: "Agamemnon" and "The Trojan Women". I am going down on WEDNESDAY (I put that all in caps just for you Jessieh- so you would know I am TOTALLY CLEAR about what day it is that I am leaving) (and when I say "down", here I mean "down into the deep deep south") and I will be coming back on Saturday. I will see Jessieh perform on Thursday and Friday nights. I am really excited.
What? People with dissociative disorders who were raped for years and keep blogs where they go on constantly about their constant struggle to survive the recovery from all of that abuse are able to have fun???? How can it bE?!?!?
Right. That is why we document this craziness. The documentation can actually be used later as a therapeutic tool. This is what I mean: Sometimes when I feel REALLY bad about the past it can be helpful to watch the films we made when we have been together. My favorite- the one that pulls me through every time- is the one where I talked Jessieh into doing her impersonation of Jennifer Grey practicing how to dance (while alone) in "Dirty Dancing". In the video Jessieh is working the living room to "I've Had The Time Of My Life" while I am standing in the corner doubled over, holding my sides, laughing like crazy and trying not to pee my pants. Therapeutic. VERY VERY therapeutic. This is pretty good too though. :)
So come back in a couple of days because I am sure some of the silliness will end up here on my blog. And I will definitely be writing about seeing Jessieh in her two plays!!!
And p.s.... I am hoping to post a picture of the finished boots before I go. I have been drawing on them all weekend.

closer to the surface way

On my 'to do list' (before I return to Italy) is to go through the boxes I left here in my closet. This morning I peeled 5 layers of tape off the top of the box labeled "sketchbooks". These images are from a book I made in 2004; right after the person I was with committed suicide which was also just after I began therapy.



It makes me feel sick to look at these images now and to know in such a much more clear and much "closer to the surface way" what it all means. When I made them I did not ever look back at them; I remember not even wanting to touch the pages. These were collages I made just weeks into my therapy and I was just "bursting at the seams" with the need to tell my therapist about all my father had done to me.
I realize now I should have started this morning with something a little easier- like the box labeled "winter clothes".

You probably know exactly what I mean here. (To place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.) juxtapose:

Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - sammenstille, stille side om side

Nederlands (Dutch)
naast elkaar plaatsen, (doen) contrasteren

Français (French)
v. tr. - juxtaposer

Deutsch (German)
v. - nebeneinanderstellen

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - αντιπαραθέτω, αντιπαραβάλλω

Italiano (Italian)
giustapporre

Português (Portuguese)
v. - justapor, sobrepor

Русский (Russian)
помещать рядом, бок о бок, сопоставлять

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - yuxtaponer

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - placera intill varandra, placera sida vid sida, sammanställa

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
并置, 并列

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 並置, 並列

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 나란히 놓다, 병치하다

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 並置する, 並列する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) وضع الى جانب, وضع جنبا بجنب‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮הניח זה לצד זה, בייחוד להשוואה או להנגדה, עימת עם‬

Little Hand Feeling #1 (sketchbook page)

