Picture and a poem.

What I Believe

by Michael Blumenthal

I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently.

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.

I will be (the)...

Six images from my work on the wall today are here.

And here is great post about healing from PTSD. I love this blog (Parasites of the Mind) even though it is very painful for me to read because of all the honesty/pain feelings/thoughts.

About the above image; the wall drawing today. I usually think of the image of the octopus as my being a symbol for my father. But I think I am sort of the octopus too. My doctor is really into fishing and so in my work the image of the fish usually represents him. Today I feel like I am the fish (in the drawing, I mean) too. I want to say: The fish represents my therapist and he is in a FUCKING RAGE!!!!!!! But I am still so scared of 1. my own feelings and thoughts and 2. the mountain RANGE of rage that I have inside of me (that is a thought/feeling too, but as it is the size of a range of mountains, it seems like it deserves its own category)- I am still so scared of my own anger and still by the idea of my father that I think I am 'hiding behind the fish'. If you know what I mean....
Something else- today I will be taking a small trip outside of Venice. Stefano usually comes here on Friday nights but I was finally able to say that the feeling of him coming here and at NIGHT was all to much for me- anyway- I wrote about it here last weekend. Anyway- today I am taking the train and I am going to meet him halfway and then come back to VENICE WITH HIM. I will write and draw and read my Italian/English art magazine on the train. Then we will eat dinner together and come back to Venice TOGETHER. I am writing a new tag for this post: "How to ease my pained mind."

Incestuous.

Here are two things that happened yesterday that were really sad and painful for me to think about: First, yesterday morning I FINALLY trimmed my toenails. I write FINALLY in all caps because it is really hard for me to acknowledge my own body- let alone try to take care of it. So after being aware for about three weeks that I needed to trim my toenails I quickly just grabbed the trimmers and did it right before I put on my shoes yesterday. (Right- there is also the part with all of the bad memories I have of my father's feet touching my own when he was raping me. Add that and it is a miracle I can even GET a shoe on in the morning.) Anyway- after I trimmed them I had all of the clippings in a little pile and I had a feeling I have had before which is that 'for some weird reason' (and I will explain that reason in a second and it is not really so much weird at all as it is just incredibly sad)- anyway- I have felt this before but I suddenly felt like saving them. I mean- I felt like I did not want to just throw them away. Yes, my toenails. So I saved them. I put them all onto a little piece of tape in two little rows- from big toe clipping to small and then I covered it with a second piece of tape. As soon as I was done I thought, "NOW what do I do with this?" I just put it on a shelf in my room and I went off to the foundation to start working on my projects there. But before I started working I decided I would write in my sketchbook. (I have failed to mention this- but on February 16- almost 2 weeks ago- I decided I would start writing three pages everyday in my sketchbook- even if it felt like it was going to kill me. :) I started this because I NEED to write everyday to gain a better understanding of my own thinking and thus to be able to function in a better way and the 3 pages part came from the whole 'Artists Way' journaling thing which helped me to feel better in the past and now I know why it worked so well for me- because I was just ACHING to write-talk-tell my story.) So yesterday before I started working I wrote my three pages which actually turned into 4 or 5. Which is quite great because when I started doing the daily writing not even two weeks ago I would be on page one and writing something like, "I am still on page 1. How I am I going to fill 2 and a half more pages?" And now I will be on my fourth or fifth page trying to negotiate a stop to the writing so I can go and do other things. I should probably just write for as long as I can though... Ok... to try to get 'back on track' here... so I went to the foundation yesterday morning and before working I wrote in my sketchbook and I was writing a bunch of different things, a bunch of different thoughts... and then I wrote the following in big huge all capital letters: "This morning when I trimmed my toenails I saved what I cut off and it was because I AM SO SCARED TO LOSE ANYMORE PIECES OF MYSELF." After I wrote that I almost cried. When I told Stefano about the whole thing and what I wrote I DID cry.
And the other thing is this: Yesterday I ate two smallish sized pieces of pizza for lunch and as I was chewing I realized this: PUTTING ANYTHING INTO MY MOUTH MAKES ME PANIC. Because my father ORALLY RAPED ME AND FOR SO MANY YEARS- PUTTING ANYTHING into my mouth causes me to be filled and overwhelmed and full of panic. Ah, right. And now I know VERY CLEARLY why I have had "trouble" with food and eating and my mouth and the fact that I have one.
Having a mouth and teeth and my voice- THE ONE MY MOTHER DID NOT RESPOND TO WHEN I CALLED FOR HELP IN THE WORST MOMENTS LIKE WHEN I THOUGHT MY FATHER WAS GOING TO KILL ME- makes me panic.
*****NOTE TO JESSIEH: I LOVE YOU. And yes it IS a big deal that you are graduating. And yes, it is aBIGGER DEAL that you are still alive and that you have survived all that you have survived. I will dance to that fact when I see you in May. I love you.***** Jenny, Inc.

