Jessieh.

I Am Waiting

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona

and I am waiting

for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored

and I am waiting

for them to prove

that God is really American

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped onto church altars

if only they can find

the right channel

to tune in on

and I am waiting

for the Last Supper to be served again

with a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered

by an obscure general practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and tv rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am awaiting retribution

for what America did

to Tom Sawyer

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Childe Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting

for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again

youth’s dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

"6. News Will Arrive From Far Away"

by Dana Gioia

News will arrive from far away: the phone
rings unexpectedly at night,
and a voice you almost recognize
will speak. Soft and familiar,
it mentions names you haven't heard for years,
names of another place, another time,
that street by street restore
the lost geography of childhood.
Half asleep you listen in the dark
gradually remembering where you are.
You start to speak. Then silence.
A dial tone. An intervening voice.
Or nothing. The call is finished.
Not even time to turn the lights on.
Now just the ticking of the clock,
the cold disorder of the bed.

The courage to go to the library.

Today I went to the library and checked out a copy of "The Courage to Heal". I have read the first 7 or 8 pages and now it is EVEN MORE CLEAR why it took me five and half years to get there and pick the book up. I know it will be helpful- but it is incredibly painful to read it.

militia

Work in progress.

I started this drawing tonight at my group art therapy session. After working on it for about an hour I had to put it away because I felt so overwhelmed by it I was not really able to even keep working. I am going to work on it more next week. Before the group session I talk with the art therapist who runs the group and today we talked about THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING ME.

breaking sound.

Red hat.
Cherry bicycle.
I hear the bedroom door being opened in the night.
I am scared to sleep.
Scared to sit down, touch the mattress and my sheets are in a tangle and I think that I will never sleep well again.
Crimes against my face and mouth.
Crimes against my face and mouth.

Crimes against every place of me.

Crimes against my face and mouth.

After therapy

I had therapy today and even though it was good... it was incredibly painful. I came back 'home' and felt really 'bad'. I took a nap and had a terrible dream. Another 'memory folded into a dream' dream. And it feels like the thing that is helping me the most is writing and drawing and organizing and thinking about the different ways of being me and I want to be glad... that there is something that makes me feel better... but it is so painful... it is hard to feel 'completely' happy about it. Yesterday I biked and today I walked and my legs are sore. I will bike tomorrow. And keep working in the binder. The binder is freaking me out. It is good... but scary to go forward.

Big big nightmare (dreaming in memories). Bike riding weather today. Blue binder of hope and happiness.

I just woke up from a terrible dream. Except it was not a 'dream'- it was a memory. It was a terrible memory that came back to me in a dream. Last night I was not feeling very well before I went to sleep- I was anxious and worried and hyper-alert and it was hard for me to calm down and hard for me to be or feel comfortable and my whole body felt like a swollen tool for pain. I had an o.k. day yesterday- but before I went to bed I started to really struggle. And then that struggle went right into my dreams or came out there too. It was horrible.
Yesterday it rained almost all day here and I was not able to go out on my bike. As soon as I woke from the nightmare this morning I opened the curtain and was happy to see the sun shining- biking weather. So today I will draw and write and RIDE MY BIKE.
Oh that dream was bad. Really bad. "All my skin hurts" bad. "It is hellishly painful to go through these memories" bad. The one good thing I can think about having the dream/nightmare memory that is good: I will only have to remember it for the first time once- so I am already through that.
Something else that is good: On Thursday I bought a three ring binder. I had read somewhere online that using a binder and loose leaf paper is a good way to make a book about 'a divided mind'. So I started doing that. And it is a little painful, but helpful. Yesterday I was writing on one page, drawing on another and making a list of things to do and sections to divide the book into on another page and I kept writing writing writing and then switching to a different page and then coming back to where I had been and then thinking of something else and then starting a new idea, a new page- until I was covered in loose leaf paper. But it is good. It is helpful. I have tried many times to make the lists and chapters and sections and dividers in a regular sketchbook- but it is difficult in a book already bound because I will feel like I need to change the name of a section or add more paper or rearrange the order of the pages- and all of this I can do in a binder.
The binder is a METAPHOR for my brain. Lol. I am binding the pages and my head (thoughts). The binder is a deep dark blue color- like a version of the night sky in some painting I have yet to paint and I want to put stars on the cover- the parts of the constellation.

