tilt cat

toy car.

Thankful

bicycle ride.

Sweet, sentimental, new, holidays.

Jessieh is napping next to me as I type this and the sound of her breathing makes me happy. It is gorgeous here and I am happy we have this great time together. This morning when I woke up I was so happy to be here with her and instantly put out my arms for a hug. And she jumped into my bed to hug me.
My mind is healing and my life contains so many good things. I am with Jessieh now, I am very close with my sister which makes me incredibly happy and Stefano is coming to the US for Christmas- which we will spend with my sister and her husband.
I am going to get my camera out. I will post images soon.

sketchbook pages.

Tomorrow I am off to see Jessieh. We will post images. : )

Letter from the Dr.

Dear Jessieh,

I hope you like this t-shirt I made for you today. Actually Jenny drew most of it and I slept a lot and looked at some picture books. Mostly I slept though.

I will not be coming with Jenny on Tuesday and I am sorry I will not see you. I would feel uncomfortable traveling on a bus that is named after a dog though anyway. Also I do not have a good pair of mittens and my snow pants must have been shrunk in the dryer because I am no longer able to zip them up past my middle.

I hope you and Jenny have a good holiday together and I am sorry about my fur on the mittens Jenny knit you. I was only borrowing them to see if they really are the "warmest mittens in the world". They are. You will have very warm paws now too.

Love,

Dr. Larry Lloyd

too near

my go-to-man.

Supernova.

Today I got a car. I am pretty excited about it.

I was a little anxious about going and picking it up and having to go to get it registered- but it all went fine.

Now I feel the same way about my 'new' car that I feel about my life...

I can go anywhere! Where do I want to go?

sketchbook

Art therapy was difficult. Cried into the fur of Mr. Wonderbunny.

"an obesity of grief"

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

The thing is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"I am experiencing the bizarre miracle of reincarnating, more lucidly than at birth, in the same lifetime."

I have not been writing much lately.... I was struggling quite a bit for a while but I feel like I am starting to feel a little better again now. My therapist was gone for two weeks and that was difficult. Then I was glad he was back... but also not. And a lot of thing have been moving around in my head. Today I have my art therapy group and I am looking forward to that. I have been drawing every day but a lot of it has been in my sketchbook... maybe I will just upload images of drawings half-finished and works in progress. I also went back to reading "The Courage to Heal". Here is a quote from the book:

"If you enter into healing, be prepared to lose everything. Healing is a ravaging force to which nothing seems sacred or inviolate. As my original pain releases itself in healing, it rips to shreds the structures and foundations I built in weakness and ignorance. I am experiencing the bizarre miracle of reincarnating, more lucidly than at birth, in the same lifetime." -Ely Fuller

And also: I will be going to Vermont for Thanksgiving with Jessieh in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. (Insert Jessieh roaring like a Wild Thing HERE.)

I will write more soon.

I love this.

(sunday.)

The Sacred

by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

One reason.

I know it will be very painful but I am looking forward to seeing the movie "Precious". Yesterday I heard the director of the movie on NPR and he was talking about ENDING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE. So so so important.

Breaking it down.

Yesterday I took Winston to the vet because he has hardly been eating. They took some blood and I should find out tomorrow the results of that.

I spent the entire day knitting. It is less painful and complicated than drawing.

And if I did not feel so bad, this would make me laugh- but for the past few days this song has been 'stuck in my head'.

Addendum: Right after posting the above I thought, "Why would I laugh?". Shame. And RAGE. I keep experiencing all of this sadness and shame and horror- but it feels hard for me to express it in any way other than by feeling sad or depressed or hating myself- all safe and 'non-threatening feelings'.

And this makes me sick, but hearing this song now- it feels like a break-up song to my abuser. Which fits with all of the 'seduction of the aggressor' issues I have been discussing recently with my therapist.

Constellation failure.

(The following is an email I just sent to my therapist.)

I also feel like just a loser. I think it is easier to keep thinking this than to realize what happened to me, how horrible it was and how much it has affected my life. And also... to think about WHO it was that hurt me. Oh WAIT... WE ALREADY HAD THIS CONVERSATION, DIDN'T WE???!!!

Jenny

p.s.- I wish Lloyd had a car. And a driver's license (obviously, as I do not want him to get arrested). I would ask him to drive me to my art therapy group tomorrow because I did not go at all last week. I am sure that if he had a car and a license he would totally take me. Don't you think? I would be happy if I could take HIM, actually. The bus would be SO MUCH MORE BEARABLE if Lloyd was in a backpack and with me. I mean- only if he was not unhappy in the backpack. And not really a backpack maybe- I need more like a sling and I could 'wear' him across the front of my chest. It would be good if he was in a little sling and across my chest and we were on the bus together. If all of that happened I think it would be fun if he also had a little book to read. And a pair of small and stylish reading glasses. God.

That would make the bus ride so much fucking BETTER!!

p.p.s.- I am going to post the text of this message onto my blog now because I do feel like such a huge fucking failure most of the time and I feel like maybe the one small thing I can do while I am NOT doing a bunch of other things that I wish I was doing- is to explain a little of what it is like to live with a dissociative disorder. And I feel like this email, in the context of the rest of my blog, will help to explain/show that.

p.p.p.s- One last thing... If Lloyd did drive a car, what kind do you think he would have? (And I will just say right now that I think answering with 'Smart Car' would really be the cheap way out on this one.) Maybe a little Ford Focus?

Other continents.

I took this photo Sunday night. I was starting to knit a sweater for my sister while Winston and Lloyd were sleeping.

Winston had stopped eating for almost 2 days and I was really worried but he has started again. I was planning to take him to the vet today but he is acting fine now- sitting at the window and watching leaves fall.

I keep having these huge anxiety attacks right when I wake up in the morning. I keep thinking that I need to write or talk about WHY I am feeling so anxious when I wake up- but then I feel scared and like 'I don't really want to know'. Although that never works for long anymore.

My therapist was gone for two weeks but he just got back.

And I am continuing to work on this drawing.

black whole

It is painful when you want to disappear but can't dissociate anymore in the same way. Getting better means not dissociating from reality. But there is this horrible horrible middle place- a mix of semi-dissociation and semi-reality and it feels awful. I feel depressed and I have not been going out of my 'house' very much. I am struggling a lot.

Dear Probably Godless Universe,

Living with a dissociative disorder feels awful most days. Recovering from life with a dissociative disorder feels awful most days. I am trying to deal with this struggle, get through each day, try to do a little to work toward healing, try to accept the painful truth about my past, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

I just wanted to write here a little note to the universe though now as I struggle to continue to recover from all of this exceedingly-painful-beyond-words-mess:

IF YOU LET MY LITTLE ORANGE CAT DIE I WILL BE SO FUCKING MAD ABOUT THAT.

Nancy Spero and Albert York.

Here is a quick video with Nancy Spero and here is an article about Albert York. They both died recently.