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The Perks of Being an Artist

Tag Archives: coping

Drunken Black Whirligig

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by emilypageart in art, death, dementia, health, mental health, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

absence of color, coping, death, dementia, depression, grief, mental illness, pinwheel

It hasn’t been the easiest of weeks. I’ve had a little too much down time. Appointments at the tattoo studio are few and far between since I’m still so new and haven’t developed a big customer base yet (hint hint: tell everyone you know to come see me!). So I’ve had a lot of time to think. That’s not always a good thing for me, because it leads to negative, cyclical swirling in my brain. It’s like my brain is a drunken whirligig of black and gray and more black and more gray. There’s an absense of color in my head sometimes.

I’ve had too much time to look at photos of the tattoos I’ve done and pick them apart and get mad at myself for them not being perfect. I’ve had too much time to worry about the probability that I’ll have to get a job soon since I’m not bringing in much money at the tattoo studio yet. When I’m not constantly distracted, I have too much time to focus on my body, which spends most of its time complaining about its own mere existence and threatening to quit. And when I get tired (which is always) and achy (which is always) and nauseated (which is often), and don’t have a decent distraction, I get little mini flashbacks of those final couple days by my dad’s bedside when I was so utterly drained and exhausted and ill and grief-stricken. And then, of course, I am again grief-stricken.

For some reason, the universe always chooses these moments to give me little nudges to keep me thinking about my dad. Lucky pennies left in the grocery store parking lot, dementia reminders all over the news, tv shows and movies where a parent dies, radio shows about grief…millions of little things that become an onslaught at a moment when I’m already fragile. I’ve cried. A lot. Which is embarrassing when I’m sitting in my tattoo studio room. Not the most professional. Thank god we have doors to close so I can hide for a minute or two and compose myself.

The thing that really gets me is that I’m still not missing my dad. I’m missing my demented dad, my sick dad. And I’m replaying his final days and trying to figure out how I could have spared him that pain somehow. I’m not thinking about him napping happily on the sofa with the cat, or hiking down the train tracks with him, or how he had a very particular way of eating yogurt. I remember those things, sure, but I can’t make myself focus on them. Instead, my brain goes to the hardest, most painful moments with him and replays them over and over. Those painful memories have become syndicated reruns, invading seemingly innocuous moments and leveling me.

I don’t know how to change my focus. I don’t know how to slow the whirligig down and add a little color. I keep trying to will my attention to happier things, like throwing colorful chalk dust onto all the ugliness, but the whirligig just blows the color all away again. I wish there was a way to scrub my memory clean of the dark stuff, because I know there’s color underneath. It’s there. It peeks out periodically. Sometimes it bursts forth and the blackness cracks and shatters and I can sweep it up and toss it out. But the black always comes back. And I’m okay with a little darkness; it’s familiar and makes the good stuff seem that much better. But lately it’s been overwhelming. I wish I could find some balance. Or maybe still have it not be balanced, but have the color on the winning team.

whirligig pinwheel

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Disconnecting From the Pain

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by emilypageart in death, dementia, gratitude, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alzheimer's, coping, death, dementia, frontotemporal dementia, grief, grieving, moving on, pain, Tamoxifen, uterine cancer

I’ve been feeling sort of…disconnected from my life for the last couple weeks. It’s like life doesn’t always feel real. It’s not a scary feeling. It’s not depression. It’s just a quiet disconnection. In examining it, I’ve decided that it’s a lack of grief that I’m experiencing, and that’s a little disconcerting. After the pain of losing my dad in February – and really, for the 7 years following his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia – life has felt a little too real. I’ve become accustomed to grieving. And I think what I’ve been feeling lately is a lack of that pain. This is not to say that I don’t think about my dad or that I don’t miss him. But I’ve finally reached a phase where the grieving is less acute on a daily basis. I can think about him without losing my breathe and choking on tears. I even watched the video of his memorial service and only teared up a little, and those were mostly happy tears at the wonderful things people said about him.

I’ve dealt with death enough to know that there are still days ahead of me during which grieving will surprise me. It’ll blindside me and send me reeling back to those dark days. But I also know that the time between the blindsidings will stretch out longer and longer. And I’ve learned not to feel guilty about it. It’s okay to disconnect from that pain. The person we miss wouldn’t want it any other way.

Just before my mom and I went on our trip down the Danube, we had a scare. She’s a breast cancer survivor, and she’d been on Tamoxifen several years ago as treatment, a side effect of which can be uterine cancer. She had some symptoms consistent with that, so there was real concern.When we got back, she had more testing and it was determined that it wasn’t cancer. Following the non-diagnosis, my numbness increased, because I think I had prepared myself so thoroughly for bad news, and I had a hard time trusting that she was really okay. It just seemed better luck than we’ve had the last few years. But it’s been a couple weeks, and I think I’m just now starting to exhale and trust that the universe isn’t throwing us yet another curve ball (at least, not right now). Again, I’m distancing myself from the pain I was bracing for.

So now I’m moving forward with a slightly more secure feeling, a more connected feeling. I’m getting accustomed to the new normal, which, finally, isn’t just another decline in my dad that I have to adjust to. I’m adjusting, instead, to life without the daily ache and agony of grief. I’m learning to let go. I’m learning to disconnect from unnecessary pain without feeling guilty. I’m moving on and feeling grateful that I survived, I am surviving, I will survive.

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Emily Page

Emily Page

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