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Tag Archives: depression

so many kinds of yes

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by in culture, gratitude, health, kindness, mental health, tattooing, Uncategorized, writing

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I have a rule for myself: if I get an idea for a tattoo I want, I have to wait a year before I can get it. If I still want it a year later, then it’s not likely that I’ll regret the tattoo later in life. Well, it’s been more than a year since I got the idea for this tattoo, and 6 years since my last tattoo, so I decided it was time. Plus, I’ve never been tattooed by my tattoo mentor Julio, and I own a freakin’ tattoo shop. Julio had a little free time today, so I chained him to his tattoo chair and put him to work, even though today is his birthday (everyone say “Happy Birthday, Julio!!!!”).

My dad kept a magazine picture, of a little girl from a third world country carrying a jug of water on her head, in his music room to remind him that it could always be worse and that he really had it very good. It was one of the ways he dealt with his own depression. It helped him keep his life in perspective. To me, the picture just depressed me more, because not only did her situation not actually make my brain any more functional, but it frustrated me both that the world would allow her to have to live like that and that I couldn’t do anything about it. Reminding myself that I have an easy life just made me angrier that I still wasn’t able to be happy.

So instead, I’m choosing to just keep reminding myself to look for the good that’s all around me. Thank you Mr. Rogers. I have a stanza from an ee cummings poem printed out and taped onto the lightswitch in my art studio so that I see it coming and going. It’s a reminder that spring is always present in a million little ways if I just look hard enough. The color is there. The poem is called Sweet Spring, and the stanza I keep up is

(such a sky and such a sun

i never knew and neither did you

and everybody never breathed

quite so many kinds of yes)

I’m not spending much time in the art studio these days, because I’m busy learning a new way to make a living as an artist and spending all my time at the tattoo studio. I’m working to shape my life into what I want it to be and grabbing every opportunity that comes my way. I’m making all that color mine. When I can. And when I can’t, maybe my tattoo will remind me that there are just

so many kinds of yes.jpg

 

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Drunken Black Whirligig

05 Thursday Apr 2018

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

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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

Come Rain or Come Shine or Come Insecurity

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in death, dementia, humor, music, sip and paint studio, Uncategorized

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I’m sad, guys. I don’t know why I’m sad now. I just know that I’m grieving my dad HARD right now. I know grief comes in waves. I think partly that this is because I’m in a period of real transition now that I’ve closed the paint and sip studio and things have stalled with the next adventure. Insecurity in my life isn’t helping. I think it’s also because it’s the time of year that I tend to get a depression flare. It happens just about every year around this time: my depression kicks it up a notch and my brain starts telling me I’m a giant loser and a miserable person who makes terrible, cowardly choices, and the future is very, very bleak. Again, insecurity in my life isn’t helping.

I’ve been having nightmares about my dad again. I say “nightmares,” but they’re not really scary – just really, really sad. I’ve woken up crying several times. And my dreams always share one feature: he always has dementia. He’ll be in different stages, but he’s never just him. In a dream a couple days ago, I was dancing to “Come Rain or Come Shine” with him, and for a split second, he was dancing and interacting with me like he was normal and healthy, and I thought, “This is a dream, but it’s a fantastic dream. I’ve got to keep this going.” I very rarely am aware that I’m  dreaming, but I knew it this time and I was desperate for it to continue. And then, in an instant, he changed and I kept grabbing his arms and trying to force him and my dream to come back. I woke up so bloody angry that I couldn’t even remember him as my fully functioning father in a dream. Why can’t I think of him that way? Why is it always him in some stage of dementia?

Two nights ago, I had a flashback. I was feeling really tired and a little nauseated and lay down, and suddenly I was convinced that I was crumpled up, crying, in the hallway outside of the room where my dad was dying. I could hear the oxygen machine going and smell the nursing home stink. I could feel the carpet underneath me and the wallpaper at my back. PTSD, anyone? Ugh. I just want to forget those final three, pain-filled days.

So yeah, it’s been a hard couple weeks. And Wednesday is my 40th birthday. How can I celebrate it without including my dad? How can he not be here for it? He’s supposed to be here for it. I miss him so damn much all the damn time.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. And since I’m in a depressive cycle, I need to focus on the good things. I’ll share one with you.  This is the pit I discovered when I cut open an avocado for lunch today:

avocado pit

How cool is that? It looks like a tree. Or Audrey II (there was that total eclipse of the sun a little while back…). Or brains. There is an excellent possibility that I chased the cats around the house with it chanting, “braaaaaaaains.” I may have also tried to chase S around the house with it and he may have taken it from me and thrown it out when I wouldn’t stop. It may also have attracted fruit flies and I may also being currently trying to get them drunk/kill them on cheap white wine and dish soap. Hey, it’s not the worst way to go.

