Hard to write anything much recently as I have felt very raw - as though my outer shell had been removed. I have been enjoying quite a few sessions a week to recover - just 'be' - at the psychiatric day centre and I think as I have prodded and probed my psyche with skilled and highly professional assistance, to try and understand what's behind the presenting messages of my depression and anxiety, I had worked so hard in the days leading up to this last week that a week of taking things more gently was just the ticket. I arrived at the centre complete with canvas, huge black box of paints and enough brushes and kitchen roll to provide an impromptu art class for 30 mixed infants - but this time it was me who was left to play for a bit - alone and for me. It was important. I was, for some reason, worth upsetting a busy professional environment to find a spot to paint in. I was worth another human being taking the trouble to check I had everything I needed and that I had such support as I needed. I was precious enought - somehow - to be awarded space that could not be eroded by anyone.
The rawness stayed for a bit in its acute form and I had a bad few days when I was very down having flipped the positivity of the painting experience into a negative view which framed it along the lines that it would be better if I was in some kind of long stay rest home for the mildly deranged where I would be no trouble to anyone and everyone could get on with their own lives in peace. I then remembered we live in the 21st century and that our contemporary equivalent of that is Broadmoor which doesn't have quite the same appeal.
The feeling of rawness I experienced had almost a physical quality. I remember a young person once telling me that a carer had rubbed her hand with an abrasive houshold substance to try and get rid of a different pigmentation present on her otherwise lighter skin - it was I suspect a birth mark - but for some reason the carer was offended by the imperfectness of the blemish. I can't imagine what that must have felt like for the youngster, emotionally and physically. I just felt tender to the emotional touch. I became as tight as a ball physically, clutching onto the fabric of my clothes and the old legs going ninety to the dozen as though I was keeping time with a punk band. No thoughts apart from I can't. Interestingly the one thing I was pretty much forbidden to say as a child. But that was then and now, is now...
Without my sub-personalities kicking in to remind me there are several interpretations to events and thoughts I seemed to be on a treadmill of negativity. Medication dulled my senses apart from a passion to switch off and splat paint everywhere over large canvases.
I am now on series 6 of West Wing. I'm also on my second sleeping bag to snuggle on the sofa as Mungo (collie x) - bored by my sleeping - didn't just unpick the seams - he removed the stuffing so I woke to a snow scene. I am a lousy seamstress at the best of times glue and what I describe as invisble stitches which are enornous uneven blanket stitches - so it has been recycled. Reminded me of the time when my son was about 6 and had a hissy fit in the bathroom emptying 2 and a half large containers of talcum powder over the whole bathroom (large for a semi) and part of the landing - that was after he'd discover how to back up the toilet and cause several days work replacing flooring and eradicating odour.
So, I have painted three canvases in the last two weeks. This has probably taken the place of words and blogging. They were a bit too factual and detached rather than emotion-ful and reflective. I've worked in acrylic paints (on canvas, not on my emotions) and my treat for getting myself to my mental health review today - normally I am sitting there sagely nodding while someone else is assessed - was to take the three pictures for framing afterwards - exercise, a trip to a shop and the healthy alternative to a Hot Chocolate and a Cream Cake at Simpsons - a Garden Centre with a difference - the tourists haven't found it.
I very nearly didn't go to The Frame Shop who have done all my more recent work - but the last piece The Stations of the Cross based on reflections of disability, nearly lost them my custom permanently. When Holy Week got nearer and nearer - the traditional time to reflect on The Stations and I kept calling and promises were made and not realised. I lost confidence in their ability to quite literally deliver on time. We found another framing shop on the way to my old favourite and decided that if we felt the formerly favoured shop were much as we remembered last time - a guy with a vivid imagination and a fantastic eye for a frame - the capacity to make the frame draw you into the subject but a rather laid back attitude about the when and where - then we would try somewhere new. The trouble is good framers with an inspired eye are like gold dust that's if you really don't want a picture to look like a bargain from Ikea. Today the person I have always assumed is the proprietor was about and she is a genius. I don't know how she does it - but she can make a painting live with a good frame. Or maybe I should say an amateurish composition look like art with the right surround. Of course the framing cost an arm and a leg. But I am on a roll with painting generally. Comfort Zone. I can put into painting what I cannot touch with words. The three compositions I have worked on are called Scrutiny, Driftwood and Summer Blooms.
Back to the mental health review; I am making "excellent progress". Yes, I am still raw - but medium rare now emotionally. No, I am not doing much apart from working my way through all seven series of West Wing before I start on 24. BUT I am better. The moment I KNEW I was better as opposed to other people telling me I was making progress was when it was intimated that if I was painting (Scrutiny made it into a session because it was significant in terms of my recent dreams.) Very good signs noted; the way I am currently able - and capable of making eye contact and speak articulately - I was told I was in a better place than many other patients at the centre. Suddenly, from nowhere a sub-personality I have heard nothing from in weeks - who has been utterly dormant - as the now familiar droning mean-machine prattles on with my droning old, self-abusing monologue inside my head - rose into action and I stopped myself saying it out loud, but maybe I should have done just that - "IF you think this is me functioning, you should meet me when I'm well".
Oh, yo! Oh, yo! Oh, yo!
Now I must stay open; listen to these lucid and sometimes literally frightening dreams and practice gently returning to the chances, and opportunities - the hopes and dreams. Time to explore what my psyche has re-ordered; de-fragmented; prioritised and respond to where the changes need to occur. Time to see if in the silence of the painting some of my shadow can continue to find a means of expressing itself.
Prayer is difficult at the moment.
I am unpacking a lot of my theology and spirituality almost subconsciously because I want some synthesis between my life experience and my values and beliefs.
But now - even though I am emotionally knackered - I want to work. Get inside - and understand and reflectively evaluate. Find the rest of me and the painting gives me a place from which to advance or retreat back. Cream cakes, salmon and cream cheese bagels, steak sandwiches and pasta carbonara help too - stuff I don't normally 'allow' myself.
I have broken into fragments. Now the fun starts. I have had my time to stop. I must now claim whatever individuality means for me from now on. I must find the Super Glue.
John Stuart Mill:
A people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop. When does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality.
No longer on our Scottish Theological Training Course as far as I know - but a great, great thinker and ethicist. Time to progress...
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