Alone

Watching the world go by

This one hasn’t been finished just not sure of what direction to go exactly (medium wise).  The drawing is a sort of flashback image I had in therapy.  I don’t remember what the conversation was just that all of a sudden I was dissociating back to preschool.  I was watching all my little classmates run around and have fun, I wanted so much to join them but I was to afraid.  This happened a lot in my school years.  Instead of joining in with my classmates I often sat back watching, floating off into my own little world.  This memory/flashback was really upsetting to me all the feelings of loneliness and fear came rushing at me.  I guess dissociating was how I dealt with it back then but this time I had to face the feelings full force.  One of the hard things was trying to communicate what was going on and communicate with this part of me because, this was a part of me that can’t or won’t speak.  She just sits eyes wide absorbing everything she sees, trying to get attention and remain unassuming/”invisible” at the same time.

Unsupported

Cut Short - Unfinished Pencil

This image came from thinking about how I felt about my mom, feeling like my growing was cut in someway.  I think it’s just feeling like I’m not at all supported.  Originally the axe was supposed to be sort of flying through and chopping the tree, and I think there was supposed to be a small sprout coming out of the stump.  It’s not quite done, still being fiddled with.

The self-portrait that wasn’t

I was trying to get motivated to try and attempt a self-portrait, I don’t like doing them.  I decided to in a way to give up and just try drawing something.  This is what happened.  It’s pretty funny if you actually know me or looked at some earlier posts, maybe even read my “About Me”.  Definitely this  is nothing like me.  The odd thing was when I was done…it looks just like one of my more unknown inner parts.  It’s one of those parts that I think hides so, much of the time I wonder if she really exists or not.  This makes that part seem more real though.  Maybe it can be a little link to her.

Random Painting

Late night painting

Late night painting

These two were just random late night paintings.  Just kind of did them with no real point in mind except to see what happened when I put a brush to paper.  The only thing in mind was feelings of an inner part, hoping that maybe painting would help.  The first one was about feelings of self-harm.  It’s kind of funny because there was a drawing from earlier in the year that was done in the same colors, all colors that I don’t like which was on purpose.  This time they were picked at random.  The red is the anger, rage, the yellow had something to do with spirits or something spiritual, I forget what the green was, I think the brown was about darkness.  I want to say the green was something about grounding and perhaps the brown too.

The second painting was even more random. I think I was just about ready to go to bed when that one happened.  Don’t remember much about it except it was something about feelings toward my mom.  I remember listening to the sound of the brush making the red streaks that look like flowers and hearing something say it sounded like whispering.  There was something about the whispering sound being all the secrets kept being put down on the paper.  The red again being the anger about those secrets.  I think the green and yellow represent the same things in this painting as the first.

On Love and Loss

This is one of the ones that came from the “Art as a way of knowing” book exercises.  I was thinking about love and loss and just started to doodle away while thinking about those feelings/topic.  There is a peacock thing and then this weird ugly bird in front of it that doesn’t seem to know if it’s a bird or a snake.  Then there are some strange paisley tears and I guess that’s a person (on the left in sorta of a purple) or …something ha!

Knowing Art

I’ve been reading this book my therapist gave me, “Art as a Way of Knowing”, I’m not sure how much I really like it though.  I like the fact that she mentions how art is such a judgement loaded word and can really turn some people off.  That would be me!  She says she tends to use the words images or image making so people won’t limit themselves, which is good but it gets a little annoying after awhile.  I think after awhile the whole book starts to feel a little too new agey for me.  She has this method that she uses of setting an intention (I’d like to know more about my inner critic, for example) and then you just set about making ‘marks’ on the page and let whatever comes, come.  Sometimes this works ok, other times I don’t know…  I mean ’scribbling on a page can be fun and interesting but sometimes it’s just …scribbles.  I’ll probably finish reading it but, I can’t say I’m going to be trying anything else out from the book.  I think no doubt I’ll still let myself goof around and scribble as that’s about all I feel comfortable doing here in my moms house.  I think I’m gonna move on to my other two art books though and see what they have to offer.  I might put up to examples of things that came out of this book experience though.  Stay tuned.

Walls and Gates

Blocked words – Colored Pencil

Slamming the gates – Pen

I did these two drawings on the same day. I can’t remember what was going on, I think maybe it was around the time my dad was coming out to see me at school.  I remember that period of time being really frantic to pack up anything that might be lying about on DID, PTSD or me. This kind of picture comes into my head a lot though when I feel like I want to talk to someone about me and my history.  This two came out pretty quickly though, for some reason when they popped into my head I thought they would take a while to do.