Life goes on, come rain or come shine.

I’m Still Here, Sort Of

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in death, dementia, mental health, sip and paint studio, Uncategorized

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It’s been a long time since I last posted. This is partly due to laziness, partly due to being totally overwhelmed by life, partly because it’s the time of year when my depression usually kicks things up a notch, and partly due to the hurricane coverage that has sucked me in. A LOT has happened over the last almost-month that I’ve been an absentee blogger. And as I got farther and farther behind on posting, the harder it’s been to make myself sit down and actually write. So, because I’m out of practice, this post may be total shit. Apologies in advance for shitblogging.

As you may or may not recall, our landlord for our sip and paint studio decided to be a total douchefuck and double our rent. If you missed that post, go back and read it to catch up before you come back and finish this post. I’ll wait (I won’t really wait. I’m not typing this live, as you read it. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you people.).

So, now that you’re caught up, you’ve probably figured out that we did, in fact, close the brick and mortar location. I taught my last in-studio class on the 19th, and then we had 2 weeks to clean the space out, during which I also had to travel to Colorado to train artists for a new sip and paint studio for which we were doing some consulting. ‘Cause there was so much time for THAT. Aaaaaaaagggghhhh! Cleaning the studio out to close down the business completely wouldn’t have been that big a deal, because we could toss, donate, or sell most of the stuff filling the 1400 square foot space. But because we’re still doing mobile events and offering consulting services, we had to keep a lot of it, which means that we had to find storage for it all. Double-aaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhh!

We had to go from this (which doesn’t even show the back rooms which were also choking on art supplies):

full AA class

To this:

empty AA studio.JPG

The room where-art-goes-to-die was already packed to the gills, and we need the space we have in the buildings at the haunt to make more fun things like the creepy trees. So we had to spend a few days emptying everything out of the already packed spaces so that we could put shelving from the studio into them and re-pack them even more. I had to throw out some old art, which isn’t a happy thing to do, but, realizing that they hadn’t sold since college and aren’t really representative of the work I now do, I said “fuck it” and tossed the paintings out. I also renamed the room from “the room where-art-goes-to-die” to “clusterfucklandia.” (I think maybe I’m German or Dutch. I keep combining words to make a newer, longer words. I must have germandutchitis.) A local friend also generously allowed us to store a solid crapton of stuff in the space above his garage, which saved us a whole heap o’ trouble. So we worked it out.

the room where art goes to die

Except for the desk. My dad’s desk. We’d brought it down to serve as our check-in desk at the studio after we put my dad into the dementia care facility. Try as we might, we couldn’t figure out a place to keep it now that the studio is closing, and it was insanely heavy and damn near impossible to get into the back of the pick-up truck for easy moving. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but for some reason, I got really, really sad at the thought of giving it up. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think that maybe, on a subconscious level, it was a way of having my dad still be a part of a chapter of my life that he’d never see in person. He was contributing to the studio, in a way. And now here I am closing that chapter, and it feels weird that there’s an entire chunk of my life that he never knew, and as I move forward into the next chapter, I won’t even have his desk along for the ride to make him a part of it. It’s silly. I know. It’s just a desk, not my dad. But I just can’t help feeling really sad that I had to let it go.

And then, suddenly, everything was sold or donated or in storage, and I had nothing to do. Except think about that damn desk. And my dad. And now I’m grieving hard again. And, of course, things keep popping up to ensure that I continue to think about it: References on TV; lucky pennies; someone he knew, while growing up, contacting me out of the blue because they read my book; going to a friend’s wedding at which her father said to me, “You know, your dad’s band was supposed to be playing for this,” and at which she and her father danced the father-daughter dance to “What a Wonderful World,” which is what my dad and I danced to at my wedding; cleaning out old emails and discovering a bunch from my dad from his early days with dementia; and on and on. You get the idea. And now I’m reeling a bit and have kind of shut down and hidden from the world for the last little while.

