Scattered pieces

The theme for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is:

Through drawing, painting, or any other visual means, create an image that represents a major obstacle facing you now.

My first reaction when reading the directive for this month’s carnival, was to write the letters “ME” on a page, and send it in.  It feels more and more as if I am my own worst enemy; or probably more accurately, my thinking is.

My disordered thinking is evident in all areas of my life, but is particularly problematic at work – where I’m doing the job of about two people, but reluctant to make waves by saying that I’m swamped; within therapy – where I hold up any negative interaction as a reason to further beat myself up mentally, and use as a gateway to more self-injury; and finally with my relationship with food – where small things like being told that I must have three meals a day in order to have the antibiotics I was prescribed last week, caused a major panic.

I know that all of these factors are inter-related symptoms of an underlying cause… the problem is, that the symptoms are screaming so loudly, that it’s difficult to see, or hear the motivations behind it all.  It is for this reason, that I’ve chosen this abstract photo of a red canna lily to represent both the scream of the symptoms, and the underlying motivations.

This scream is my obstacle… and my path to healing.

—————-
Now playing: Counting Crows – Rain King
via FoxyTunes

I return to work on Monday.  Going back to an overwhelming workload, within a toxic environment.

I don’t know if I can do it.  Actually, I know I can’t.

The only question is; how long can I handle it, before it destroys me?

Winnie

1994 – 28/12/2011

Forever resting under the Pohutukawa…

Sunbathing (2011)

On alert (2009)

Disdain (2008)

When I returned from Wellington, I thought I was making my way out of the abyss.  Things seemed more settled, and my thinking clearer.

I was wrong.

During the past week I have reconnected with dysfunctional people from my past; and set-up emotional scenarios which mirror different aspects of my past.

I’m a train wreck.

I’m trying to live in the present, and failing.  The past has begun haunting me with a vengeance.

I would tell you how my week has been; but I don’t know, it’s a blank.  I see from my tweets that there was a problem over the weekend with a neighbour… my hair has been cut… I see from emails that I was concerned about friends… I had Christmas cards to put in the post today, so things were getting done… I was appearing normal.  But, I don’t remember it.  There’s jumbled glimpses of other things… putting on trackies when I was getting cold talking to a friend on the phone Friday night… It’s Monday, right? That means I need to get the rubbish ready to put out tomorrow… Panic in the mall on Saturday… I hate Allison… Take the team at work to afternoon tea on Thursday, but tell them they can go downtown for an hour if they want – one small way I can make up for them not getting a bonus… I don’t trust anyone…  Why is our work Christmas function in a sports bar?

Just a mess of thought fragments being tossed around my head.

I was scrolling through my YouTube playlists, and came across this piece which calmed me briefly…

If I’m falling, I wonder where I’ll land?

—————-
Now playing: Arvo Part – Spiegel Im Spiegel
via FoxyTunes

I recently came across this poem, which although being about trying to fit into a culture that is not your own, I identified with strongly…

Crossed Cultures

A child, I skipped alone
over cracks in concrete

not daring to look behind
not daring to fall. I was the
dark shadow

that moved
beneath my uniformed body
a shadow stamping its rhythm
on my skin

the threads
of my mother’s tongue reaching out
to furl me in close embrace
her hot orchid breath

whispering
you are not one of them.
but I am! I cried, jumping higher,
running faster

but still
the shadow curled its wily
blossoms about my knees, my hands
my throat

and others
saw and shook my hand and welcomed me
to my own country and asked,
how does it feel
to be you?

And I lied
and said, fine, the words
like sandpaper on bare skin
and I said

fine, kia ora,
no worries, yeah, gidday mate
and they told me my English
was amazing.

So I took
my shadow home with me. I stood
so the shadow
was smaller. I opened my eyes,
stared directly at the sun.

I wanted to be blind
so at last I’d fit in.

By Renee Liang
(Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License).

The themes of acceptance, alienation, and conflicting messages are powerful.

I came across the poem through the Mix & Mash Awards, with this poem being part of the winning entry in the Literature Remix section by Allan Xia, and also called Crossed Cultures.  You will need to click on the image of the poem to be able to see it properly, but I found it to be a worthwhile extra click.  The image that Allan used within his remix associated with the line “not daring to fall” was what initially caught my eye; but I think he did a brilliant job of mashing the two media and incorporating his own artwork.

—————-
Now playing: Missy Higgins – Stuff and Nonsense
via FoxyTunes

Fragments… just bits and pieces flying around inside my head.

That’s what the last week has been like.  Nothing tangible to hold onto.

The only constant are feelings of disgust.  I feel dirty, disgusting, sub-human… unclean.  I don’t think the layers of filth can be, or will ever be, removed.  It is part of me as surely as the colour of my eyes.  It is a part of me, and I am a part of it.

I think I could handle it, if all of the fragments flying around my head were of horror.  Horror has the ability to sweep you away in a dissociative haze of lost time.  But when there are everyday scenes intermingled with the horror, it makes you pause.  You pause and look.  You turn the fragment around, inspecting it from all angles.  You look into the heart of it, and only then do you see the horror.  The unmitigated horror of seeing how brazen and normal the abuse was.  In those everyday scenes, you see the range of emotions on the faces around you – discomfort, curiosity, embarrassment, and the knowing smiles.  What they don’t know, is that they are being manipulated.  This is part of their entrance exam into the Old Boys Club.  They all pass.  Even the ones who question the young girls presence in a place she shouldn’t be, with their joking protests quickly turning into silent observation.

