A choice of weapons; Hello Red Heart.

(Insoluble asphyxiation bib in two sizes.  Acrylic yarn.  May 13, 2011.) 

At different times various people and I myself (many, many times) have asked the question:  What are you going to do with all your anger?  Valid question.  Raped until I was 25, I spent the past seven and half years in therapy and now I am thirty-three.  The majority of my life has been about surviving being abused, abusing myself to not know about the abuse, surviving the aftermath of the abuse and abusing myself through most of that because it was so painful.

The rape stopped eight years ago and I've (recently and FINALLY) been calming down on the self abuse for a while now... first quitting one form, then another, then another after that.  I asked my doctor a several weeks ago in desperation: "How will I know when the self-injury is really over; when will I know I am really done hurting myself?"  He said at first there would be a lot of wondering if the self-injuring was done; then there would probably be a lot of sadness.  And that is almost exactly what it looked like.  Almost exactly just like that only I would also toss in the phrase "dense grief" if I wanted to give a better mental picture of it all.

I started cutting myself and abusing myself with food when I was a very small child and I started having dangerous/hurtful sex when I was a teenager; all ways of trying to cover my original pain of having been abused.  I hate a lot of the things I did to myself but I stayed alive and surviving the toxicity of my family feels like nothing short of an act of genius.  I'm not going to be upset with myself any longer for any of the things I had to do in order to salvage both my mind and body from that cesspool of trauma.

So that brings me up to the present day!! Thirty-three years old, seven and a half years of therapy under my belt, not self-injuring, three months away from beginning to work on my MFA and I've formed an incredible group of wonderful, healthy and loving friends who are my new family.  I have scars, emotional and physical, but I made it.  Today I wept in relief:  I'm alive.

I do have a lot of anger.  Rage is probably a better word for it.  I also have a huge amount of sadness and grief.  Other feelings too though... Last night I was in bed; tossing and turning as I keep stitching together the fragments of myself and my memories in my head- then I wrote the following quick email to Eve:

"There are so many good things about really living this good life.  My favorite- after love and then art- it's the music.  It's definitely the music.  Then all that dancing."

This morning I spoke to my art therapist about possible ways to deal my rage.  Since I have lived most of my life in the emotional prison of my childhood and I finally just now got out; I am going to choose the way in which I do not spend the rest of this life in a physical prison.  I am going to make my art.

I'll listen to an opera while I knit a life size recreation of the bloody revenge I imagine in my head.  I'll sing with Nina Simone while I make those larger than life detailed paintings of my abuser that I keep talking about.  I will show my work and I will keep telling the story of what I survived.

I will never be silenced again.

Liza Lou's "Kitchen" is brilliant.  I love that after she became famous from that piece she started making work about abuse and torture.   So much truth in art.  So much power.  (You can see some of Liza Lou's work here- be sure to click on the images- they are sculptures covered in millions of glass beads.)