Surfacing.

The last six pictures HERE are from today.

INCEST.

Last night I had therapy. This morning I feel like hiding in my bed until... well, for a very long time. Last night I talked about all of the things I LEAST 'LIKE' to talk about. And by 'least like' I really mean: HATE. The things I HATE to talk about. I started thinking yesterday maybe I should write something everyday for a while about being an incest survivor too. A lot of people come to this blog because of searching for something about incest and I know when I have googled 'incest'- well it is still hard to find helpful information and/or good blogs. This also makes me think I should put links here to helpful sites. I have a lot of good blogs that I read every day; a bunch by other sexual abuse survivors. Few things are more encouraging to me than 1. other artists making their work and 2. other sexual abuse survivors who are recovering or recovered from the abuse. I have been thinking about changing my blog so I can include a list of links to websites that I like- both informational ones, art ones and bloggy ones. I am in the process of finding a good template to change my blog to- so I am trying to work that out. I feel like I should do something more helpful by putting together a list of sites that are at least useful to me. So then if people get to this blog because they are looking for USEFUL information about sexual abuse, incest or being a survivor- they will find something more than a huge explosion of paint and pain on a wall called 'grenade'. Yikes. I am going to start trying to figure out a different look for my blog and something where I can put all of the helpful sites that I know of. In the meanwhile- here is a link to a blog I just recently started reading. It is written by a woman who writes about herself by starting with this sentence, "I am a trauma and long-time extreme PTSD survivor." Her blog is here and it is called: Parasites of the mind. At first the title of her blog really bothered me... even with the interesting and intelligent explanation of where it comes from, "When Charcot (1887) first described traumatic memories over a century ago, he called them ‘parasites of the mind.’". Then I started to realize I did not like the title because I am having so much pain and rage and sadness from all of my own traumatic memories.
One more thing quick: I always thought I hated the word 'incest' because incest was something so disgusting... and dirty and gross and sick and twisted and awful. Then I got to therapy and started telling my doctor all of the things my father had done to me and one day he said, "There is a word..." AND I THOUGHT, "NOT THAT WORD." Incest. Right. And the reason I hate it it is not because of 'the word'... but BECAUSE OF ITS MEANING. AND: It REALLY scares me how much of a negative connotation there is attached to that word. Because the negative connotation is not: Sexual abusers are criminals. It is more like: Incest is dirty and 'people involved with incest are dirty'. And so I am here to say this morning: INCEST IS NOT DIRTY. SEXUAL ABUSERS ARE SICK. People that abuse children and/or other people are unhealthy. And people that are abused by them are neither dirty nor bad. People abused by sexual abusers are neither dirty nor bad- they are wounded. Wounded and hurt and angry and sad.
For a long time I have wanted to make a t-shirt with the word INCEST in huge red letters and then something written below it like, "If the word 'incest' scares you... IMAGINE HOW A SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVOR FEELS." Or something like that. I usually imagine the following, actually,
"If the word INCEST scares you, imagine how I feel." Or something like that.
One final thought: This post feels messy and not so well written and I have been going back and editing what I have written and I am not trying to suggest I know much about these things or that my blog or art can help or not help people. I am just trying to say this:
I am a woman who survived 14 years of incest and abuse and today I want to hide in bed with my 2 cats but I am not going to. I am going to go out into the world and live and make my artwork and be real and alive.

Grenade.

12 images from today HERE.

Listen, Jenny. (Drawing on clothing, how the mail gets delivered in Venice (by a little dog on a boat) and a lot of other things.)

The above 4 items are all recently finished. The one below is a work in progress.

Here is a picture of some major traffic in Venice.
Delivery boats, a gondola and a vaporetto (a public bus Venice style).

