Drawing (on a dress). (Work in progress.)

drawing on bed sheet

End of fear.

Yesterday I rode my bike to my art therapy group and when I walked in the room I exclaimed, "It feels so fun to not be scared!". I meant it about riding my bike- but probably more than that too. Last summer when I was biking I felt like I was 1. Just trying to get where I was going and 2. Trying not to die while doing that. And as much as I loved riding my bike- I was almost always 'scared' when I was riding it. Last week I got my bike out for the first time since last October and it is so much more fun to ride now!! I think it is better because I know a lot better what I am doing when I am on the bike and I am less scared about the idea of getting a flat tire or about biking near traffic. But mostly I think it is better because I have been talking a lot in therapy and art therapy about where a lot of my fear really comes from. And it is not fear about 'what could happen when I am on my bike'- but a lot of old fears. I have been carrying around a lot of fears from when I was a kid. And it feels good (although sad and painful too) to really name them- because then it feels like I can start to let them go.
Yesterday on my way home from art therapy I was at a busy intersection waiting for the light to change and I took the last drink of water from my water bottle. A woman in a minivan with a kid in the backseat rolled down her window and held up a bottle of water and asked me if I needed an extra drink. I smiled and thanked her and said I was ok- but thanks! And I could just hardly believe it. It was so... Nice. And she was such a MOM. And there I was- dripping in sweat, wearing shorts and tank top with all of my many tattoos exposed and still she offered me that water. It was so kind. I was surprised at first I guess- and now I realize- it is not every person or mom that hates the way I look. But my mom did. When I was growing up people used to always say that I looked just like my mom- ALL OF THE TIME. And my mom used to say ALL OF THE TIME how much she hated her face, her chin, her weight. It was painful. Painful to think I looked just like her and she hated the way she looked and so I guess the way I looked too. And both of my parents HATED when I started getting tattoos. Hm. Probably part of the reason I did it. Oh well. It is sad and painful- but on I go.

Today I biked 24 miles and it was just lovely.

Next week my art therapy group is having an exhibition and there will be a symposium and an opening reception for it. If you live near the DC/MD/VA area and are interested in coming- you can read about it HERE. I am going to be giving a 30 minute talk at the symposium about my art and how making art has helped me to heal.

poem. (End of wondering why I loved my father's clothes.)

Little Things
by Sharon Olds

After she’s gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a small
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, this raised dot of
amber sugar, and this time
when I think of my father, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the beautiful blood-red
glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned to
love the little things about him
because of all the big things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this tiny image of resin
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a
pile of my son’s sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have—as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

Kiana Firouz.

A week and a half ago I wrote a small post about Kiana Firouz- an Iranian lesbian filmmaker seeking asylum in the UK. Her application for asylum was denied and so was her appeal. You can read more about it HERE and sign the petition to support her appeal HERE.

For Tuesday.

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

When dissociation fades.

It is really painful to start to remember the places in my mind that have always seemed like 'black holes'. I know it is good- I know it is moving forward and healing and all of that- but it is sad too. It is terribly sad to remember things you have spent all of your life blocking out. And it is sad (but I know it is really 'progress' and 'good') to not have the same DID coping strategies. I feel like I should just be HAPPY that the ways that I have hurt myself to protect my mind from knowing about pain from the past are no longer working- but I am sort of not. It is mixed. It is painful. It is painful to remember the truth.

Mixed.

I am happy to say I got my bike out yesterday and rode it to my art therapy group. And then again this morning. (This is the first time I have had it out since last October.) I am struggling with a lot of hard feelings- anger, love, sadness, betrayal... to name a few. It is painful- but I am biking and drawing and I wish I was a little less scared of going forward and healing... but I am definitely on my way... so I will accept that and I am trying to be patient with myself and understand that the fears I have are there for a reason and it does not mean that I have to live with them for the rest of my life.

Hm. Recovering from child sexual abuse is hard and often miserable. The getting better part though... the getting better part is pretty fantastic.

"The Life You Save May be Your Own"

The most shocking piece of my healing is not in remembering the details of the abuse I survived or knowing with clarity how much my parents hurt me- it is in finally realizing that I survived it all and in understanding now that I am safe and free to do whatever I want with all of the rest of my days.

Pen and ink and lacrimation on paper.

Cat photos!!! (This is DID code for: I AM STALLING.)

I have stuff to write about... mostly about healing... actually. But I am not quite ready. But I am working on it. So for today: CATS! Lloyd is obsessed with a chipmunk who is living right outside the front door and Winston... he naps a lot. More soon.......

"Iranian Director Faces Death For LBGT Film"

You can read about it HERE and sign the petition HERE.

drawing from art therapy today.

Really? (Therapy Thursday.)

I am having a major bout of "ohmygod I do not want to go to therapy this afternoon". Major. Really really do not want to go.

