I think that I need to start blogging on mental health. It's time. I need to tell my story, my continuing story. I've been hidden for too long. My mental illness has demanded that I hide at all costs, and now I'm defying it in the best way possible. It gonna be good I can feel it. Things are a changin.
Right now I'm sitting with a wee bit of chronic pain in my shoulders. But, if I stay aware of it, it'll dissipate and then shift somewhere else in my body. If I am honest with myself, I've had this type of chronic pain since I was a kid. I would always get it during art making, I thought that it was due to strain. But its really just trapped trauma energy, and when the energy speeds up within me, boom some intense, localized pain. If you're gonna read my blog you're gonna have to get used to me describing things in terms of energy a lot, it's the only way that I can succinctly describe my experience. In the world of invisible illness, you're going to have to talk in invisible terms.
I can feel an art show coming together and its bitter sweet. Too many years spent in bed, confused about healing, and NOW I am just starting to get it...at 29. I earnestly started to heal at 15, looking towards Nichiren Buddhism to save me. While it didn't accomplish anything that it promised, it at least got me talking to people who encouraged me to go to therapy and read self help books. I have this problem from my trauma where I feel terrified of doing my own research most days, so I am reliant upon recommendations from others. If anyone else has difficult quirks from trauma let me know, because this quirk is frustrating beyond belief. My whole body will seize up and ill get filled with fear at the thought of looking up a thing that I want to look up. After 10 years of psychoanalysis I think that it might be from my mother attempting to control so many details of my life that I am filled with fear when I step outside of this invisible box that I left 12 years ago, when I left home for school.
I want to keep the entries short and sweet and easy to digest. I think I'll end it here for now.
Katherine,
ReplyDeletebest wishes with the art show and this "Sweeter Future" of yours.
Yes, you do have to talk invisibly.
Can you tell the difference between strain and energy of the trapped variety?
A good place to go is Pair a Docks by Roger Garrett. At the end of his articles/blogs he always has a list of books and stories and other resources.
http://pairadocks.blogspot.com
I like Monica Pignotti and Jean Mercer too. And Geoffrey Falk's STRIPPING THE GURUS is a very funny read.
Glad I found you on Celestial Reflections - this is a long story.
I was reading the Tweets of a woman who went on a motorbike through Africa and Europe a few years ago and she mentioned Teal and Jessica Schwab on two different blogs in 2014 and 2015. Melanie Cowpland is her name. Schwab came first ... then I learnt later Teal had come two weeks ago to Melbourne and Sydney.
[I was much more interested in the World Cup at that point].
I also know bits and pieces about Nichiren Buddhism because a Californian friend went to Soka Gakkai of America in 2011-15.
My difficult quirk is wanting to know everything - and, yes, research is fearsome too.
Hey Katherine, good you are writing. :)
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