Out of All the Hours Thinking....

As I write this on Friday afternoon I am listening to a collection of Beethoven Adagios.  The dictionary defines "adagio" as a movement or composition that's to be played in a slow tempo.  Usually an adagio is part of a larger composition, such as a concerto or symphony.

Thus endeth the music lesson.

I know that classical music purists look down upon collections of disparate and unconnected classical music pieces as meant for amateur music lovers.  More "serious" classical music-aholics listen to the full composition.  Which I also do.

Find it here

When I'm experiencing psychiatric angst, I know that my two collections of Beethoven adagios, plus other collections I have of pieces by Bach, Albinoni, Mozart, or Vivaldi will soothe my soul - and mind - in a way that a full symphony won't.  I need that slowness.  

I've been in a state lately where audio and visual hallucinations, plus PTSD flashbacks, have been dominating my world, and where being around people is actually painful, as painful as some may find fingernails scraping down a chalkboard to be.  

Still from Matchbox 20's song "Unwell" 

I've been unable to be present online as often as I had been. Facebook and social media, as necessary as it is to my social and professional life, has become an incessant wall of noise that has had the same effect on me as do encounters with people in real life.  I've had to retreat. 

 I haven't been able to work on the shop.  My previous renewed energy and enthusiasm for making work to sell has come to a grinding halt, only 3 weeks after I ended a summer sabbatical I found necessary because  I was experiencing similar symptoms in May and ended up doing a course of outpatient therapy at a local hospital.

Oh yeah, the obsessional thinking too.

When I saw my therapist on Wednesday, she was concerned that stepping back from the business may be an "all or nothing" thing - a tendency of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (definition here), which is one of the psychiatric illnesses I deal with.  But she reluctantly realized that this might actually be something I have to do, to relieve self-imposed pressure for a while.  And find something else I can work on.

Which I'm doing.  Earlier this week, my friend Lisa sent back my journal and a new one she started, and I started pages in them on Thursday night.  A little bit at a time.  No pressure.

I have a show coming up at the Mill Gallery where everything has to be 10"x10." I'd already finished one piece for that, and have started another, and even might try to do a third.

And I have a project that needs to get started, a very personal, difficult project that will become a sort of "anti-scrapbook."  What I mean is that scrapbooks usually celebrate good times with introspective, sweet, happy bits of journal entries describing the events chronicled. Happy families sort of things - well, no one wants to chronicle bad times, right?

I'm planning to do the opposite in order to try exorcising the demons.  I'm not sure if I will share that particular journey.  But I think it's a project I need to try to accomplish.

I am trying to keep that creative life happening, but... you know.


I do have to say this, though.   There are those who have checked out this blog and been annoyed by my 'whining' about dealing with mental illness.  

Yet, so often people can't talk about mental illness and how it impacts their lives.  People are ashamed to write about their struggles.  People are afraid to write about the difficulties their mental illness causes.  There's a belief (too often validated) that if one talks about their mental illness, they'll be judged, ridiculed, bullied, ignored - or fired from jobs. Which sort of happened to me.  My writing about what I experience are a very small effort to try to change that.  If I'm to write about my art life, I need to be honest about what impacts it.  And my mental illness affects my life 24/7.  And my ability to create my work.

I do my best to push past the symptoms. I try to present a "shiny happy" persona.  I've been in that habit for so long, it's second nature.  Because of it, however, people mostly "can't tell" that I am mentally ill because I'm not fitting the stereotype.  So I defeat my purpose of being real about my struggles.

Behind that persona, I am often howling in a mental anguish I am too afraid to reveal.  At least face to face.

Writing about it is easier.  And at least here I'm being honest.  I think most people want honesty.  I hope they do.  But if they don't, I'm still going to keep writing posts like this.  I hope you'll stick around to read them - no offense taken if you don't.

And I'm going to continue to listen to those amateurish collections of adagios too.  

later,
lin