I took the above photo from the balcony of the foundation. I was watching that guy unload his boat and his dog was tied by a leash to the boat and the man kept yelling (in a kind of affectionate way) for the dog to, "Get back!". I thought it was cute so I went to grab my camera and then when I got back the dog was curled into a ball and waiting. It is hard to see from this photo because there is a package covering the long handles of the cart- but that is a cart that he will pull through the streets to get the packages the rest of the way. Almost everything is brought into and taken out of Venice by boat- so the streets are always full of people pulling carts like this. That little dog is going to just wait there in the sun for the guy to come back. No cart pulling for him!!!!!
I am REALLY glad today is Tuesday. It is the last day of the carnival and it has been crazy crazy crazy here. The carnival was kind of interesting... but I am really happy it will be over tonight. :-)
This morning I started crying while I was brushing my teeth (again) and I FINALLY realized WHY I cry in the morning when I brush my teeth... I have been talking a lot with my doctor about my father forcing me to give him oral sex and I have really been struggling with eating and my mouth and having one, etc. So, having to take care of my mouth is difficult/sad for me. And I often cry when I brush my teeth. I guess it happens mostly in the morning because when I was young and being abused by my dad I would feel so sick and dirty and horrible in the mornings and I would feel like I needed a lot more to clean me than a little tooth-brushing. It is very hard to deal with. Very depressing. BUT OVER OVER OVER. Now there is just the memory/memories... but that is still a lot and still huge.
This morning when I woke up I felt too sad to even get out of bed. I called Stefano and told him, "Hi. I am too sad to get up." He was kind and reminded me that 1. I needed to try to get out of bed anyway and 2. I needed to try to do what I have been trying to do lately which is: NEGOTIATE. Right. We hung up the phone and I laid in bed for a while longer feeling sad and depressed about the past. Then I finally got up and started moving. This is what I have figures out: When I take time to actually listen to my own thoughts and to respond to what I am thinking and to negotiate between different 'ways of being me'.... I may be sad or not feel great all of the time- but when I pay attention to my own thoughts and work on the negotiating- I am always about 1000 times better than if I am constantly trying to pretend the feelings I have are not happening. I talked to Stefano later in the afternoon and I told him that I was always worried I was not going to "get enough done"- if I take the time to listen to myself, to negotiate, etc. But I told him I realizing it is just the opposite of that- if I do NOT listen to myself- if I do NOT negotiate- then it is almost impossible for me to get anything done at all. Even though I stayed in bed late today, when I got up I was paying attention to my own thoughts and so even though I felt pretty sad and was moving pretty slow... I also felt really real and very awake. ALL OF THIS IS A GREAT GREAT WONDERFUL WONDERFUL change. I went to the foundation and finished worked on one t-shirt, made another one from start to finish, photographed everything, made a quick run out to get something for a very late lunch and came back and made a drawing on the wall. I also realized today that it is very helpful to me if I keep a piece of paper and a pen with me at all times. That way I can write down any thought I have that feels important- so I do not forget it or worry about forgetting it. It is also helpful because sometimes I think of so many things I want to do that I need to make a list and go through the things one by one. Other times I get so caught up in feeling bad that I just ignore and/or forget everything that I could/should be doing... so if I have the list and I start to feel 'lost'... I will look to that to figure out what I want/need to do next.... instead of getting carried away by memories of the past and hurting myself. It is a 'to-do' list but it is also a 'to-tell' list. I mean- a lot of the things on the list are things I want to do and/or remember to write out here or to my doctor or in my sketchbook later. So it is helpful to think of it more as my list of things keeping me present and helping to carry me forward. This morning I felt SO bad- but because I seriously just let myself feel totally bad, go to the foundation wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday (did I mention I am at a FASHION foundation?...Um... Lloyd was kind enough to point this out to me this morning as I was walking out the door with all of my hair going off to the right side of my head...)- anyway- because I DID listen to myself I got more done today than I have on probably any other day of my residency. And it is almost 9 pm here in Italy tonight already and I have been busy organizing photos, eating a regular dinner, taking care of Lloyd and Winston and doing a bunch of other little things... soon I will talk to Stefano and after that I will go to bed and HALLELUJAH I MADE IT THROUGH THE DAY WITHOUT HURTING MYSELF THANK YOU ME.

And thank you Jessieh for being you. I love you.

The drawing I made on the wall today was so painful I felt sick as I made it. I started to cry at some point but stopped. I feel like making such a painful drawing helps me to feel better later too. I mean- so much of me is NEEDING to tell the story of what happened in the past and when I just let the blood (paint) flow... everything works better in my mind then.

More tomorrow.

The wall today. (Feb. 24, 2009)

12 images from today are HERE.

FUGUE!

HERE are 12 images from the wall today. :)

Where did I go? Where did the day go?

I do not think it is totally abnormal to feel like, "Whoa... where did the day go?" But my sense of 'Where did the day go?' I think is a little more extreme. I was working on one thing today- most of the afternoon- and when I was finished, I feel like I switched to a different way of thinking and I felt shocked about the time. It is almost 6PM here and I REALLY feel like, "WHOA. What the hell happened?" ... except I know what happened. So it is even weirder to know, but to still have the completely strange feeling.

I feel so overwhelmed by my own thinking. I feel like I had a pretty hard week last week (that is sort of a mild understatement...) and then I wanted to draw this afternoon- but I started working on one thing and it took longer than I planned... Anyway- the carnival is still happening here and there is parade that is keeping Lloyd awake and unable to nap.

