Bumbling and fumbling words rolling my tongue like a gutter ball on the side of this well worn lane. I am a fool now. Ignored. Unseen, laughed at when seen. I am a fool; not your fool.
Faith
Or Me
Category: Surreal
The Crooked Tea Cup – Chatter Art
I take pen to paper and near violently sketch, in order to manage obsessive thoughts and counting. The Etsy painting expresses anxiety building that I needed to manage.
I paint what’s swirling in my head, marching, counting or popping. Art helps manage the symptoms and situation.
When focused, I’ll express how I feel in bright colors next to black lines, and upside down flowers without uttering a single word.
This painting is 5.5×8.5 inches on watercolor paper, unmounted, signed, sealed
“The Crooked Tea Cup” – Arrows direct the path I should take; paranoia is her guide.
Please see my Etsy shop for this raw art original.
Faith
Sometimes I Feel Like A Freak
This is about the stress and pressure from people telling me what I should be doing and me having a hard time finishing projects. Slowly but surely they are being completed, this one too very, very soon. –
Sometimes I feel like a freak but I try to hide it.
I try to blend in.
Say the right things, the right way.
I want to hold my face in the expression allowing emotions of the moment to show, balancing them on my brow and tongue like a real live woman.
I’m not normal. I’m not and the effort it takes to be, exhausts my tired spirit.
Sometimes I feel lost.
I’m lost
as ink scratches on
9×12 pads
roads and hills,
lands of dramatic color and wonder.
With each stroke of the pen to paper you hear the symphony of my madness.
There’s stress in the ink, acrylic and experimental designs. Stress to do it your way.
Change. Spotlight. Museum. Gallery. Gala. Teach. Speak, Lead!
Don’t waste your voice, your voice, your voice, your voice.
The art stops. The freak is seen clearer. And everyone finally goes home.
Faith Magdalene
Chatter – Rip The Heart Out
CONTENT – My cat Joe is dying. Friend always contradicts me. (Changing meds.)
It’s been difficult watching Michael Joseph become weaker and weaker, sleep more and more. It’s tearing me up. I don’t know what to do with the anxiety sometimes.
I’m working on several art projects. I’m successfully working with my CNA. I’m successfully writing letters. I’m holding up my end of things and I’m proud of that. But I’m anxious as I watch my little guy grow weak and cry out in pain. He literally sounded like a cow mooing. It tore through me! My baby Joe Schmoe isn’t well! I can’t take it.
It’s interesting, the very first reaction is to distrust my instincts and listen to others but I’ve thrown that away. I’m his mother. I clean his litter box every day. I brush him every day. I feed him every day and remind him that he’s the mascot of Sundrip so act right little king! lol I hold him. I cuddle him. It’s me he sees day in and day out. We went through the lock down together. I KNOW JOE SCHMOE very well. Seeing him deteriorate is heartbreaking. My God!
Faith
Epiphany: A Future that is Mine
CONTENT – Child Abuse. Strong emotion. Therapy Review. The art work is not finished but will eventually be in my Etsy shop.
If I believe I have a real future and a real hope, why do I keep wanting to go back and fix things? Why do I still feel like that little girl who needs her mother to love her?
No, it’s too late. I know she’s gone but I feel myself unable to give up. But not giving up the past means there’s less room for the wonderful future ahead, a future I firmly put faith in.
Today Dr D ask me if I could say anything to her what would I say? My words are in bold. I told her Don’t touch me! Don’t look at me! Keep away! You keep saying you’re going to give me a way, then do it!
That comment was interesting because the entire time I was talking to her I never said I love you or why don’t you love me? I never said hug me. I never said anything like that. It was it, Get away from me! Get away from me!
I didn’t want her to touch me ever again. I was angry about her watching me. I was angry about her letting others watch me. I was angry about all of the touch. I was angry about her destroying the mind of my sister. I was angry about her destroying the relationship I could have had with my sister. I just wanted her to go away. That was different from the feelings I thought I had. When I had the “spontaneous opportunity” to speak it was the voice of rage not a tiny, vulnerable child. That was incredible.
The artwork I’ve been doing lately shows exactly how I feel about my mother’s voyeurism. She was everywhere to the point that it was scary. Now that I think about it, if she stalked her boyfriend with us in the car of course she stalked my sister and me. And she wore that stupid black coat with the stupid hood looking like the grim reaper. She wasn’t holding anything, but dang! Standing in a pitch black hallway in a black trench coat watching people like a psychopath!
She told me she had people watching me and my sister and that nothing could be hidden from her. Dr D jumped in an said, “This is why you have DID.”
It was the most terrifying time of my life growing up with her and yet I thought I wanted that woman to love me. I wanted a little child me to go to her. To run to her. To be held by her.