Crying as I type this I keep telling myself that I do not HAVE to go. Except I do. All of the progress I have made has been because of all of the work that I have done and to stay home and hide in my bed for fear of what has already happened and so long ago in the past- it is not going to help me to be more present in the present. So I am going to go. Even though I am crying and wishing that my childhood had not been so painful.

I know I am getting better. I am getting better in so many ways- but it is so scary and painful. So I keep reminding myself of something Pema Chodron wrote: "Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth".

Maybe I should take my assistant with me today...

drawing on jeans.

Different lines.

My Cup

by Robert Friend

They tell me I am going to die.

Why don't I seem to care?

My cup is full. Let it spill.

Line and verse.

My Husband Discovers Poetry

Because my husband would not read my poems,
I wrote one about how I did not love him.
In lines of strict iambic pentameter,
I detailed his coldness, his lack of humor.
It felt good to do this.

Stanza by stanza, I grew bolder and bolder.
Towards the end, struck by inspiration,
I wrote about my old boyfriend,
a boy I had not loved enough to marry
but who could make me laugh and laugh.
I wrote about a night years after we parted
when my husband’s coldness drove me from the house
and back to my old boyfriend.
I even included the name of a seedy motel
well-known for hosting quickies.
I have a talent for verisimilitude.

In sensuous images, I described
how my boyfriend and I stripped off our clothes,
got into bed, and kissed and kissed,
then spent half the night telling jokes,
many of them about my husband.
I left the ending deliberately ambiguous,
then hid the poem away
in an old trunk in the basement.

You know how this story ends,
how my husband one day loses something,
goes into the basement,
and rummages through the old trunk,
how he uncovers the hidden poem
and sits down to read it.

But do you hear the strange sounds
that floated up the stairs that day,
the sounds of an animal, its paw caught
in one of those traps with teeth of steel?
Do you see the wounded creature
at the bottom of the stairs,
his shoulders hunched over and shaking,
fist in his mouth and choking back sobs?
It was my husband paying tribute to my art.

—Diane Lockward

art therapy painting

sketchbook

Healing heart.

For the past couple of weeks I have been... angry with my doctor. For the past few sessions I spend about 1/2 of the time being mad and nearly unwilling to speak and then the rest of the 50 minutes in a racing babel of thoughts and sentences and in a stream of hurried switching. This afternoon I have therapy.
This morning when I woke I felt starved and I ate a huge breakfast even though I realize now and with a little after thought that it was not food that I am 'hungering for'. I am wanting to talk. And draw and write and listen to music and be alive. I am hungry to be an artist and real and awake. But I am scared too- because the past was so scary, because I have to remind myself still that the past is over, that I will not be hurt anymore, that I am safe. And I have been having to remind myself of this for a while now. And there is a part of my thinking that keeps saying: "I have been doing this work for six and a half years! I do not want to suffer anymore!!" And there are parts of me that are thinking: "Ok. You do not have to suffer anymore.".
Last night I was laying in bed reading two books. I was continuing to read "The Courage to Heal" and when feeling massively overwhelmed or like my whole head/brain was going to stop working (I accidentally just typed the word "start" where I 'meant' to write STOP... lol... oh healing mind of mine...) anyway- I kept flipping open Pema Chodron's "Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion". And finally- after months of being stuck at the beginning of the chapter titled "Understanding that it was not your fault"... I was actually able to read through it. It was painful. I had to keep referring to the Pema Chodron book to calm myself down.
Why I have been hating (now I am elevating this from 'angry' to 'hating'...) my doctor: For most of the long time that we have been working together I have never really been able to imagine "getting better". When I met my doctor I was in a lot of pain, desperate to tell my story, desperate to be able to make my art, desperate to feel better and I believed him when he said that I could recover from all of this. I could not imagine getting better really- or at least not very well or very much- but it did not really matter. It did not matter that I could not see a vision of myself not in miserable pain- I just believed him. Because I needed to, because I hurt so much and because.... because I just wanted it to be true and I did not feel like at that point that I had a lot to lose. My doctor has been patient. I mean... PATIENT. He has been very patient and over the years I started to trust him more and more. I have begun to trust him so much that a week or two ago I told him that I thought he was not helping me and that I was seriously considering ending our work together. And it was a relief to feel like I could say that- that I could say anything and that I could trust that he would not get mad at me.
I am rambling on a little and I wish things were more clear... and I sort of at the same time do not.... But that is what I am moving towards- clarity and more healing and bigger leaps in recovering.
It is hard and sad and painful to think about my past. Yesterday when my art therapist said, "A crime was committed against you.".... I thought my head really might just fall off. But it didn't. And she is right. But I have just never really been able to hear or see or feel the truth of it in the way that I did yesterday.
One thing that seems to be helping me a little yesterday and today is to think how it is good that I no longer have any connection with my 'parents'. And how I am ok. And better than ok for that. I have been scared to take care of myself, scared to be successful at very many things- but this is changing now. And I am... scared but also very relieved.
So I step into the next moment knowing this is all there is and I have that thought in one hand and in the other I am thinking: It was not my fault. None of the abuse was ever my fault. NONE OF THE ABUSE WAS EVER MY FAULT. I think I always needed to believe it was- to keep myself feeling 'crazy', to keep myself from knowing the truth about my sick parents, to keep myself from knowing the truth about myself. It is scary to let go of so many ideas that I have held onto for all of my life- even though they have been hurting me so much. But I am doing it.

for today

Moon

by Billy Collins

The moon is full tonight
an illustration for sheet music,
an image in Matthew Arnold
glimmering on the English Channel,
or a ghost over a smoldering battlefield
in one of the history plays.