My thoughts feel everywhere and all over and like such a mess... but then not. I need to shower, write an email, organize some images on my computer, figure out what to eat for dinner and with all of that small stuff I am wondering how I feel toNIGHT. It is strange because I have been trying to listen more to my own thoughts... and that is sort of helping me to feel better. But feeling better also means a lot of not feeling very good. And... anyway... I just have so many different thoughts and I switch so much between my different ways of thinking... I feel like I am not always doing things in a good way, or the right way or something is wrong... SOMETHING ALWAYS feel wrong. Today I was thinking how my brain overfloweth with thoughts of 'oh my god something terrible is going to happen'. After living for so much of my life thinking and knowing that something terrible really was going to happen and then having to shove it all away and then starting to think/talk about all of those feelings now... Well, it is weird (I am writing 'weird and strange' a lot here...) because now I am becoming more aware that I am almost always walking around feeling 1. Trapped 2. panicked 3. worried something bad is going to happen. And all 3 of those things were very true for me for a very long time- but it mostly never got felt- just in a small and sort of sideways way- I mean- I was never able to CONNECT those feelings to what was really wrong. And it IS pretty weird to feel scared and worried and trapped and panicked... but to not KNOW WHY. And while it is a relief to start to know the 'why' part of it all... it is also painful, difficult and STRANGE. Strange because I still have a lot of those same feelings and almost all of them always in one way or another. But today I felt really bad and I was thinking how I felt trapped and then I was thinking 'But why do I feel trapped?' And then I was thinking how it was about the past.... and then I was thinking how I can do whatever I want now and how I am not trapped anymore. And it is really really shocking to me to feel like I can do or say or write or draw or make anything that I want. I mean... I keep obsessing over very simple ideas like: I can go out and walk ANYWHERE. I can decide to wear ANY clothing that I want. I can eat whatever I feel like, I can go to bed when I want to, I can write or talk or tap dance with Lloyd if I feel like it. That is just SOOOOOO great. Not because Lloyd is strong at tap, but because I am REALIZING I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT. I am waking up. And I am realizing I AM NOT A PRISONER ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to go and find Lloyd's tap shoes now. He does do a pretty good 'buck and wing'. ;-)

More truth, the other Sistine Chapel and more food- but not in a bad way.

I just got back from a day in Padua with Stefano. We had a really good time- we met there this morning and immediately went into a bookstore to find a restaurant guide. Then we borrowed a bookstore map and figured out how to get to the restaurant for lunch. After all of the critical details were taken care of (where we would eat lunch I mean) :) we walked for a while and then went to the Scrovegni Chapel where we bought our tickets and made a reservation for later in the day. We had a great lunch- we went to a place just outside of Padua and we were the only 'tourists' there- everyone else was a 'local'- so we pretty much knew we were in for a good thing. The food was really good. We both had pasta, then Stefano had meat and polenta and I had fish and cauliflower.
I got really exited about the olive oil (note photo taken with my camera phone while Stefano was talking to the waiter) and I ate a few pieces of good bread (as a sort of 'plate' for the oilI was enjoying so much) and some good salad which included a lot of carrots and some more of the oil. We ordered espresso when we were just finishing our wine and I quickly asked Stefano- "Don't you want to have a little desert?" Stefano does NOT say no to food- so when we were given our list of options and everything sounded good... he picked two. One was a lemon cake and the other a ricotta pie (something Stefano LOVES)- it was great because they were both homemade and STILL WARM. So we were feeling pretty pleased about everything and then we got the check... And we were shocked because we were both expecting it to be about twice as much as it was. Right- we did not know the price of anything because in Italy many places do not do things like print out menus with prices, etc. They would rather talk you through the whole thing.... anyway... it was a great meal and we had a really good time. We went back to Padua, walked around a little, went to a small museum and then TO THE SCROVEGNI CHAPEL. I went once before but Stefano had never gone. We were both pretty excited because it is a masterpiece. It is truly indescribable and no matter how many photos you see of it- nothing compares to actually walking into the chapel and being there in person. Anyway- the only bad thing about it is that YOU CAN ONLY BE THERE FOR 15 minutes. And that is just crazy. All four sides of the chapel and the ceiling are covered with the work of Giotto and 15 minutes is hardly enough time to look at anything- anyway- it is still incredible.
So even though this sounds like a 'great day'- and it sort of was- I was really sad when we had to go in opposite directions on our separate trains and the whole thing reminded me of why we were there in the first place and not in Venice.