_________

Things I live with.

Homemade haircut.
Burning skin feeling.
More self hate than I can put into my backpack.
Glittery blue nail polish.
Glittery blue nail polish used for painting pictures and not decorating finger nails.
Painful memories that have me crying a lot right now.
Dr. Larry Lloyd and Sir Winston the cat.
Starting to make a book about the different ways of being me.
Enormous amount of grief.
Hope.
Hope.
Hope.
Strength.

FREEDOM BIKE. 3 drawings.

All three of the above drawings are available for sale here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday when I went out biking I taped a little note across the top of the handlebars and it read:
IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.

Big ride. Hard therapy.

This morning after therapy I felt a bit like this... After therapy I biked home, took a small nap, ate lunch, drew a little... and then went out and biked again. I am really struggling with the horrible truth about my past. I will try to write more, tonight I just do not want to think about it anymore. I did bike 55 miles today and that is the most I have ever done in one day.

drawing.

Sometimes I cry out on the dance floor.

I have not written here since Thursday and I WANT to write something but my mind also feels like such a wild mix of thoughts... it is hard to know where to go with all of it. I guess that 'wild mix of thoughts' is my point though. I am struggling a lot with the balance of knowing the truth about my past and starting to also now finally be able to think about MY FUTURE AND MY PRESENT.
It feels so hard to know about the past, to accept it so that I can finally let it go and move on and live my life in the present and FINALLY. The pain of the really knowing though- the pain of being really honest with myself- about myself and my mind- the pain pierces my heart. I have no real words to describe it.
I keep waking up in the mornings having to remind myself of the date, the year, my age, the fact that I AM SAFE NOW. And what a way to start the day.... I keep feeling like I CAN NOT TOLERATE THIS PAIN ANY LONGER!!!!!! But I do. Everyday I just do what I can and I have finally started to be able to imagine and so see some of the healing that is coming from all of the therapy and work that I have done to bring myself to the place I am in now.
The better I feel, the more I want to feel better. I am so sick of hurting. I feel like I lived too long in pain. Today I will balance my day- thinking and writing some about the past, about the sadness and rage I am still dragging inside of me- but I am going to balance it now- with being in the present and celebrating my new found ability to SEE AND FEEL AND HEAR that I am in the present and alive and awake and real and safe and here.
So I imagine today will be a mix- good feelings and very difficult ones. But it is getting easier for me to tolerate the pain of knowing about the past- especially now when I am making a painting or a drawing of something that I love, or riding my cherry red bicycle, or turning the music up really loud and dancing around my room.
I must be getting better at starting to see the positive side of a situation... For months I have been upset about the fact that I have this large bedroom with just a desk, a table and a bed. Now I think: What a great dance floor I have here. ;-)

TO BE VERY VERY CLEAR.

This is a self portrait I just made. I am about to leave to bike into the city for my therapy. And a lot of me does not want to go. I feel almost ashamed of this self portrait and I had a moment where I questioned if I should even post it here. That moment passed. I have been starting to realize a lot of FEELINGS that I have that I have never really FELT before and SHAME is at the top of the list of the 'difficult' ones.
So anyway- I am not going to hurt myself, but a part of me would rather. (Rather than go into therapy, rather than go forward, rather than admit the REAL REASONS I HURT.) But I am also starting to really acknowledge the fact that I can not keep hurting myself and creating new pain for myself in the present because I do not want to be honest about where all of my OLD FEELINGS of pain are coming from. THE VERY LAST THING I NEED is MORE pain. So even though I FEEL like I want to hurt myself... I am not going to. And I am going to acknowledge that the reason I feel like hurting myself and so badly is because I was hurt so badly and then told to shut the fuck up about it. Well, I am neither going to be hurt anymore or be silent. And p.s.... That is a butterfly coming out of my head in the drawing and I take that to be one of the very best of signs.

Art. For Sale.

These drawings and several others are now for sale in my Etsy store.

