Sundrip Journals
It came in the mail. I’m so happy to wear mine!
You are enough. The world is a better place with you in it.
Love, the person in front you.
I’ve gotten one person respond with a heartfelt thank you. I’ve gotten tears, a thanks from a boy who felt confident in his youth. One lady saw a way to make fast money, another said the world is a better place with me in it, too. Thank you for that!
I love this shirt.
Live Free. Create Well. Sundrip.
CONTENT – Suicide. Abuse with few specifics. High emotion and anger. Not a light entry.
I stayed in bed three days with the lights out. I fed the animals and went back to bed. The world felt too big and too dark. Now I’m in the weeping side of grief.
I was talking / weeping to my BFF that the memory of the various events is as clear as the day they happened. The fear was so incredible but someone had to do something!
My head is full. Sleep is a joke. I keep accidentally calling the cat by his name. It freaks me out a bit.
The image of him at age 3, turning and smiling that smile, it no longer makes me feel warm and sentimental. It makes me angry. I want to know if he would do things differently if he had the chance to learn the Gospel truth that “this too shall pass.” I’m angry.
I talked / blubbered to my BFF about how I can see better just how emotionally unwell my mother was. I can see how we ended up the way we were. I know the difficulty I have functioning even with my large support system. She had nothing. No information. No experts taking care of her mental health, like I have. She was shell shocked after the divorce and just lost. I pity her. No family who loved her. No friends to talk to intimately. No one to trust, and two kids in tow. Yeah, I pity her.
Her anger about life was coupled with mental illness, paranoia and OCD. It made every day a survival course. Here’s my thing, I see the paranoia clearly in her behavior, but I also know that her response to the paranoia was chosen and thought out. Her first choice was always violence. She said a person needs to be humiliated in order to learn. That’s not mental illness, that’s just messed up.
I always felt responsible for helping her feel better. If my mother cried, it all but destroyed me. I couldn’t stand to see her cry. She cried a lot in her room. I used to hang hearts all around the hallway and her room to prevent her from killing herself. It never crossed my mind that it’s the child who we’d lose to suicide. I was suicidal too, so was my sister. An entire family of suicidal people.
When I think about it, my sister and I were the focus of my mother’s paranoia. She always accused us of stealing, lying, etc.
As I sit here I still pity her. Pity feels much better than hate. Pity feels warranted.
I empathize with her being unprepared for the divorce and have two small children. I understand how things got crazy. I know she managed to keep a good job but still had us sleeping in the car. I know that her mental illness fueled that. But the violence, wow, just wow. That was always her first response, violence. You never knew what the heck she was plotting in retaliation for some false issue she accused you of. I couldn’t trust the moment, and once 3am hit, God help us bc it was about to get bad!
She hardly ever raised her voice, hardly ever cursed. She was a professional who men fawned over. She dressed well. At 5’10 she was a sight to see. Despite being pretty, my mother had one boyfriend when I was growing up. That is a whole different story.
I remember the last conversation I had with the child before the police took him away for good.
It was a house of horrors, period. I thought by getting him out of there he’d have a chance. Now I ask so many questions, did I do it soon enough? Were the things he endured from her too much to bear or was it an accumulation of things? Did I fail him? I can never forget the last night he was there. My God! My God! No one should be asked to endure that.
I know I didn’t fail him. I risked my life for him. Right now, holding his memory instead of his hand I think to myself, it should have been her, not him. But really, any suicide turns the world upside down and sets it on fire for a very long time. My heart is still in flames.
Faith
Content – Suicide, no details
I’ve come to understand the semicolon to represent times when a person could have given up but didn’t. This is a miniature 3 part painting in progress. Acrylic and oil on 3×2 wood piece with rounded corners. This is about half way done.
I don’t feel suicidal, nor did. It’s just that a rather triggering conversation came up about suicide. I just sort of painted through the heavy emotions.
The young girl in the original artwork decided to keep going, to never give up. She made it through the darkest times then took the opportunity to appreciate the small things.
Soon to be seen in my Etsy shop.