Are you kidding me! No way! This is the woman who beat my lips with a wide tooth comb. Who beat my body with a towel rod. No. No. I have got to scrape this off of my heart so I can let myself have that future that’s so right in front of me. I’ve been crawling towards it. How do I scrape this off of me, the filth that she layered on me? The filth belongs to her. Whereas a future filled with hope is mine. I believe that with all my being.
Faith
Father. Art.
I keep sighing. My heart is heavy but I keep trying to lift it up.
The fatigue is insane.
I’m learning so much about how OCD affects my life and how it affected my mother and sister.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about my father. I remember his voice was kind and sweet. I don’t want to be angry with my mother for separating us. It’s foolish to entertain what-if scenarios but what if one of my parents loved me.
I say my mother didn’t love but I’ve got to retract that statement. The more I learn about her mental health the more I think she had love for me from time to time but was unable to most of the time. There were many things I can point to now and see a shadow of normalcy where love could have existed. Somewhere in that shadow she may have been capable of loving me. Sometimes there may have been a spark.
I bet my mother battled depression after the divorce. I remember feeling like a failure after my marriage ended. Is that why she cried so often? Did she cry because of the divorce and the loneliness?
It’s hard to say she may have loved me while knowing the extremes she went to in order to hurt us.
She lied and told me my father was dead when he wasn’t. Now I wonder if what contact she had with him in my younger years.
Like all my other family photos, my father’s photo is tucked away so I can’t see it. There are no family photos on my walls at all, just art.
Our family of three left a restaurant together. While in the car my mother told me and my sister to “freeze, it’s an emergency, don’t move.” She said look straight ahead and don’t move. After about a minute or so she gave the all clear then said, “That was your father in the car next to us.” It was cruel.
I’m tired. I’ve got to sleep very shortly then get up and eat. The fatigue is heavy.
Original Art
This piece has changed significantly. It now reflects dissociation and PTSD. It’s currently listed in my Etsy shop.
This is more Chatter Art. It’s art that I do to better manage the incessant talking in my head. I’ll put this in the shop too. It’ll be in the section for journal art.
The above is complete and ready for the shop. It too is chatter art. It feels great to finish art pieces. You can see more in my Etsy shop. 🙂
I have a restart button hanging on the wall so if things really start to go down hill I can hit the button, take 5 minutes for breathing exercises then get back to life. I got the button from Dollar Tree.
Until soon,
Faith
A History of Eyes on Me
Content: Abuse. Being watched by abusers. Sadism.
Publishing this art piece comes at an odd time seeing as how I just talked about store workers profiling and following me and my caregiver at the store. It’s also not concerning imaginary audience / fable but an all together different type of being watched.
I was never sure why my mother was watching me. I was more concerned by her method of watching me. Although I know she watched me and my sister around the second grade, my most vivid memories are the 4th grade when she wore her trench coat and stood behind the door motionlessly.
The coat was her regular coat. It was a black trench coat. When the lights were out we couldn’t see her, nor were we looking for her. But if we saw a motionless figure in the hallway it scared the crap out of us. She’d make sure we’d seen her before walking away. No words. Just walks away.
After a little while I worked hard not to show I was afraid. I’d either say nothing or turn around to the door and say something to her. I had to guage how far I could go in pretending she didn’t scare me. I knew there was a response she was looking for. If I withheld that response too much, I might regret it. When being beaten with a dowel rod I knew I had to give the response she was looking for.
When being watched in the room alone, when showering or using the restroom there was a response she was looking for. I always wondered if there were times she wasn’t trying to get caught and see my reaction. This game of watching went on all the way to the day before I moved out. She listened to phone calls when we had a corded phone. I owned nothing, especially my body.
When I moved to Florida with my mother’s sister, my cousin and an uncle by marriage, I thought life was going to be good. He said he would treat me like his own daughter. That one sentence makes me want to break into tears. The irony of it is cruel.
My cousin was his step daughter. She endured more abuse than me. Having me dress up. Making crude comments. Watching me. If I turned around and saw him watching through the cracked door, he too would stay just a few seconds longer before quietly leaving.
I’ll be keeping A History of Eyes on Me a little while longer. It’s hanging in my own art area beside the painting She Speaks the Dream, which was created in 2017.
Observations – The painting called Roses for Jane was remade. In addition to more eyes, I brought out the figure in the back then made a dramatic leap by dividing the main figure in black and white. I kept quite a bit of the original twist and turns while softening her face by one notch. As a person who uses sunflowers for emotional expressions, it interests me that not a single flower is on the original piece or the new. The main figure is no longer standing in the dark.
Thank you for coming to Sundrip today.