BIKING. 42 miles. Map practice. I love you Jessieh.

Big grief. Burning. Blurry eyes. Bike.

Today when I got on my bike I felt so bad- I keep going out when I actually feel like hurting myself. I know this is good- that I am biking instead of hurting myself- but it is almost amazing to me how bad I am feeling today and that I was able to get myself to go out at all. And then I biked 36 miles.

When I first got on my bike today I felt like my vision was almost blurry- my chest hurts so much from grief it feels almost physical and I feel like the only way I can feel present and know the real time is to be on the bike and LITERALLY GOING FORWARD.

Here is a really beautiful but very painful blog by an artist who survived a massive trauma: impactplasticbag.blogspot.com

On my bicycle near the airport. The past is history. I pedal on.

I have not written here in a few days. My last post was an image of my drawing from my art group therapy on Wednesday. Then I had my regular therapy with Dr. C on Thursday and then again on Friday. (Usually I have it on Monday's and Thursday's- but this week he had to change his schedule and we met on Thursday and Friday.) So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday... it was like a great big huge... a lot of therapy.

A lot has been changing in the past few weeks... a lot has been changing in me and it is both and exciting wonderful... but also sometimes just overwhelming. So I guess I have not posted in the past few days because I have been busy riding my bike, dealing with the pre or post therapy feelings, being in therapy itself or just... somewhere that is not here or any of those other places either.

I have a lot to say, but I am not sure how to say it. And I've just read something really huge and incredible here online- the blog of another trauma survivor and I want to share the link and talk about her blog here, but I feel like I need to ask her first.

One of the things I have been doing recently is starting to READ about trauma- I am FINALLY reading "Trauma and Recovery", by Judith Herman. It is so painful- because so much of it speaks so clearly and perfectly to my own experiences... and while that is in many ways good, it is also painful because it is helping me to finally really start to put the pieces together- the memories, the past, the way my mind works and also allowing me to think about things I have never thought about before like THE FUTURE and THE PRESENT.

I have been biking a lot. Now 30 or more miles a day and I keep feeling like I want to ride more- longer and sometimes farther... but mostly just longer times. I mean: I like to go places on my bike and it is fun to go from one place and get myself to another- but when I first set out on my bike- my first thought is now usually: "This IS my destination." (Just being on my bike, I mean.) When I am biking to get somewhere I leave extremely early so I can bike very slow if I want or need to, allow time for a flat tire or even the possibility of needing to get off my bike and get on the bus with it. But when I am NOT trying to get anywhere and I am alone... sometimes I wander places I had not planned on going to and the other day I just rode 4 times in what I knew was a little circle trail of just over 5 miles- just over four miles from my house.

Anyway- it feels like everything is my life right now is about: biking, healing and drawing. When I am biking I feel like I am able to be more present than at almost any other time and I find the rhythm of the pedaling is like a.... like a cadence that is healing my injuries with each turn of the wheels. I can hardly believe how much better I am finally feeling- because even now when I feel 'bad' or when I am remembering something painful or thinking about something painful from the past- in some ways it is MORE painful now... because I feel so much more real and present. But in some ways all of the shit of the past is easier to tolerate now for the exact same reasons: Because I am so much more real and present.

When I was in Venice, working on my project, I had a pair of jeans that I wore there almost everyday. And after my project I did a little drawing on them. When I started biking I was first wearing jeans- because I have NEVER been able to tolerate shorts... having my legs exposed makes me feel.... it MADE me feel 'unsafe' and/or vulnerable... I mean... it was never about long pants or shorts... it was always about HAVING BEEN ABUSED SO MUCH AND FOR SO LONG. But anyway- when I first started biking I just wore the jeans and thought I would just be 'warm' and it would be fine. Then I started to really really love being on my bike. More and more each time I rode... then I trimmed the bottom off my jeans- sort of like cropped pants. Then I finally cut them off into shorts and started to ride in the July and now August sun with my legs that have almost never even been exposed to sunlight.

Tonight I am beginning to draw on my jean-biking-shorts.... A horse... with a red head- because it is so mad and pink body- because I always think of pink as the color of healing.

