Om Nom Nom

I am working on some artwork right now... but I have nothing to post at the moment, so I thought that in the meantime I would post some pictures of the food that I've been making because I feel like cooking is similar to art! Last weekend I went on a food-making binge: I made a huge pot of soup so that I could put portions in the freezer to take out whenever. And then I made stuffed peppers and empanada filling (which I also froze). For some reason it was incredibly satisfying to do all of that cooking in one day and I ended up being in a really good mood.

Here are some pictures from the past month or so of cooking:

Stuffed Peppers

Potato & Leek Soup

A Yummy Omelet

Fettuccine Shrimp Alfredo

 

Letting Myself Feel

I've been trying to get myself to draw but I haven't been able to yet. My therapist and I have been talking about anger and loss, so it seems like it would be a really good time to express some of that. Maybe this weekend I'll do something.

I feel like I have TONS going on in my head right now - I've been trying to let myself feel some of the scary emotions that I usually try to push away or "do something" with. I think that I've been coping with it all pretty well though. I haven't been feeling as depressed and I have a feeling of catharsis from letting myself experience emotions. I also feel like I've been able to understand myself a little more. I never truly realized how well my mind manages to hide things from me and I probably don't even fully recognize the extent of it yet. I've become more aware of my brain fighting with itself to change from what I'm used to and what's easy, to what's more healthy.

All of that awareness made me start thinking about what I was like in high school and how I reacted to feelings of anger, sadness and anxiety by immediately pushing them away, often by using unhealthy coping skills like hurting myself. I was so good at it that I didn't even know why I was doing it, other than that it made some sort of discomfort go away. I've been able to deal with some of those things now by using positive coping. I have a new mantra that I've been saying to myself: "I know I'm a good person and I am in control." I've also been doing things that make me feel good about myself, like cooking dinner for myself, and doing things that are distracting when I know I need to not think about things.

I don't know if any of what I wrote made sense or if it was just really repetitive... but the sum up is that I'm feeling pretty good and I'm making some good progress in therapy. Yay!

Filth

Body

November 25, 2012

This drawing is from the series where I was trying to portray feelings of shame. This drawing is simply showing a body with filth covering the areas that I feel are defiled and disgusting on my own body because of what happened. I put the greenish color over the mouth, hands, and female areas. I also put tape over the mouth to represent how I felt silenced by the shame. The hole in place of a belly button represents the damaged feeling; feeling like a part of me died and rotted away. The full drawing actually has the whole head and face but I hate seeing the eyes on it so much that I couldn't post it here. I'm not sure what exactly it is about the eyes, but maybe they make me identify with it too much and that makes it too humiliating to share with people.

New Year Resolution

Happy New Year!

I'm glad that I don't really believe in the idea that your whole year has to go the same way that it starts out... because I had kiiiind of a shaky start to 2013. I had a really nice Christmas with my family, and it was a nice break from thinking about things. But once I got home, I suddenly crashed into feeling depressed and anxious. Maybe I was holding it all back so that I could enjoy the holidays and it had to attack me when the holidays were over. It's not really the worst depression I've ever felt, but I was still surprised because I haven't really felt this kind of grey, flat, want-to-isolate depression in a while.

I had to make a slightly belated new years resolution based on something that happened within the first hour of the new year and also based on a review of the past year. Everything that I did in the last year that I really regret and for which I felt disappointed in myself, occurred because I had at least a couple of drinks in me. So, my resolution is to have no more than one drink in a given day. 

In 2011, after my suicide attempt, I stopped drinking altogether for a while because I knew that I'm more likely to hurt myself when I've been drinking. But this past year I started getting more comfortable because I felt like I was mentally well enough to be able to drink whatever I wanted without doing anything stupid. But I pretty much disproved that theory on new years. When I drink, my inhibitions are down and I start to give into any impulse I have. If my thoughts start spiraling in a negative direction it turns into a dangerous situation and that's what happened on new years. 