Faith
Anxiety. Support. Long Haul.
I bought a second sketchbook that’s small and easy to take with me if / when I leave the house. It’s also easier to hold in bed. And for the first time in a good long time, I had to buy art supplies. I was able to get ahold of the paint needed so I’m happy with that.
Right now I’m making the art supplies area more disability friendly.
Symptoms of the clinical depression (my nervous breakdown) significantly decreased but have crept up again. After my aide left, a person with whom I felt safe) abandonment issues began to derail me. At least this time I know better than to wait to see if the depression, anxiety, etc will get better. I immediately began using the skills I’ve learned in the last year so as to never revisit that horrible-for-everyone, deep, hollow place.
I remember thinking that everyone has an invisible line that represents a division between coping and totally losing it. It feel like as long as I don’t cross that line I’ve still got hope of getting better. Well I blew past that line and had no way on my own to get back. I couldn’t reach inside and pull up strength because I was hollow. There was nothing to pull from. I couldn’t even stop or control the emotions anymore. I felt stranded in the middle of the open sea.
I’m not where I was last time but some of the symptoms are troubling. The decline began shortly after being triggered by the loss of a CNA I felt safe with. Right now I am regrouping and using new skills so I don’t again completely fall to pieces.
I’m grateful for art. I can’t believe I did that mental health crisis with very little art. I had no way to redirect anxiety so it felt like it just sat inside eating away at me.
My included art piece shows individuals with solid black skin. I noticed the color of the shirts as being significant. The person who reflects my current state is wearing an orange shirt. I don’t think I’ve drawn my sister, me and my mother together in at least 5 years. This time it’s definitely all three of us, with me in the orange shirt with one foot and extra long arms.
When I looked at the chart created to record color significance, I could see a bit more into what I’m actually feeling. Come to find out, it’s very much representative of what’s going on in my life right now and what I’ve been thinking about.
The Art Therapy gallery explains color and symbol significance.
- Orange: Fleeting courage or self doubt, ambiguity,
- Purple: Self worth, pride
- Black: Emptiness, vacant, does not exist, emotional death
- Red: Strength, courage, empowered
My mother has been on my mind quite a bit because of my menopause symptoms. I remember seeing some of this as a kind.
I remember one winter my mother only wore a long, thin, black trench coat (it was the 80s ok) despite the fact that it was freezing cold. Several years later she had it so cold in the house that I wore a jogging suit to bed. Fast forward to 2022. The heat is still off. I had no idea menopause would be so life disruptive. My friend said her severe covid was easier than menopause. Wow.
Lastly, I did finish stealing the art piece but I’ve not put new art up for sale. I’m not certain I’m ready for that step just yet. I’m just going to keep at the art while working on emotional issues.
Faith
Half a Century More
I started this little painting back in October of last year but I just now finished it. It looks so much better in person than the terrible photograph. This 7×10 watercolor piece has a lot of numbers on it. The numbers are ages that were very significant to me with age 47 being the last significant age on the painting.
The painting shows a young girl who divides the paper. She’s a young me with a split face depicting multiple personalities. Though I don’t know the exact age I split, I’m sure I was fully a multiple by the age of nine. I have a few symbols in the painting like a peanut and a purple butterfly as well as a wheelchair with a sunflower instead of a wheel.
One of the most significant things about this painting is the tree. It is bare on one side and full of colorful leaves on the other. Though they’re fall leaves that are technically dying, the point was to have colorful and lively leaves like seen in the Fall, which happens to be my favorite season.
I call the painting Half a Century More because of what a friend said to me jokingly the other day. I told her I’m about to turn 50 and she said, “Oh, you’re going to be half a century old.” Well I tell you I was floored!!! Wow. Do you have to put it that way? It took a few days to kind of get settled with it but now I think to myself, I’ve lived a half century but I’d like to live a half century more. I’d like to have a lot more art to paint, dolls to sew and days to figure out how to be happiest.
I won’t be 50 until August but I’m so, so exited I can’t stand it. I honestly never expected to see that number. For many reasons I didn’t expect to be here but half a century on and I’m still kicking!
Faith
The Invisible Children
The Invisible Children is a haunting and surreal scene of sunflowers at night, a full moon, ravens flying and figures in the flowers at the base of a large, bare tree. It is a dark, fluid piece, full of small details.
Art Title: The Invisible Children
Art by: Faith Magdalene Austin
Media: Acrylic paint, ink, paper
Size: 5.5 x 8.5, unmounted, raw art
Please visit me in my Etsy shop for original art, such as above, and handmade dolls.
www.Sundrip.etsy.com or contact me at SundripJournals@gmail.com for a PayPal invoice.
Thank you for visiting Sundrip
Faith