I Haven't Given Up
Today I went for the psych evaluation my doctor ordered months ago. My therapists had recommended it too. Concerned friends and medical professionals used diagnostic words like "bipolar", "mania" , "ADHD" and some other ones to describe the mental and nervous breakdown I had in the last few months. The breakdown that pushed me into the cave I'm in. The cave that has helped me shut out the sounds, noises and input. The internal and external cave that both felt like a sanctuary and prison. Those words scared me. They scared me because I didn't know what that would mean for me. They scared me because I didn't know what was going on, but more so, I didn't know what to do.
I was assessed to be "highly sensitive" or something like that. The psych evaluator said that some people are physiologically born more sensitive - it's not a disorder but rather a physiological make up. I was just designed to feel everything more. Physically and emotionally. It comes with pros and cons. That checks out for me. She said that given my life the last some years, I am going through situational depression and anxiety. So I'm highly sensitive with complex PTSD and situational depression and anxiety...along with burn out, LT concussion symptoms and currently post surgery healing. Anyone got a break for me? She also said something about that while the high sensitivity isn't considered a disorder, it becomes one if I become so overwhelmed I have suicidal thoughts. She suggested I take SSRIs and DBT (dialectical behavioural therapy). I'm not currently open to the pharma drugs as they have been known to affect me strongly and I just can't afford more setbacks, but I will check out DBT once I am cleared by my surgeon. I have held onto the full 6 weeks after surgery as my "cocoon" time to not engage in anything that may trigger me as I also can't afford more injury right now.
I had started to feel better these last some weeks. Better meant the downs were less frequent and intense. The intense times, while still hard, were not so harmful I was clawing at myself. Healing is hard and two steps foward, one step back. Sometimes it's two steps back, try to maintain there, breathe, and take one step forward again. It's a lot of that.
Art, both visual and writing, has been the only things I can really do. Cleaning and cooking has been clumsy, though I'm slowly getting it back. It's not even the physical part. It's like my brain has been hijacked and I've forgotten what basic things like a spoon is. But with practice and repetition, I learn what a spoon is, where it is and how to use it. But art,...for some reason, it's been my place I can go to, disappear and appear into. It's where I find myself again...not in one whole...but in pieces...one at a time. Sometimes I am finding refuge in the moment when Pthalo Blue mixes with Quinacridone Gold and a beautiful green emerges from the thickness. Other times, I am in an accidental stroke that seems like I screwed it all up, but I breathe and embrace the mark...like the marks on my body and spirit. I let it sit there, stay and get curious about what it wants to say. I wonder if it was a slip or defiantly stating " Hi! I'm here. See me. Let me stay." Please, love me. Embrace me. Stay with me. I belong here too. Unintended but I am art too.
Then there are days like today, when my brain feels like it hates me. My head hurts, my eyes blur and I literally can't walk straight for days. The ringing inside my head is a firetruck alarm pointed at my eardrums and won't leave. Those days, I can't pick up the brush, or I try and the marks just don't land. I learn to tell myself, it's ok. Art will still be there for you when you emerge from hell again. I will still be here for you.
Same goes for typing here. I used to write more poetically, more eloquently. This "rough" journalistic stream of consciousness writing...has taught me to not judge the creation. That all creation matters. That even this is still writing. I may not ever do anything else with it except keep it here. No one else, or at least not many, may care to ever read it, but it is still writing. Why judge it if it gives me any reprieve. Who cares if the only audience is my screen and random spam bots (as long as they don't hack my website and make it a D grade p0rn0 hub).
Art isn't just writing and painting though. It's life. It's observing with my soul rather than my mind. It's tasting my breaths and feeling the texture of the sky by hearing the clouds move. It's living. I get it now. Art is living consciously, intentionally, one small moment at a time. It's feeling the full range I feel so deeply- grief, loss, joy, gratitude, pain, the fight and acceptance all at once. All of it. Living with art, the art of being truly alive, is what saves me. It's why I haven't given up yet. Because there is still so much more life to live.