After the new years situation, I spent about an hour crying in therapy about how disappointed I am in myself, and then a half hour promising that I'm safe and then immediately after all of that I got a $200 speeding ticket on my way to work. Woo! Soooo yeah, not a great start to the year. But last year started out even shittier and it turned out pretty OK overall. Maybe this will even turn out to be a good year...

Post Secret

I just saw this on the Post Secret website (http://www.postsecret.com/)... It's an email that someone sent:

I was at the PostSecret Event in London. I didn't find the courage to go up to the microphone, but if I had been able to, this is what I would have said.

I spent so long feeling guilty, feeling ashamed of my sadness, and you know what? It just made me sadder. You are allowed to be sad, you are allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be depressed. We all deserve to feel our own sadness in our own time.

Something you will have heard before - you deserve to be happy. That, of course, is not always easy to hear, especially in the depths of depression - so let me add something. You deserve to be happy - but you don't have to be happy right now or all the time.

It is okay to be sad, it's okay to not be ready to be happy yet. One day you will be ready to recover - that day doesn't have to be today or even tomorrow, as long as you know and trust me that it will come.

It's okay not to be okay.

Thanks for everything Frank,

Holly, London

P.S My secret is that I decided last night that I'm ready to recover and it's going to be incredible.

I like everything about this email. I've always had a hard time feeling like it's OK to feel sad or depressed - so when people told me that I deserve to be happy, it just made me feel guilty that I didn't feel happy. I think it should be required to add that it's also OK to not feel happy at the end whenever you say that.

The Power of Manipulation

I had a little bit of insight into how distorted my thoughts were - especially as a child - because of the manipulation I was subjected to... I remembered something the other day that is a despicable example of how I was manipulated. Even though I don't have the best perspective on my own distorted thoughts, this example is just so completely illogical that it's clearly wrong.

So here's the story: I have been getting some laser hair removal treatments on my legs and it can be a little bit painful, especially for the first few treatments. I had an appointment the other day, and the technician must have turned the laser setting up high and she was being very thorough so it was much more painful than usual. It was so painful, in fact, that my legs would involuntarily spasm every once in a while. I was so embarrassed that I kept apologizing. It felt really familiar for some reason, and then I remembered having a similar jerking reaction in response to the pain of being raped. What's weird is that I also remembered being embarrassed when it happened then too. And this is the messed up part... The reason I was embarrassed is because he would get angry with me for jerking my leg. Let me say that again in a different way: I felt guilty that I couldn't control an INVOLUNTARY response to the pain that HE was causing ME.  

Most of the time, I find it hard to feel angry at this particular person because I'm still pretty emotionally detached from a lot of the stuff that has to do with him because it's hard to think about. This probably isn't even the worst manipulation I was subjected to, but when I remembered it, it was just a "what the fuck" moment. I think this might be the type of disgust that other people feel when I tell them things that have happened. Usually I'm embarrassed because I feel disgusted with myself - but I'm (pretty) sure that they just feel disgusted with the people who did it to me.

Humiliated

I can't really tell if I'm doing OK or if I'm just detached from my emotions... maybe a little bit of both? If that's possible? It's like a lot of the time I feel fine but life feels a little surreal, which actually makes being at work easy. Then in the evening I get flashbacks and obsess about stuff that's happened or feel really irritated. Then at night when I'm sleeping I have crazy dreams where I have super intense emotions to make up for the lack of emotions during the day.

The epic battle that goes on in my head about whether all of my memories are true or not is still ongoing. I had this memory that somehow made me really accept that what happened is real. Then a few days later I happened to drive past someone who abused me and suddenly I doubted myself again. Why do some perpetrators have to look so normal?? I feel like he should look like some big scary monster...

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Sea of Shame

November 25, 2012

This drawing is my shame in a nutshell. The black/grey "sun" thing in the corner is where I want to disappear into when I'm feeling really bad about myself. It would probably make more sense to describe it as a black hole. A sense of humiliation makes me wish that I could just shrink so small that I don't exist anymore. The sea of green represents the vastness of the shame that I feel. Sometimes it feels like I'll never be able to deal with all of it and convince myself that I don't really have to be ashamed of all of the things that happened when I was young.