what I really can not afford. **WARNING: May be triggering.**

I only have a few minutes to type here which is a real blessing because I will not be able to sit here and let myself write and delete for half the morning. But even that I want to change... But no time.
Last night I was drawing on the pair of boots that I just started to work on and I was thinking how my mother (I want to write something horrible- maybe a seven or eight or twenty word description of what I really think of that person... but again... yeah!... no time for that!)- I was thinking how my mother would FREAK out if she knew that I was "drawing on a perfectly good pair of boots". When I was young there were several times when I started to draw and/or paint on the walls of my room. Both of my parents hated it- but no matter what I did my father would nearly kill me many nights anyway. Sometimes I think that I knew they would get mad- but the time they would spend yelling at me, well, at least it would not be time spent hurting me in a different way. I also think that I scared my 'father' with my art. I mean- he got to me in almost every way- physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally- but there was always some places in my head where I would go and he could not get to me. And I always knew that- in part because he loved to try to break into the rest of me and he devoted large amounts of time to that. Anyway- I think there was a point when I realized he would not, could not ACTUALLY kill me. He used to suffocate me until I would pass out... but I LITERALLY at some point started to think, "He can't kill me, because where would he hide my body?". Oh... that is painful to write. Painful in a way that I can not even describe. Anyway- who cared about being yelled at for 'destroying' the walls (drawing and/or painting on them) when they hurt me in other bigger ways and ways so much worse and more painful.
When I was 17 and became pregnant by my dad for the last time... or maybe it was right before that. Maybe I was just 16.... oh, these little details that we keep. Lol. Who cares? Anyway- right around the time which was to be one of the worst of the worst things that he did to me (right up there is the afore mentioned 'person' who drove me to the abortion... for him? anyway...)- I took four decks of playing cards and put a huge piece of tape onto the back of each and taped them all to the ceiling of my bedroom. Not in a pattern. More like an upside-down and taped to the ceiling chaotic version of 208 card pick-up on my ceiling. There were 4 people in my family and I think it was a description or sort of 'installation piece' about the extreme fucking (literally) chaos in my house. It was also what I would stare at and count and try to make up patterns in... while my father raped me.
So... my point was that if my mother knew I was ruining a perfectly good and NEW pair of boots (by drawing on them) she would just be furious; an enormous lecture about wasting money and on and on. Right... her husband was raping her child on a regular basis and she was very annoyed because her child was 'destroying' the walls and ceiling of her cage? I mean... of her 'bedroom'?
Now I think just the opposite. Last night as I was drawing I thought, "I CAN NOT AFFORD TO NOT DRAW ALL OVER EVERYTHING NOW".

It took me one hour and forty-one minutes to write this. (It took me 101 minutes to write this.)

I put up my previous post more than hour ago. After that I decided I wanted to write about an artist whom I really like (who I really like?) so I started typing a new post.
Typing and deleting, typing and deleting, typing and cutting and pasting and cutting and pasting and again and again and again. After just over an hour of writing I had about four sentences. So I deleted everything and started typing this- about how difficult it is to write out thoughts when you (while I?) have a dissociative disorder. This is my third version of that... Ok.. so I will start again for the fourth time. (So far I only wasted about 20 minutes with this post; type and delete, type and delete...)
Having multiple ways of thinking and trying to write sometimes feels absolutely and totally completely impossible sometimes. Sometimes, sometimes and absolutely totally and completely? No, I mean: Having multiple ways of thinking and trying to write can be completely impossible sometimes. Or wait... I think I mean this: Sometimes writing with a dissociative disorder feels completely impossible. No, that does not sound right either...
So the 'post time' says I started writing this at 9:06am and it is now 10:32am and never mind about the artist I wanted to share/write about, never mind even about the possibility of a CLEAR explanation of the struggle I have in my head. Never mind, never mind, never mind. Back to the... back to just the confusion in my head but without the trying to write anything about anything part. (It is now 10:47am and I am going to just, just going to... stop. this. now.)

Isn't that how everybody sees it?

You say 'shoe', I say 'CANVAS'!!!
I am pretty excited about my new drawing project. :-) I will post photos in a few days.

Can you even imagine being 'stateless'?

Refugees United is a non-profit organization that helps refugees relocate family and friends through an anonymous, safe, online search engine. If you click on the image below you can read what it means to be stateless, why this is a global crisis and what you can do to help.

The Victims

When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it, in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,
your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your
suits back, too, those dark
carcasses hung in your closet, and the black
noses of your shoes with the large pores?
She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it
until we pricked at your
annihilation, Father. Now I
pass bums in doorways, the white
slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their
suits of compressed silt, the stained
flippers of their hands, the underwater
fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the
lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and
took it from then in silence until they had
given it all away and had nothing
left but this.

by Sharon Olds

sketch on large paper.

IF THERE IS A GOD; WHERE ARE YOU?

The head of a male student, still alive, trapped under the debris is pictured at the scene of the church school that collapsed on the outskirts of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, November 7, 2008. (Joseph Guyler Delva/Reuters)

about the photograph

I do not understand.

I do not understand people or nature or the incredible imbalance and unfairness of life. I do not really even believe that there is god but I am going to pray anyway that this boy survives. I hope that the photographer put his camera down after he took this image and helped to rescue this boy.

Yesterday I watched the wind blow orange leaves off a tree and at the same exact time children were trapped under a building and dying.
Sometimes I can barely stand to be alive.

the (writing on the wall)

'blood on hands', 2004, pages 1 to 15