But, as we all know and sometimes like to pretend we don’t, life goes on. And we have plans. All the plans. The best plans. But those plans are for another post. For now, we have bourbon. All the bourbon. The best bourbon. And right about now I’d really like to get all the drunk. But I won’t. I need to save some of the drunk for you, dear reader, because I’m generous like that.

It’s Not Me, It’s My Head

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in cats, health, humor, Uncategorized

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I know I’ve been promising to get better about posting more regularly again. And I meant it when I promised it. But my head didn’t agree. I said, “I swear I’m going to post more,” but my head was all like, “Oh, but I have other ideas. I’m going to give you a week of migraines, cluster headaches, and tension headaches. And maybe some caffeine withdrawal headaches. And probably brain tumors or something. And then I’m going to give you postdrome, just for funsies.” Apparently, my head didn’t make that up, and “postdrome” is actually a thing. Basically, my head was like, “Hey, you know what would be fun? After a bunch of pain, let’s be stupid!!” And I totally went along with it. Because stupid is awesome?*

Also, I’m heading into that time of year when I go into a depression, and my creative juices dry up. I get creatively dehydrated. Not even bourbon can quench my creative thirst. It’s coming on a little early this year, due in part, I’m guessing, to all the headbitching. So I run out of interesting things to say and paint and instead spend all of my time binge watching Jersey Shore and complaining that not all three cats are snuggling with me at every single moment of every single day. I either need more cats or a smaller house so that there are less places for the cats I already have to sleep that don’t involve directly touching me.

all ma kitties

All mah kittehs on me at the same time. I has the heaven.

On top of that, as I have mentioned in the last two posts, I’m going through a major work transition that’s causing a fair amount of chaos from which I would prefer to hide. I was going to post about that right now, but I’m going to drag this shit out into another post so that I can do the work now, and not have to come up with anything to post about over the next couple days, thus maximizing my binge watching/snuggles time tomorrow and the next day. Fuck you postdrome, I bees smart.

*I was going to insert a clip of Snooki, from Jersey Shore, asking if cherubs were real, but apparently, that little nugget of reality TV gold didn’t register on anyone else’s radar enough to isolate a clip and post it on YouTube. So here’s a transcript I created:

Italian, tour guide, pointing out a fresco: “Cupid, the son of Venus, who will throw the arrow of love…”

Snooki: “So they’re real?”

Tour guide: “What – what do you mean are they real?”

Snooki: “The babies with wings?”

Tour guide: “They are character of mythology.”

Snooki: “Cool.”

Let the Lames Begin

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in family, kindness, Uncategorized

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It’s that time of year, people, when my depression tends to take hold and turn me into this:

FullSizeRender.jpg

This years seems to be no different. Partly, I’m sad. I just had my first birthday without my dad. Today is my parents’ anniversary. Next month will be his birthday followed by the holidays. So some of my inertia is grief related, but I need to be honest that some of what I’m feeling is my crankypants brain being crankypants for the sake of crankypantsness. Fun fun fun for everyone!

While I do need to be careful to take steps to stop the negative cyclical thinking so that it doesn’t turn into another long term depression, I’m also going to be a little more gentle on myself this year. When the mental fog hits, the funny doesn’t come as easily. The creative goes into hiding. The social takes a vacation. This year, I accept that. I will be kinder to myself. I will not beat myself up for slacking off a little. So I’m still going to make an effort to post semi-regularly, I’m going to make myself keep painting, I’m going to try to see friends, but I’m also going to let myself take some down time. So please forgive me if the posts are a little less frequent over the next couple months until I emerge from the cycle. If you’re a blogging buddy, please forgive me for not reading as many of your posts as I usually do. I promise that I still love you and wish you were here to hang out eating junk food on the sofa with me. If you feel like stopping by with some bourbon, I won’t stop you.

Gratitudinousness

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in art, gratitude, health, mental health, painting

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Normally, on Thursdays, I post a painting about who my dad was before the dementia, but the next one isn’t yet complete, so I’m going to skip it. I’m also not going to talk about him today, because I’ve been in a very dark place over the last couple weeks, and things seem to be getting darker by the minute. This is not the normal time of year for me to get this depressed, so I’m not really sure what’s going on. Have had several loved ones get very sick, and I think it’s contributing to it.  But I have an exercise I do with a friend, Kristy, where, once a week, we trade emails with all the things we’re grateful for over the last week. It helps us each kick ourselves in the ass and stop focusing on the negative. It doesn’t always work, but I do think it helps me break the negative cyclical thoughts. And I find that reading the triumphs and little things that make her happy help to cheer me, too. It forces me to look at little things I might otherwise miss. I just finished typing mine up and sending them to her, and thought I’d try the exercise with you, dear readers. This won’t be a weekly thing, but here are some highlights of my gratitude. I’d love for any of you who are willing, to comment with something that you’re grateful for, to help me see the sunnier side of things.