It was the perfect scenario.  There was no obvious abuse, but it was implied.  Every person in the room probably knew that something was wrong, but there was nothing tangible that they could take to the authorities.  It opened the door to silent consent, and they walked through.  They became accessories; and in order to ease their own conscious, they will stay forever silent.  They didn’t see anything, after all.  Just a young girl with her father walking by the shower room.  He might not have known that the team were in there.  They’re both hearing impaired, after all.

It changed the way those men looked at me.  Some of them turned away more quickly.  Some saw through me more readily.  Some smiled, and beckoned me over more often.

Then the memories of horror draw you into their grip.  Grounding techniques are lost in the wave that overwhelms and batters your mind.

But still, you force the smile and talk inanities to the person asking about patron upload problems.

You pack up the box of horrors for another time.  Stamp down the lid and push it backwards.  You hope that you never have to look at the box again.  But, you know you will.  Not because of the memories in the box, but because of the emotions it evokes.  There is anger at looking at the horror, and anger at looking away.  In a world of no-wins, I walk the minefield of navigating the present, while trying to understand and heal from the past.

It’s all done in the hope of having a future.  My father took me past the shower room in order to have a future that he wanted.  I walked past that shower room because I had no concept of choice.  Despite often losing my way, I do have choices now.  I have choices based on experience, education and understanding.  The only thing more soul-destroying than the abuse, is seeing how I seem to make choices which encourage, or perpetrate self-abuse.

I know that there should be a positive note to the end of this, but there isn’t.  I sit here at work, looking at the huge pile of work that is expected of me.  I feel the effects of the medical problems which I was told yesterday will require minor surgery.  I feel the dissociation starting – the slight fuzziness at the back of my head which is creeping forward steadily.  It’s difficult to find that positivity, when the layers of stress in the present, add to the layers of horror from the past.  Your head becomes a maelstrom of emotions, and the only relief is dysfunctional coping.

—————-
Now playing: Tracy Chapman – All that you have is your soul
via FoxyTunes

Note: This may trigger due to talk of abuse and the Sandusky abuse scandal.

Cold, hard concrete floor
Wooden seats, newly stained
Cicadas singing
Tree silhouettes dance across the window

…

This is the first verse of a poem that I wrote today.  I won’t share the rest of it with you, because it’s too raw and personal.

Raw is probably the best way to describe how I’m feeling at the moment.  I’m struggling to make sense of what is going on, and there might not be too much of this which makes sense, but I’ll try to keep it coherent…

When the news of the Sandusky scandal broke, I wasn’t surprised to find that this man had been protected by those around him.  It makes sense – power, loyalty, pack mentality, morality, etc; all play a part in people staying silent about abuse for so long.  This, I understand.  I even understand the anger that some of the students exhibited at the firing of Joe Paterno… when your illusions of someone are shown to be false, it’s difficult to cope with.  I know that this is only an assumption about their motivations, but it makes sense to me.

It also makes a certain amount of sense that the photos I saw associated with the scandal headlines, were not those of Sandusky; but instead of Joe Paterno.  He was the more well known of the two.  But it also shows another sign of how the real tragedy of this scandal gets lost… where is the talk of the victims?  These boys (some of whom are now men), were vulnerable and allegedly abused.  As far as I can tell, they have yet to determine the identity of the victim in the showers.  I realise that identifying this person might be difficult after all these years; but to me, he’s symbolic of how anonymous and vulnerable these victims were.

This is where it becomes difficult to separate my own experiences from the ones surrounding the scandal.  I often describe myself as being invisible and disposable; and this is exactly how these boys seem to have been treated by Sandusky.  They were vulnerable, and he was in a position of power… he is described as paying attention to them, giving them gifts and opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise had – that is, he groomed them.

The cynic in me says that this invisibility and disposability has spilled over into some of the media coverage of the scandal, as the victims take a back-seat to the careers of football coaches…

I’m the first to admit that I don’t know anything about football, but I do know a bit about the sports pack mentality that can contribute to this sort of cover-up.  I grew up in a small town where the weekends were dominated by sport.  It was a crowd that you were either a part of it, or not.  If you were part of the crowd, then your life became intertwined with these other people to such an extent, that your children would call your friends “uncle” or “aunt”; you would laugh as you watched your drunk friend stumble towards their car when the bar closed; you would laugh at the racist and sexist jokes, then tell a few of your own…  It was very much “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”.  Admittedly, this was 30 odd years ago, but some of that sport culture still remains.  Even if the acts have changed, the camaraderie and sense of community remains.  When things get bad, you talk to one of the crowd, you don’t involve outsiders…  So even though I don’t agree with his actions, I can understand why the graduate assistant called his father, and then talked to his superiors within the organisation.  He failed that boy in the shower; and in so doing, kept his position within the crowd – it takes courage to stand up to the crowd… isn’t it sad that it takes courage to do the right thing?

The problem is, that understanding the potential reasons why people failed those boys, doesn’t help.  Firstly, it’s only conjecture on my part; but secondly, and more importantly… those boys were allegedly abused.  All of the reasons why, won’t take that away.  Nothing will reverse these events, all we can do is support the people who need it… the victims.

—————-
Now playing: Natalie Merchant – My skin
via FoxyTunes

I came across the word “murmuration” today, and stumbled across this video.  I don’t know if it’s the music, the dance of the starlings, or both… but I found it calming, so thought I’d share it.

Thanks to Frank and the @postsecret team for the tweet that piqued my interest.

Late edit: If you hadn’t already tried it, it’s great to watch in full-screen :)