August 31, 2012

Defense

So after the last post I did end up feeling like posting, however a ghost decided to take over my computer for a few days and so I had to take it into the store to get it exorcised. But I have it back now, and there's no more random mouse movements or clicking, so I am finally going to do a real post.

As a follow up on my medication situation: I have been feeling a lot better again, so I think that the med that was reintroduced has started working again. It's amazing that one tiny little 5mg pill is the difference between being a horribly anxious person and being just a very stressed out person. It's bizarre knowing that without that tiny amount of drug, my soul would be slowly dying under the pressure of all of that anxiety and depression (not to be melodramatic or anything...). I'm just happy that I finally have some meds that work and make life seem pretty OK.

I have some art to post. My therapist and I were talking about how I could go through all of the trauma and yet still act like a normal little girl. There was definitely some dissociation going on; I would just think about other things so that I didn't have to feel what was happening. I think I also separated myself into two parts - one part dealt with the abuse and the other ran around dealing with normal life. I'm not talking about dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities), I just think it was a different part of me that had to deal with that stuff so that I could then go on afterwards and act normally. It's kind of like I compartmentalized the abuse so that it didn't affect the rest of my life. After something happened I could just tell myself that it wasn't real or it hadn't really happened to me. I remember telling myself that it was Katie that did the bad stuff, and I've always hated when people inadvertently call me that because I guess I associated that name with the part of me that experienced horrible thing.

 
Protection
 
August 2012
This is supposed to represent the dissociative defense I used while bad things were happening. The pinkish semicircle at the bottom represents me and the greyish color on the outer part represents the dissociation barrier between me and the abuse. The red-orange is the pain and the black represents how it seemed like there was nothing outside of the abuse while it was happening. The three grey, brown and green spike-things represent the three main abusers. They are mostly blocked by the dissociation, but they still manage to pierce through and leave their mark. I tried so hard to pretend it wasn't happening, and later that it had never happened, and yet it still managed to push its way in and hurt me.

August 23, 2012

Post

AAAHHHH!!! I'm feeling so guilty about not posting! But feeling guilty is making me feel pressured to post! And feeling pressured to post makes me want to do anything but post! It's a terrible cycle. But it's possible that posting this will make me feel less guilty about not posting so then I will be able to post something real. 

How many more times can I say post?

So post-medication-reintroduction (aka after I started taking one of my meds again), I am still waiting for the chemicals to kick in fully, but I think I'm feeling a little better again. But that might just be the post-work-relief feeling so I don't want to speak too soon... It would be better if I knew I was definitely feeling OK and then I would tell everyone post-haste.

Hopefully there will be more art and less crazy in the next post...

August 11, 2012

The Sea

I've been struggling with anxiety a lot in the past month. My prescriber tried to take me off one of my medications (an antidepressant) and as soon as I stopped taking it my anxiety shot way up. I've gone right back to judging myself for everything I do - I feel like everything I do is stupid and people are probably just pretending to like me. I know that this is just the anxiety talking, but it's a really difficult feeling to fight. A lot of PTSD symptoms have gotten much stronger and more things are triggering me. I have intrusive feelings and thoughts about the abuse all the time. I've also been dissociating a little bit when I'm particularly anxious, which hasn't really happened in a while (apparently one of the meds I'm still on helps prevent that - interesting info I just found out yesterday). All of this has made my self-harm urges a lot stronger. So obviously we are putting me back on that med... I'm hoping that's the reason I got more anxious and that once I get it back in my system, the anxiety will lessen again.

All of this is making me wish I was back on the beach...  


Sandbar

August 4, 2012
During my vacation we went to a beach in a different town on the one rainy day and I took a picture that this drawing is based on. It seemed like a pretty simple landscape to draw and I liked the sandbar that all the birds were sitting on. I find the sea very calming to watch and listen to. I always imagine my safe place to be on the beach at dusk. I brightened the sea up from the original and took out a boat and some of the people on the beach - I liked the idea of a lone person walking along. The original photo is below.



August 3, 2012

Vacation!!

I have not forgotten about this blog - I am currently on vacation. Relaxing at the beach, eating delicious food and getting awkward sunburns is exactly what I needed right now. My family has always gone to the same town for summer vacations since I was little and so it has tons of good memories attached to it. I am trying to take a vacation both from work and from all this PTSD crap and it's actually working so I'm pretty happy about that.

I'm posting a drawing that I did a couple weeks ago just for fun. I wanted to use something different than my usual pastels and decided to just doodle with markers. I was going to fill the whole page with color but it turned out to be incredibly time consuming. And then it was really hard to cover most of a piece of paper with black marker. Crayola markers do not last long at all - I used a brand new black Crayola marker and it couldn't even finish off this drawing! But anyway, there's nothing to this drawing other than relaxing and doodling with as many colors as I could.


Stained Glass

July 17, 2012