So I come back to Venice and it is the last weekend of the carnival which means it is CRAZY here. People are not just filling the streets, but also dancing and getting drunk in them. It is a bit overwhelming for me and so I just tried to enjoy a little of the weird-craziness of it all as I walked from the train station back to my apartment wearing headphones and listening to my music. That was my compromise- I could have taken the boat and avoided the whole craziness of the carnival- but I decided just to walk right through it... but wearing headphones.

It was painful to say goodbye to Stefano in Padua knowing that if I asked him to come to Venice we would have been on the next train together. It is SO HARD to know about the past though and like the huge circle I had tattooed on the back of my hand I feel like I am always having to REMIND myself: where I am and what is really going on. I mean: Stefano did not come here this weekend because I have been feeling so overwhelmed by him arriving here late Friday night and then being in a bedroom with him... I mean... SOME parts of my thinking can not tolerate it- being so physically close to another person, even Stefano. This is very hard to deal with because other ways of being me know I love him, know he is who he is and I do not need to be afraid and there is always the fact that I sleep better (deeper and fewer nightmares) when we are together. But it is hard to want to be close and far at the same time.

It is painful. Every post I write these days I use the word PAINFUL a lot.

I will write more tomorrow. It will probably be something about the 'painfulness' of what it is like to RECOVER. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Not night.

This is detail from the wall today. There are 12 images of my work from today HERE.

I do not love the night time. My father hurt me for so long and almost always it was at night. I would wake up in the morning and in between trying to recover from any mental/physical remains of any trauma/rape that had just occurred that evening before... My mind would wake up in a race- starting to worry and dread the next night. There was so little I could do to escape him- I faked illnesses more than any other child/person I have ever known and even that was not always enough to get him to leave me alone. When I was about 16 years old I one day saw I had a red dot on my arm- I think I was not feeling very good- but by the time I was 16 I had faked being sick so many times and for so long that I was almost totally unable to tell when I actually was ill. This is one of my very very favorite memories (really) from when I was in high school: I walked up to my mom and pointed to the red dot on my arm and asked her, "What is this?" She took one look at the spot and said, "Oh my god, it's a chicken pox." OH. MY. GOD. This was the best piece of news my mother probably ever gave me- that I was sick with chicken pox. If I ever felt like there was a god, it was probably at this moment. The reason that this was GREAT news- better than just good... is because my father had never had chicken pox. NEVER. Everyone in my family had gotten them except me and my father. So he HAD TO HAD TO HAD TO stay far away from me. I remember laying upstairs in my bed with a huge fever, covered in red spots- propped up on pillows, passing in and out of sleep and feeling like a QUEEN. I do not have any memory of itchiness or being bothered at all by being sick. I was toooooooo happy. It was toooooo wonderful wonderful. It bought me four or five... maybe even six- days without being raped.

So I am having a lot of trouble with feeling very anxious at night. I take medicine to help me sleep and that calms me down some- but I do not take it until right before I go to bed and anyway- even though it is hard- I really want to try to write and draw my way out/through this- I mean: Even if going back on some medicine might lessen some of my anxiety- I know that I need to tolerate these feelings- deal with them, manage them, accept them as part of my past and move on. I also know there is never going to be a 'great' time for doing this- now is as good as any moment will ever be. And I also feel like medication- even though it might calm me down a little at night- it would just prolong this whole process and that is something I really do not want.

Anyway- all nights are hard. I need to figure out better ways to manage my nights. Or how I feel during them.... I feel like I need to accept the past and I still do not want to. It is so very hard and painful.

me.

Everything everything. (Living with dissociative identity disorder.)