Anyway- I could go on and on. I am sleeping less now than I used to, but when I do I sleep better then I used to. I guess this post is a little 'all over the place'- but that is a little how things feel and are right now.

I have the most wonderful creamy-light-greenish-blue-colored milk crate that I am going to put on the back of my bike and handlebar tape that is a turquoisey color. I will post photos of that. And of my drawn on bike shorts too.

A lot of times when I am biking I am having memories come back to me- painful things from my past that I have never yet been able to go back to or think about again. But more often than that I am making lists in my mind of the things that I am thankful for and things that I love about being alive- and things I want to do and make and tell people and learn more about.

But sometimes, like today, I am riding my bike and watching planes fly right over me; coming down to land and I am filled with a mix of joy at being alive, of wanting to be on a some plane leaving to any place and also... the feeling that I do not have to run anymore at all.

And then I pedal on.

Art therapy bike painting #3.

Self portrait.

Sitting in the f'ing railway station. (GET ON THE TRAIN.)

"there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you."

-from Bluebird, by Charles Bukowski

MAD MAD MAD. Best Sunday drive ever.

This morning I woke up feeling ok- not great- but ok. I had coffee and cried over the newspaper (I am crying over almost everything these days). I did a few things around the house and then started drawing. I was drawing and painting and looking online for places to sell my drawings and I was feeling pretty good... and that lasted for several hours and I got a lot of drawing/painting/figuring things out done. Then I started to not feel great. Then I started to feel really bad and suddenly I was not drawing or painting or figuring anything out and I was staring at the floor and thinking about cutting myself. Then killing myself. Able to recognize this huge (huge) 'switch' in my thinking... I got a sketchbook journal out and wrote a little bit. That helped a little. But I still felt really bad- depressed and tired and 'sad' and almost like I was going to be sick or pass out- so I decided to get into bed- to let myself lay down for minute. As soon as I laid down and took about two deep breaths- I suddenly had a very clear and very HORRIFIC memory of my father. It was like a crystal clear and 3-d photograph that I saw in my mind. And it was awful. It made me panic and feel really sick- like I really might vomit.
I was out of bed and on my bike in less than 15 minutes. I had planned on maybe 'taking the day off' from biking... but I felt so overwhelmed by the thoughts of hurting myself and then the HORRIFIC MEMORY... that the absolute only thing to do seemed to be to jump on my bike. Instead of my usual and a little slow 'I will get there eventually' pedaling, I was doing something new. And it was more of a 'I am so mad I want to murder someone' pedaling. I biked for what I knew was about 8 or 9 miles and then I got to this little high school and I got off my bike and stretched and then walked for about 15 or 20 minutes around the baseball diamond. The entire time I was crying and swearing and saying things out loud like, "YOU ALMOST KILLED ME. YOU ALMOST KILLED ME." I WAS FURIOUS. I have been in therapy for more than 5.5 years and I have been WAITING to be mad. It is scary because it is a very big amount of mad that I have inside of me. I got on my bike and did the "I am so mad I want to murder someone" pedaling all the way back to my house. Then I made a few adjustments to my bike and rode around my neighborhood a few times.

The biking is exercise and rage-management.

HEALING. New sounds these days now. Dancing around my bedroom. Something great from yesterday. HEALING!