– I’m starting a new project for the haunt. Will post about it once it’s complete, but for now I’ll just say that it’s way outside of anything I’ve done before, and I’m having to learn as a I go. I love starting new art projects because of the promise they hold, and I love learning a new skill in the process.

– I’ve started giving Satch B12 injections. I’m grateful that I’ve had enough experience with needles that I have no problem doing the injections. I’m equally grateful that they seem to be helping stimulate his appetite and find his purr again. We may not be able to prolong his life, but however long he has should be of a higher quality than before.

– This weekend, I was at work and was going stir crazy. So I called S and said, “we need to stop working right this instant and take the rest of the afternoon off like normal people.” So we went to Adventure Landing and played skee ball and miniature golf. I’m truly awful at both, but I got a hole in one! S got 3. I love that when we play we don’t actually keep score and make it truly competitive. I mean, we get competitive, but only in as much as we look for ways to cheat and sabotage the other person by jumping in front of their ball to block it, or using the club like a pool stick, or blowing on the ball to avoid one last stroke when it’s on the edge of the cup. We were laughing so hard and having so much fun, even though it was eleventy million degrees out. When we were done with the skee ball, we found a little kid and gave him our tickets so he could get a prize. I loved the look on the kid’s face. It was like I’d given him pirate gold.

– I love that, when I do the dishes, I can squeeze the dish soap bottle in just the right way to send bubbles floating around the kitchen. I also love that, sometimes, Dizzy chases them.

– I’m grateful that my god daughter squeals with excitement whenever she sees me. It makes me glow.

– My mom has been taking woodworking classes and is letting me design a coffee table for the new house we’re getting. I sent her rough drawings a few days ago, and she sent over the sketches with the dimensions last night and I’m so excited I might wet myself.

– Breezes. Because, yo, it’s hot.

– Big thick vines that wrap their way around trees. When I was a kid we cut the bases of a couple out at camp and used them as swings like Tarzan. When I pass them now, I smile and think about how much fun that was, sawing away with our pocket knifes and yodeling as we swung.

– Honeysuckle. It makes my walks smell wonderful and puts the song Honeysuckle Rose in my head. Here’s Patti Austen’s version, one of my favorites.

And just in case you’re missing me posting a little art on Thursday, here’s my newest still life of a veggie for which I’m ever so grateful:

Tomatoes with Stems, 12"x12" oil on board $360

Tomatoes with Stems, 12″x12″ oil on board $360

Addiction and Depression

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in health, mental health

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I have a loved one who was recently hospitalized as a result of addiction. I haven’t talked a lot on my blog about my depression yet, but it’s definitely something I’ve been struggling with since I was a teenager. I was even hospitalized for it in my early 20s. I used to hide that fact, embarrassed that I was so weak. Ashamed and guilty that, even though I had a pretty damn good life, I just couldn’t be happy. It wasn’t that I hated myself. I wasn’t numb. I was just incredibly, incredibly sad and lonely, even when I was surrounded by friends. I have learned, over the years, how better to manage my depression, but I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t still sometimes win. But I’m learning and practicing and learning and practicing how best to fight my way out of it. I imagine that addiction is much like depression in a lot of ways. Out of shame and despair, we isolate ourselves and end up feeding the disease. I will talk more about depression in the future, I’m sure, but for now, on the thought that it might help someone else out there, I’m sharing a letter that I’m sending to my loved one:

It’s hard to know where to start, but I guess I’ll go with this: you are loved. I can only imagine how hard the last few days have been, and you’re probably feeling embarrassed or ashamed, but please don’t. Addiction is a disease, not a character flaw, and I hope you know that we are not judging you for it. Diseases of the brain are tough, because our society does not fully understand that it’s the same thing as a disease of other organs. I have been ashamed of my depression, but I’m learning to recognize that it’s no more embarrassing than my endometriosis or fibromyalgia. It doesn’t make me a bad person or a weak person, it just means I have to work harder than other people for my mental health. And it means I have to reach outside of myself to my friends, family, and doctors to help me with that work. The only way to do that is to be honest with them about my struggle.