So I realized today that I have been avoiding writing on my blog. I like to pretend that my reasons for avoiding to write on my blog are things like the following: I am too busy, um.... I have too many other things to do, sometimes I worry about what will happen when/if my father is ever shown and/or finds my blog... but the REAL reason that I am not writing when I do not write ;-) Is because....... I AM TRYING TO AVOID MYSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So today I was thinking about how I have been avoiding to write on my blog and thus- how I have been trying to avoid thinking or being aware about my own thoughts. I have been working really hard with my doctor to let myself start to let myself (strange writing, I know... but it is difficult to describe all of this stuff... even my doctor sometimes invents new words to try to describe things. :-) ) Anyway... I have been working hard on trying to listen to my own thoughts and also to try to let the different ways of being me actually have a voice. ! That is hard and painful and confusing and painful.... but after the painful painfulness... there comes (FINALLY) relief. Ahhhhh.... sweet relief. The only thing that can make me feel better about the past, the grotesque amount of abuse and trauma that I survived and how my mind is divided now and how difficult it is to live/manage/'deal with'/accept/live with/manage/live with.... having a divided mind..... THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER IS TALKING. Ok.... talking, writing, drawing, being honest and listening to myself. And those may be 5 different things- but they are all really very similar, very connected and very necessary for me to feel better, to continue to heal, to get through the terrible painful memories and thoughts/body feelings/memories.
SO... last night I had a REALLY good talk with Stefano. It was something like this: I NEED YOU TO BE BETTER. And he was bascially like: OK JENNY, I LOVE YOU AND I WANT TO DO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING I CAN TO HELP YOU SO I WILL KEEP WORKING TO BE BETTER. And I basically responded by saying, "O.k., great, thank you." There was a little more to the conversation than that... but that is a good quick summary of it. :)
It is really hard to be in a relationship and be dealing with/recovering from/healing from/with having a divided mind and having lived through/survived so much abuse. I think it would be hard to NOT be in a relationship with a person who I really love and who really loves me and I am really grateful that Stefano and I have each other- but it is hard. It is hard because it takes me a huge amount of work and time and effort to deal with/manage and figure things out within my own head and then there is the normal stuff about being in a relationship (as in: the part where it is not about me and my divided ways of thinking but about Stefano and about Stefano and I together) and then there is the part where I have to be always explaining to him what I am learning, understanding, changing... how I am feeling and what I am figuring out and on and on. And then HE has to always be working to allow for a lot of confusing feelings, a lot of change, a huge amount of switching in thinking in me and on top of all of that... OF COURSE... ALL OF HIS OWN FEELINGS. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS A LOT. It is hard.
Since I have been in Venice, Stefano has been coming here on the weekends. Well, mostly. This weekend, for example, he will not be coming to Venice. When he comes here he takes a train from his town to Venice and gets here at about 11:15 PM on Friday nights. And every Friday night when I know that he is 'on his way' to Venice... I am having anxiety. I am trying (really trying) to start working with the different ways of my thinking to begin to deal with/manage/tolerate and accept thoughts/feelings/ideas like this... but right now the whole 'him rolling into town late at night (almost exactly around the time my father used to come into my room many nights to rape me) and then us going to bed right away after he gets here.... combined with then being together all of the time that he is here, most of that time spent in my bedroom because I have a roommate and then him LEAVING on Sunday night when he has to go back... it is all to much like: My father coming into my bedroom late at night and then raping me and then leaving me. And I am also having a lot of trouble with my body and body memories right now, so it is all made much more complicated that I can hardly stand to touch my own body or lay in a bed or just be in bed by/with my-self... let alone another person... let alone... A MAN. It is all just too much for me right now and I just need some time to talk talk talk talk TALK TALK TALK about the past and about what my father did and about all of the terrible things that happened and about my mind and about how much pain my mind had to shove away because it could not be tolerated and about how much my mind can no longer tolerate the shoving awayness of all of those terrible thoughts and feelings- they need to be fully thought and perhaps a little 'felt' so that I- all of me- all of my mind- can go on, be present, fully heal and recover from the horrible things that happened in my past and so that I can feel better and have a good life.
So this weekend Stefano will not being coming to Venice and we decided instead that we will both take trains on Saturday and meet in a small city not far from Venice and just spend the day together. This is called COMPROMISE. This is called NEGOTIATION. This is called WHAT IT IS LIKE TO LIVE WITH A DIVIDED MIND.
And this is really what every-thing every-day is like for me right now. Because when there is NOT the negotiating and the compromising and the discussions inside of my head and through writings here and in my sketchbook... there is just MORE PAIN. And I am all about the LESS PAIN plan. Therefore: I am working hard to be CONSTANTLY negotiating, listening to myself, trying to tolerate and then tolerate some more and then work out more negotiating between the different ways of thinking/feeling of being me. I want to be in less pain.

I love you Jessieh.

And here is the poem that was on the Writer's Almanac yesterday:

Tossing and Turning

by John Updike

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body
confiningly few sides.
There is the left,
the right, the back, the belly, and tempting
in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,
that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation
in one or another arm.
Yet we turn each time
with fresh hope, believing that sleep
will visit us here, descending like an angel
down the angle our flesh's sextant sets,
tilted toward that unreachable star
hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence
dreams and good luck flow.
Uncross
your ankles. Unclench your philosophy.
This bed was invented by others; know we go
to sleep less to rest than to participate
in the twists of another world.
This churning is our journey.
It ends,
can only end, around a corner
we do not know
we are turning.

violate

12 images of me working on the wall today are here.

The wall today.

This a detail of the wall... the last 12 images HERE are from today.

Going back to hear myself.

Here is the wall after I drew on it today. More images here.

update(s)

Images of the clothes that are finished are HERE.

Images of the wall in progress are HERE.

me.

comment about my work on the wall:

"There is a way in which the whole sequence “shows” me what it is like to be in your mind, the complexity, the simultaneity, the sequentiality, the blotting over and blotting out, and the world dimming, and then going dark, gone, nothingness of being, and then emerging again, and repeating, without explanation or apparent pattern other than many patterns."