This is one of those things I have known about for a long time but it was just too hard to really 'face' until now. When I was young I always had a stereo and I remember thinking (when I was young I remember often having this thought I mean) I used to think, "I love music... but why do I hardly ever listen to it?" I think I always knew the answer- in some other part of my divided mind- but of course I could not 'tell the answer to the part that was asking the question'. I was always SO SCARED at my house. And the truth is I could not listen to music because what I was always 'listening to' was: The sound of my dad. I was listening to hear when he would pull into the driveway after work, listening for the sound of him coming into the house, trying to figure out his mood from the day (almost always a bad one), listening for what he would do after he got home (almost always turn the TV on). Then I was listening to make sure he KEPT the TV on. I wanted to be sure that he stayed in his chair in front of the TV all night (he almost always did) and when he didn't... well, I certainly wanted advance warning of that. And then there was the night... and all of the mountain of time that I spent in my childhood and adolescence and right up until I left the house for college- listening for him at night. When I was young I would go to bed before my parents, but I would never sleep. I would WAIT. I would wait and listen. Wait and listen for the horrible horrible awful sound of the sound of my father turning the TV off after the news. The sound of the TV being turned off, in my mind, was next followed by something that feels like the shuffle of a man being walked to his execution. It was 'the beginning of the end'- in my mind anyway- and it scares me to think about how many times I survived that experience. I would hear the TV go off and then... the sound of him putting the reclining chair back into an upright position, the sound of him setting his water glass down in the kitchen sink, the tiny scratch of a sound that his glasses made when he took them off for the night and left them on the kitchen counter top. (It took me years to realize- not even he wanted to see fully what it was that he did at night.) And then... the steps. The sound of my father walking up the steps- from the downstairs part of our house- up to the upstairs. I can hear his foot still as it hits the first step and my whole heart and mind pick right up out of my own chest and head; shift to some other country. Another foot on the step and from that country I move to some other planet and by the time he reaches the small landing- the space between the two small flights of steps- I am so far away- nothing could have recovered me. I was without season. I lived under blankets four inches thick in the dead of summer- this is a (rather very minor, by comparison) problem I still struggle with. I have gotten it down to a blanket and a sheet now- but I currently sleep with two fans on in my bedroom at night because I need to feel the weighted safety of at least one blanket in place over my body- and never being lifted- not from any corner- and even now I am waking almost every night in a sweat from the warmth of the too heavy blankets. It is the best I can do to fold them down to my waist and it is more painful than I can describe to let just the upper half of my body be covered with just the flimsy weight of a light bed sheet- but I fold the quilt over to my waist and every night it almost hurts- the lightness of the sheet on my skin. And anyway... that is now, this was then... And then... I know that it goes on... or that it WENT on... he walks up the steps and then there is the image of him at my bedroom door sometimes- often- a few or several times in a week. But my mind is stopping here. This is the first time in my life I have ever let myself think so clearly about the sound of his feet on those steps and I know for sure it is because I am starting to heal in a way that I NEVER imagined was possible. I never thought I would live this long- I never imagined I would live to see my twenties and once I did, I never thought I would make it far into that. I was not 'sad' when I turned thirty; I was SHOCKED... because I could hardly believed I had lived so long. And every birthday since then has seemed like both a shock and a gift. Anyway- enough about the past- it feels like such a relief to get it out and then a much even bigger and more wonderful relief to go ahead and be alive and present in the moment here right now. I can not even believe I am about to post this here... but anyway- this makes me think of the following quote: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

Yesterday I went on a long bike ride with a friend; we went just a few miles from my house and discovered a bunch of BIKE TRAILS- which was fantastic. Many of the trails led us right to HORSE FARMS! So the weather was great and we saw horses... which I thought was even more great. And then it started raining and we were talking and laughing about that. I was laughing, as we were biking and I felt so aware of my own laughter- I mean- the sound of it, how good it felt and sounded and how every laugh felt like it was freeing up something that had/has been trapped inside of me for a really long time. At some point while we were biking, I talked a little about my dad, about the abuse I survived, etc. But my favorite part of the ride and really, one of my favorite things that has happened since I have started to really heal and get better, was this: I was talking about my dad and about the abuse I survived and then I suddenly just said, "But I am really just so sick of it and I am ready to be done hurting now." I kept thinking of it yesterday- that I said it and that it was me and my voice and my words and my feeling and I just kept thinking: I am HEALING. I AM HEALING!!!!!!!

The last few times I have seen my doctor he has at one point or another said "Jenny, you are healing." But I have not wanted to 'admit' that. I have not been ready to really admit that I am getting better- even that has felt painful. But I feel something in me is tipping... after so many years of working so hard in therapy- I am finally starting to be able to have and hold my own thoughts, be more present, feel more... and my therapist is right. I am healing.

This morning I turned my stereo on really loud and danced around my bedroom in my pajamas.

Today I am going to go out and ride my bike again.

I have never been so grateful and so happy to be alive as I am at this moment. And I feel like it is only going to get better.

I will write more soon.