Conversations

Phone conversation with mom - pen

The story behind that question is that the little sister of a friend of mine passed on a certain annoying bug that get’s passed between little kids.  Yes, so much fun …almost the entire class got head lice from that girl! The stuff you use to get rid of it has a warning lable on it saying not to get it in your eye or it could cause blindness. Well, I played the “what if” game even as a kid. I was pretty convinced that it would get in my eyes and I’d go blind.  I had it in my head that I was just a magnet for bad things. I don’t even know what I meant by that back then so, it’s one of those things that throws up some red flags for me. Growing up I had a lot of nightmares surrounding this question of “why me?”. I don’t remember why my mom brought it up in this recent conversation with her but it did.  I replied back to her that I still thought that way.  I tried to explain that I didn’t feel that was entirely a negative thing (after she said I needed to change that thought).  Like I was writing the other day in Becoming Hypervigilant in some ways it’s kept me safe. In some ways it’s let me do things I might not do.  Sounds weird maybe but I think that I tend to prepare more and I am often surprised by life since, because of this I often doen’t have a lot of expectations for things.  I don’t know if that makes sense to other people, though.  I tell people I’m a pessamistic optimist, I think the worst knowing the best will happen.  I know when I was little though it wasn’t like that, I truely thought only the worst would ever happen.

Pressures of home

Agg I got distracted and forgot I was gonna work on this so, here goes:

How I feel about home - Pen

I’m not putting these in any order, the pastel drawings were pretty much in order from the first to the last. I’m just gonna throw these up here as I get them watermarked and what not.

So …some of us feel more comfortable with straight up stick people (You might be able to see that some of the pastel drawings start as stick people but get filled/fleshed in. Some of us aren’t that patient or good lol! We are slowly learning how to build on shapes like the others were taught in old art classes.) I’ll put up some of my crap attempts later lol! More faceless people too, faces on our stick figures never feel right either.

This one I did when I came home on a break from school.  I just felt like I was going to be suffocated, smushed, etc, by everything here.  My mom, my dad, my brother, just being afraid of this city in general, everything.  I felt like I was trapped here for that short time with no escape. In the top left corner of the press it’s labled home.

The Flow of Us

Representation of Us - Pastel and Construction paper

I think I had meant to stick this up a while ago but forgot. This one was supposed to go along with the one of the ball of light.  It was meant to represent that inside part as well as it represents all of us and how we work/function.  It’s made up of lots of dots each trying to stay in it’s own seperate line but, some of them end up blending together, the swirling in and out of each section, kind of like how each part sometimes flows fluidly (both to front and also in terms of ‘jobs’). It might kind of look messy and chaotic but, it’s not always.

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The Dark Ones

Extreme protector – Chalk Pastel

Another DA – Soft Chalk Pastel

Persecutor Part

These are the Dark Alters (DA) or extreme protectors. The are all related, sort of as siblings they say.  The two sisters are just extreme protectors and do no harm to the body, on the rare occasion and only when absolutely necessary will they get physically violent with outsiders.  Mainly people get one look at “them” and know to back off very very quickly and start behaving (being very petite I get reports from friends who have encountered this experience of me as very startling).  They defend not only me and the other insiders but also our outside friends.

The male DA, the winged one, is the persecuting part. Who will and does harm the other insiders and the physical body. He will also cut off communication to the outside world when he’s about. We believe in his case that one day we can persuade him to change and that he would make the ultimate protector with out harming us anymore.

The other extreme protector was in a previous post as a profile of a woman, done in gray pastel.  She also works to be disruptive and harmful to the inside. Unlike the male persecutor we are unsure this part would ever change.

More of the insiders – one potential triggering

Thoughts of integration – Soft Pastel

child part napping – Soft Chalk Pastel

Representation of insiders/world – Acrylic Paint

Part punished by persecutor part – Chalk Pastel on grocery bag

You can click on the picture for more of the stories about them but here is the summary:

The first one shows one of the insiders down in the dark in the left corner, she is trying to get through the tunnel to the light and to myself and our Internal Self Helper (represented by the single figure in the top corner). She often feels like a burden and is in a lot of pain, she was trying to think of ways not to exist anymore and the thought of integration was one at the time.

The next one is the same child part that was posted in a previous post. She was showing herself taking a nap.

The flower represents the child parts and an area of the inner world where they are often found. This was another one where I was in an observing role as several parts painted.

The last one is the part that was also in a previous post, in the previous post she was in a red dress leaning against a wall. Sometimes she is seen wearing older clothes with sort of vintage almost victorian look. I’m not sure if this part of the inner world exists or not, I know at one point it had been transformed. It used to be were a persecuting part would send her and punish her. Our ISH helped to try and free her from the persecutor and we’re all hoping she will be able to now defend herself a little better if that part comes after her again.