Yes, I said. It is like that. The blotting over and the blotting out. The blotting over and the blotting out. The world dimming. THE WORLD DIMMING. The world dimming and then going dark.... then emerging again. Repeating. Without explanation or apparent pattern OTHER THAN MANY PATTERNS.

ship wreck(ed)

Images of the work in progress are here.

As it stands.

Here is the wall today. And here are 12 more pictures of the work in progress.

And here is a t-shirt that I made yesterday.

Without bloodshed now. (WARNING: This post may be triggering.)

Tonight I want to cut myself, burn myself, stuff myself with some sugary foods to cover the bad MEMORY-TASTE I have in mouth. I was just eating dinner and I thought, "I am not getting full." Which is 'odd' (my first thought) because I was not even hungry at all when I first started to eat tonight. So I was eating dinner and I was thinking, "What can I eat next?" because I am trying to SHOVE back into the past- THE PAST. I am wishing and sometimes trying and ALWAYS ALWAYS unable to get away from the terrible memories, the body memory feelings, the thoughts, the pictures, the stories that play again and again in my mind- about MY past. I DO NOT WANT THEM. What will I draw tomorrow? Maybe I will make a t-shirt that reads, "THIS SUCKS". Wait... do I mean... The past sucks? The truth sucks? Or the very worst possible question/answer of all: I USED TO SUCK....... And for the ....... I am being forced to insert the words, "My father.".
Fuck. Right, and that too.
This blog post is like an email I could send my doctor but which I am posting here because of my wish to talk about my pain with the hope that 1. It will help me to get through some of it and 2. Perhaps the story of my pain and of my continuing to go through it even when it feels like I can not possibly go- maybe it can help somebody else.
THIS IS PAINFUL.
So I am eating a dinner which I was not hungry for at all and I feel like I am not getting full, I am not feeling better... and I stop and ask myself 'why'? I literally think to myself, "O.k.... why am I not getting full?" BECAUSE WHAT I NEED IS NOT A DINNER. NOT A FOOD, not even a pen to draw with or a huge wall to draw on. I need to TALK. I need to TELL THIS STORY I DO NOT WANT TO TELL. AND MOSTLY and most painful of all (for parts of me anyway-) I need to tell this story to MYSELF.
I just typed the above sentence and then paused and put my head in my hands and I, who can not usually feel the weight of my own body or the feeling of anything against my skin- I put my head in my hands and I feel the shape of my skull. The shape of my skull and the way my skin feels over it and the way my skin moves a little as my hands go against my own skin and for a second I am curious... It feels so odd- this feeling and to feel my own body....
This is what almost always happens - I am even sure I have written this elsewhere on this blog but then dissociated away from thinking about it- but whenever I start to think/know about the truth I start to feel real. Being dissociative and dissociating; it is like always being lost. It is like being lost and still going and going and going knowing you are lost and mostly trying to pretend I am not lost and doing one thing and then another but things never feel right and everything becomes mixed up and confused... And then if I just THINK about the truth- the truth about my past- the truth about who I really am now in relation to that past- it is suddenly like there is a little sign in the middle of all the painful lostness and the sign reads, "YOU ARE HERE!!!" and I feel for a moment not lost. Not drowning and not lost and not dissociated and I feel REAL and HAPPY and BETTER and NOT LOST. Being not lost is good. Being not lost feels VERY good. It is just that getting to the place/moment of not lostness is PAINFUL. PAINFUL.
I want to take the best part of my day, of what I know, and make it into my story. I keep wanting to take the good and keep dumping the bad. That is not working. It has never worked. It will never work.
I keep wishing I could change the past, change what my father did, change every way he hurt me and it is just totally and completely impossible.
I do not want to hurt anymore and I never want to think about the painful past- but I have to reclaim the bad things that happened as being real parts of the story of my past so that I can go forward and have a really good life now and be alive awake, real and present. Let me just mention once again that even though I know this is the one and only way to go forward and to recover myself/selves and my mind and life.... IT HURTS. IT HURTS. IT HURTS. IT HURTS.
IT HURTS.

The wall today.

Here is an image of the wall today. And here are 12 images (the last ones are from today) of the work in progress. Today I posted twelve (instead of six) pictures because I liked the way the drawing looked as it 'came out'.

Also from today. (Thoughts of a wishful thinker.)

Here is an image of me working on the wall today. HERE there are six pictures of the work in progress. (The last six images on the FlickR page are from today.)