Faith
Subject matter – No details of anything but I do talk about where I am with grief. Very emotional….
I’m all over the place today. Today my CNA asked about K. I basically just said that sometimes young people don’t have enough life experience to fully understand “this too shall pass.” We talked about her children and grandchildren, about life goals and achievements. It was nice. What I didn’t expect to was to have yet another conversation about suicide a little later in the day, online. That conversation felt like it wiped me out. I had a headache by the end of it. I still hope that person is ok.
I’m struggling with concerns about being weird. I don’t know how to change that so that people who are a little more typical won’t run away. I feel like I live a life of secrets sometimes. People in my everyday life can’t know about the Dissociative Identity Disorder. No, most people aren’t able to handle that. Society barely can manage PTSD, they sure don’t need to try to manage the DID. I’d never tell my CNA she has more than one client.
I wonder if there will ever be a space I can share with another human being without fear of being ostracized, without misunderstanding basic human intentions?
I just read that sentence and it occurred to me that I feel alone and lonely.
There are many things that now feel like they fall into the “I can’t” category. I long for adult conversation outside of my apartment, which happens to be an extension of inside my head.
I feel like a trapped animal while sitting in a wheelchair.
Last Monday I talked to Dr D about trying to put away issues I can’t do anything about or that I’ll deal with later. I don’t like the standard way he showed me so I changed it a little bit. He said to visualize putting problems in a box then put the box up. That has worked once for me, but not again, so I changed it a little bit. I have two small treasure chests. One small box holds letters and notes about things I can’t do anything to change. The other treasure box is a little larger and holds issues that I’ll manage at a different time. The two boxes don’t sit out in the open. I put them up.
I have no intention of adding anything at all about K’s death bc it feels like his death is all I have now. I’m afraid to let go of the grief. There are no new memories to be made with him. There’s just grief. If there’s no grief then even the memory of him feels like it will fade. I feel like I’ll fade.
Its odd to hate the grief but still that’s all that’s left. I still see one photo of him in my head. He’s 3. He smiled at me over his shoulder. I think of that photo now and I want to ask him, why did you make me love you if you were just going to leave like that! Why did we survive, what was all that for? I try not to let my head go there too much.
I have a question for him – knowing everything we know / understand now, would you do it all over again? Would you take your life all over again?
Its late. I should eat something. I could use a good meal but that won’t happen until tomorrow.
Faith
I will wait
I know how it feels to be so broken that it felt as if I’d die where I lay. But it’s true, if you hang on for one more day the urge to act in a permanent way will not be as strong.
When I couldn’t pick myself up, even after the wait, I reached out and my friends reached back. I’m grateful for that.
Faith Austin – Sundrip
Content: Suicide. Blood. Emotional angst.
Cruel Words was painted by several of us. What strikes me is how affected I was by the suicide of the CNA’s friend.
In the drawing there are heads blown off the people in the trees. That’s a first for drawings and hopefully the last. I know the kids inside were very affected by the suicide. Having her cry in our arms that way was very heavy.
I fired my regular CNA who had cruel words for me. Anxiety is already high for us, we don’t need to worry about the mouth of our CNA and what she will say that’ll hurt.
The grumpy CNA is pregnant with three weeks left. It is entirely possible that her change of attitude is purely hormonal, however, the irritability and weariness she caused couldn’t be tolerated. It is also true that I can’t justify asking an 8 month pregnant woman to lift my wheelchair and take me to the doctor. I feel horrible asking her to do my laundry or run the sweeper. The girl is tired and irritable! Dang!!!
I like her but the change in her isn’t safe for my personal issues, ya know? I talked to her about why I fired her and she said she knows she’s hormonal and understands. I even told her it’s about time to take maternity leave because she can’t be at my house when her water breaks. lol. I can’t handle that. I don’t know nothin about birthin no babies.
Firing my CNA was the right thing to do. I was walking on eggshells in my own home and that can’t be. So, on to the next chapter in the CNA Saga.
The art piece was created in watercolor and is 7.5 x 10 inches on 98 lb paper.
Robert