Representing an insider

Picture representing inner person - Soft Pastel

This one was done by some of the other inside folks for the 12 year old part. It is sort of representing her by using her favorite colors in a pattern they thought she’d like. This part of me holds really strong feelings about pictures so, kind of wondering if that’s why there’s only this representation of her.  I mean we know what she looks like but … just no drawing. I guess there aren’t drawings of a lot of them but maybe one day. I’m just not sure if this part will ever be ok with having one of herself. That’s ok, I like this representation.

The inside folks

Quick drawing of insider -Sof chalk Pastel

Co-conscious – Hard Crayon type Pastel

Inside Part – Soft chalk pastel on construction paper

Inside Part – Soft Chalk Pastel

Inside Part – Soft Chalk Pastel

These are some of the inside folks. I have another one of the child part but I need to get it sized and stuff first I guess I didn’t do that one yet. It’s strange how now that I let myself learn about other multiples, I find we have a lot of parts in common. They are still often very very different but often find we have drawn them somewhat similarly and they might have the same or similar names. It’s just really weird it’s like twins seperated at birth or something lol.

They just kind of got drawn as they got comfortable and as others felt comfortable drawing them.

Random

Random Soft Chalk Pastel

Really not sure what this is about, it was just kind of something random. The dark dots are actually purple not dark blue.

Dreamt I was an Angel

I dreamt I was an angel - Soft Chalk Pastel

Medication is kicking in pretty hard but wanted to post one more for now. This is another one inspired by a song, “In to the Wild Blue Yonder”. It was done sometime after the last one I just posted and was still trying to work through all of that.

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Shadow People

This is something that has come up again for me recently. My mom one day asked me about something that happened way back in high school. I couldn’t remember anything though my brain just did a complete skip (you know when you stick a CD into your computer and you can hear it trying to read it but nothings happening? You just kind of sit there going “come on, come on, come on!”). I just got the tiniest flash of something and this was it. It looks scary and I’m not entirely sure if it was or not. My mom had asked me if I had been scared but I couldn’t remember. Maybe not at that moment.

Safe or unsafe memory? - Soft Pastel

Midnight Flowers

Tulips in moonlight - Soft Pastel

This one came from listening to a song by David Gray, called “Shine”. There were two images in my head and this was one of them. It’s just based on a feeling about my home where I grew up. I was away at school when I did this. I was sort of reminising about the summer and how I would take my two ferrets out at night since it was cooler. I remembered how the tulips in my mom’s garden just always looked like they were glowing because of the moonlight. I think there is something more to this but, I’m not sure how to explain.

Trapped in My Reflection

I don’t remember at what point in my sessions this was done. It has to do with the repeated abuse I went through at age 18. This is really more about the first time it happened. I can now remember there were three of us at various levels of consciousness. One part of me totally took over and kept the rest of us “safe”, she reframed everything, put on a front for us. Another part of me was trapped somewhere in the glass, pounding on the window wondering why this all was being allowed to happen. I was trapped on the other side partly “asleep”, partly trying to believe it was going to be ok, and partly just wanting/hoping to forget. I hear that other part of me these days, and I try not to ignore her. I try to figure out how to help.

A Part Remembering - Soft Pastel

Unleashed Screams

This drawing is of two people screaming. One of the drawings is probably more vivid than the other.

These two drawings were done shortly after the colored pencil drawings. I believe at that point I had started to admit that what I had gone through was much more than I was originally letting myself admit. I remember I felt like I was holding back all the screams. This was an interesting experience because I was an observer to these two drawings. These two drawings were done at exactly the same moment, going back and forth between the pieces of paper. I remember sitting there watching as these images flowed out of my hands. At this point I was still not admitting to what I had always known deep down, and that was I wasn’t alone in this body.

Red and Black Scream

Scream – Soft Pastel

Survivors Journey

Nature Scene in Colored Pencil

I did this drawing back around the end of ‘06 maybe.  It was the first time I just kind of let go and let whatever happen, happen. I knew I couldn’t draw so I wasn’t expecting much. There was just this image in my head. I saw this scary looking forest with trees that looked like they might reach out and grab you, or at least try to trap you in some way. There was a lake or a pond, which I saw as some place peaceful. A place of reflection, self-reflection. Then off a little ways there was this brilliantly colored tree that was just kind of bursting with life. I felt like I was caught some where between the forest and the pond. I want so badly to get to that tree. I want to be that tree. It sounds cheesey maybe but, that was how I was feeling.