A couple of weeks ago I made 2 t-shirts for a woman who works at the foundation. Over the weekend her nephews saw them (both shirts had dinosaurs on them) and they wanted dinosaur t-shirts too. Well... one of them wanted a dinosaur and the other a horse. She asked me if I would do it and then brought in these two little shirts after lunch. After I drew the horse (below) I thought I might use the Replay t-shirt with the huge 'R' on it and try to draw one more horse; I have kind of been wondering what I was going to do with that shirt....
I also made a skirt this morning and did a little drawing on that, but it has a long way to go and also some sewing. I am supposed to get a sewing machine tomorrow or Wednesday. :-)

On I go.

This is a t-shirt I drew on this weekend. Today I have therapy- in just over an hour- and I get so anxious before it. But I am trying to work on that too... I mean- I am trying to realize: It is not the therapy that I hate. It is what COMES OUT in my therapy that I really hate. This past Friday someone I knew from high school sent me a link to their Facebook page and since I do not have one I signed up so I could look at theirs. Then I started seeing the pages of a lot of people I used to know- people from high school, friends from college,etc. All people I do not speak to at all now. And it bothered me. A lot. It bothered me to see people I used to know and half or more with wedding pictures or pictures of them with their children. It took me a good two days before I could really sit with knowing WHY it bothered me so much to see the people I used to know, go to school with, be friends with... Most of them probably remember me as being 'crazy' or as having something really wrong with me anyway. When I ended my connection to my family I also really stopped even trying to explain to anyone I had know from earlier in my life about 'what had happened to me' (what my father had done to me all of my life, I mean). It is painful because I was pregnant long before anyone I knew was- but it was from incest and one ended with a miscarriage- the other an abortion. Nothing to explain there (certainly no photos for Facebook about that...). It is also painful because I keep wondering: Didn't any of those people ever wonder WHAT was wrong with me? Why I hurt myself, slept with so many people, drank so much, did so many drugs? Or didn't some of their parents? All of the teachers I knew? No, I guess not. Or maybe, but I think that (much like me...) people do not want to think about rape or incest or father's who get into bed at night with their children or a mother who would drive her daughter to an abortion for herself and her husband.
So it is not about being married or having children... it is about being real and about being honest. And my truth is honestly something I wish was different. But I can not change the truth about my past. And I have to accept it all even though most days I still want to reject every piece of it. So I keep going, even when it feels painful in a way that makes anything and everything seem totally and completely impossible. I am grateful that Stefano is so patient and kind and I am grateful that I have good friends and a great doctor who all help me. Lately (and I think this is because I am drawing so much and telling a lot of my story through the making of my art) the past is becoming more real feeling. And I am feeling more real, too. And it is good..... but it hurts like HELL. It is painful in a terrible way to start to try to really sit with the truth about my past. It hurts and it makes me feel sad and sick and overwhelmed and anxious and tired and suicidal. BUT I WILL KEEP GOING.
I feel like it hurts too much to keep going, but there is no stopping, there is no other choice.
So: On. I. Go.

The wall today...

Here is what the wall looked like today; after I drew/painted on it for one more hour.
CLICK HERE to see all of the images of the wall drawing in progress.

First day of drawing/painting on the wall.

Click here to see some images of the drawing 'in progress'.

TODAY/TOMORROW

I just took this image tonight. I repainted the wall a few days ago (it was covered in charcoal dust from my three 'test drawings') and tomorrow I will start working on the actual wall. I first heard of Andrea Molino and his idea for this project almost exactly one year ago to the day. So... after almost ONE year of emailing and talking about me 'drawing on the wall' and all of the work being recorded... I will begin the actual drawing tomorrow. I will work on it for the next two months.

t-shirt from today

A day with little sun-shine.

From today.

Day.

I just posted a poem here by Catherine Barnett, from her book of poems "Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced". The book is about the death of her sister's two children. Last night I was reading an anthology of poems and came across a different poem by her from the same book. All of the poems are incredibly beautiful and her ability to describe and convey the grief and the suffering almost takes my breath away.
It is already almost 1pm here in Italy and while I got up early today and have gotten quite a bit done... I am feeling pretty sad.
I feel like there is so much grief inside of me from the past- so much grief I need to grieve. I am walking around everyday becoming more clear and more aware about both the past and the present and I am almost constantly on the verge of crying.

poem by Catherine Barnett, from "Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced"

Living Room Altar

Except for the shirt pulled from the ocean,
except for her hands, which keep folding the shirt,
except for her body, which once held their bodies,

my sister wants everything back now—

If there were a god who could out of empty shells
carried by waves to shore
make amends—

If the ocean saved in a jar
could keep from turning to salt—

She’s hearing things:

bird calling to bird,
cat outside the door,
thorn of the blackberry against the trellis.

Catherine Barnett