Like other chronic diseases, you need treatment with a specialist who can help you learn how to combat and manage it. You need the support of other people who go through similar battles (their battle will never be the same as yours, but they’ll have good insight and understanding, nonetheless). You need to learn your triggers and what you can do to circumvent them. When I’m going into a depression, I tend to isolate myself and I’m betting you do the same. Dealing with the outside world seems totally overwhelming, but I promise you it’s worth the discomfort. So is dealing with the pain you’re feeling, both physical and emotional. Pain sucks. Who wants to accept that pain will be a part of their life forever? I fully admit that there are days that I desperately want to escape it. That may be at least a part of what drives your addiction.

But here is what I’d like to ask of you: instead of reaching for the glass or the pill, reach for the phone. I know I’m simplifying things, but you have to start somewhere. Talking about the pain doesn’t make it go away, but it makes it bearable. You can always call me, but I really hope you’ll also consider AA so that you have someone local who’s fighting the same fight.

Your husband loves you more than you know. He doesn’t want to lose you to this disease. None of us do. Again, you are loved. You are loved. You are loved.

Pity Party Over

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in gratitude, humor, mental health

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Okay, pity party over. Time to kick myself in the ass and put some good juju out into the universe. Yes, the last week has sucked royally, and I didn’t deserve to get yelled at by the guy who was driving down the wrong side of the street. But I was alert enough to avoid him and not wreck my car. Yes, they hacked most of the limbs off of the cherry tree that is the main reason S and I have stayed in our shithole apartment. But I’ve gotten to enjoy those beautiful blossoms snowing down on me all spring for the last 3 years. Yes, I’m having a really tough time dealing with my feelings about my dad’s dementia and it’s giving me nightmares every night. But I’m so damn lucky to have a father that’s worth missing this bad. And yes, I’m sleep deprived as a result, but I have a warm soft bed to lie awake in, and a comfy sofa to snuggle on with the cats when I can’t stay in bed awake any longer. Yes, my fibromyalgia and endometriosis are flaring, but that’s what heating pads and Advil are for. Yes, the drop off for my next art show got all screwed up and cost me money and will necessitate a lot more driving and unloading and reloading and re-unloading of the car. But at least I’ve got another show lined up, and I got to borrow my husband’s car for the week and it has seat warmers. Yes, I’ve had some truly ugly, nasty customers demanding the world from me for free and bitching me out when I don’t give in. But I have plenty of other customers and am able to make a living playing with paint. Life could be a lot worse. No one trashed the studio bathroom this whole week. S and I have been taking turns picking what movie we watch, and we’ve gotten to see a few new ones that we liked. I don’t have to date any of the crazy women on the Batchelor (have you been watching that???! Holy all new level of crazy, Batman!). Our power stays on all day. We have running water. No bombs have gone off near us (except a few f-bombs). I can breathe without the aid of an oxygen tank or a respirator. The Muppets exist. So does cheese. When I do the dishes, I can squirt bubbles into the air so that they dance around me as I clean. I’m not addicted to much besides silly socks and word games on my phone and hugs from the people I love. I have lots of people to love. And, if all else fails, I have bourbon. Wink.

He Forgot That He Had Forgotten

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in art, dementia, Fractured Memories, health

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I was reading someone’s blog recently who has a parent with dementia, and the parent is still in the earlier stages, where they’re very aware that they’re slipping. I remember how painful that time was for us – when my dad knew that he was having a harder time understanding the world around him, but still felt like a reasonably autonomous being. I remember how angry he would get at us for telling him he wasn’t understanding something, and how he pushed and pushed to be heard and treated like a competent adult, even when he no longer was. It had to be absolutely terrifying for him. There are times when I know I can’t trust my own brain, because I have a very strong history of depression (I’ll talk more about that in future posts), but I also generally trust that at some point, I’ll come out of the depression and be able to trust my world view. To be slipping and slipping and getting more and more confused, and knowing that it’s not going to get better, well, I’m not sure how people continue on. But, blessedly, they get to the point where they’re no longer aware that they’re not seeing the world as it is for the rest of us. They can trust that the people around them are looking out for them, like a child does. At some point, they forget that they’ve forgotten. Again, using the elephant as a symbol for dementia, this painting, from the Fractured Memories series, is about crossing over that line where we are still aware of what is happening to us.

Text reads:

Text reads: “and in his later years, a second childhood found him, and he forgot that he had forgotten”