It's as full as it was
in that poem by Coleridge
where he carries his year-old son
into the orchard behind the cottage
and turns the baby's face to the sky
to see for the first time
the earth's bright companion,
something amazing to make his crying seem small.

And if you wanted to follow this example,
tonight would be the night
to carry some tiny creature outside
and introduce him to the moon.

And if your house has no child,
you can always gather into your arms
the sleeping infant of yourself,
as I have done tonight,
and carry him outdoors,
all limp in his tattered blanket,
making sure to steady his lolling head
with the palm of your hand.

And while the wind ruffles the pear trees
in the corner of the orchard
and dark roses wave against a stone wall,
you can turn him on your shoulder
and walk in circles on the lawn
drunk with the light.
You can lift him up into the sky,
your eyes nearly as wide as his,
as the moon climbs high into the night.

"If you are a prisoner, you are also a warden with all of the keys." (pen and ink and paper and mind)

I listen, repeat, repeat, repeat.

self

Poem from "The Writer's Almanac" for today.

Up and Down

by Beverly Rollwagen

I don't know anything
for sure unless I look it up,
but sometimes I can figure
things out if I write them
down. So it's up and down
all day long. It's a good life.
Better than back and forth
or in and out which I find
constraining. I have up
and down in balance and
with my mother's death
have discovered the true
meaning of before and after.

Poem I post to cover the shame of my last post and to try to be hopeful on a Monday mourning.

God Says Yes To Me

Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Turning place.

For a few months I barely put anything here- then recently images of drawings and some poems. I have really been struggling to write here but at the same time I wish I was writing more because so much is happening and I wish I was writing more down so I could look back later and see how it went. I have been in therapy for six and a half years. On Saturday I went to a meeting for survivors of incest and I cried a lot. I have been drawing more- daily still- but I am trying still to draw more. I want to try to sell the drawings on clothes.

The healing from DID is so strange- so twisty and turny and difficult to explain because I have had it for always and now it is like... all of my wrinkled concept/mess idea of time is like an enormous piece of fabric being ironed out and it is often blissful and horrific at the same time.

I keep having these moments of feeling all of this freedom- knowing I can do what I want, see what I want, etc. and these other moments- all of the memories of my childhood- it feels like everything is being poured together. All these ingredients being mixed. I don't know. I don't know if I can write here. It feels so ridiculous. It is very hard to explain the incredible weirdness that is healing and starting to feel ok when you have never felt safe or ok.

Yesterday I mowed the lawn and it was hot and it took a long time and it was kind of hard and I got blisters on my hands and feet... but it was good. I was happy. Free and out in the sun and the smell of the grass and a lot of the time I was thinking about the past and feeling mad as hell and it felt good and I was glad to be working it out physically.

Last week I took this stack of images into my therapy session. Laid them down on the floor and started to talk about specific different ways of being me. This weekend I have been coming and going from thinking about that. And thinking about how much my thinking comes and goes. And thinking about how my mind just shorts- cuts to nothing. And feeling awareness of those 'shorts'. I was talking to my doctor last week about realizing that I really do 'forget' things. Often. And I am becoming aware of it. Painfully aware and it is scary. He quoted Confucius and said that to know what I know and know what I don't know... is to know. And that seems both good and kind of terrible.

If there was a way to change the past I would. I hate what happened to me. I hate how long it has taken me to get this far and I hate that I still struggle so much.

I want to try to write about the weirdness that is me really getting better- but it is so odd... and I feel like I am constantly having to be courageous now and make myself step forward... it seems like I do not want to have to work more here too. But this is a strange work- the work of telling the truth and it quickly spins around from pain to... to something else. I feel like I have lived most of my life carting this enormous amount of secrets and shit around with me and I have wanted desperately to put it down- but I have not wanted to claim it first- so I have been unable to let anything go.

I hate how much child sexual abuse robs a person. An abuser robs you in your childhood and then it just keeps feeling like it is happening over and over and over all of the time- until you finally talk and let it out. And I hate the shame piece. I really hate the shame. I hate that I have felt ashamed- ashamed because it was incest- because it was my family, my father. I have always thought the abuse was my fault. But I am learning to let go of that shit lie too.

I wish it was not so painful to heal. But I keep on.