Thirty Year Old Art Work

I had a closet leak, and some of this art I had to photograph before losing it due to mold. I was fortunate to not have the entire apartment flood like one new acquaintance down the street from all the rain we had. It was interesting to look at this thirty year old artwork. These projects are from high school and early college in the 1980s. Yes I am that old.

In college, I had life drawing as a freshman. I started college when I was only 17, so often was the youngest in the class. It could be intimidating to draw all the naked people. We drew both men and women too. One lady was more modest and wore a bathing suit. Some of the drawings were timed like the life-drawing water-color below. We got 15 or 20 minutes for that one.

This is an etching I did, in early college too. We had to etch these drawings into zinc plates and then use acid to make the grooves before printing them with a roller printing press. I think my Aspie brain had a little bit of difficulty with reversing things properly. That was a challenge for me in printing.  I had a fascination with Victorian times and houses even then. There are several prints in different colors of this house.

This was an ink drawing in high school. I had a model for the drawing. It probably was from inside my parent's last house, but I showed the cat, the windows and the chair as accurately as I remember. Sometimes I think about doing ink drawing again, it's been a long time. Back then I did acquire pen nibs, I seem unable to find the matches of. I read that Charles Schultz bought out pen nibs of one entire company before they went out of business. Good pen nibs aren't always easy to find.

This was an early college design project, making letters out of objects.

This is a high school drawing, I think this may be a self portrait from back then and I had long hair, though you can see some of the thickening of the legs. This was done with regular pens around age 14 or 15.

This is probably one of the earliest artworks. This is a water color from when I was a freshman in high school. I remember drawing and painting this one oddly, I think I made up the scene out of my mind. Today I need pictures to draw from or a still-life. 

Post-script art work. I forgot to add this one in. It's either from late high school or freshman year of college, just a one-off, I made for myself and in a sketchbook. You can see the emotion in this one. You probably can guess who I had just dealt with.

A Recent Art Work: Charcoal

 

The paper is a little bit wrinkly. We had a rain storm while I was transporting some art, long story......

"A Million Candles Burning For the Help That Never Came"

For those into Leonard Cohen, they know he was singing about God.

He sings "A million candles burning for the help that never came."

This song sums up some of my recent spiritual ponderings. It's hard, to be in a deconversion process. It upends your whole world. You get scared of even trying to figure out who is safe to tell and who is not. I guess the cat is out of the bag now.  I have recently lost several online friends for leaving the traditional Christian camp. Some good and true friends have stuck by me.

 I have spoken of seeking after a more loving God then the one I was presented with in fundamentalist Christianity. I will remember the positive and good teachings of Jesus, but my spiritual picture has definitely changed.  My view of God and religion has as well. The false promises and more came to a head. Some may ask "What happened to your faith in God?" I realized this world is not what they presented it as being to me. Reality became too apparent. The idea of direct intervention failed when my dreams of at least a little bit of justice faded. The veil was ripped off, and I prayed for justice or at least a little bit of comfort instead of the wicked always "winning" and those prayers were never answered. I have to deal with life as it is, not losing my head in magical thinking. I cannot hold to a God who is more like my abusers.  I am still a theist unlike the author of that article, but many of their points stand out to me.

I can't accept hell and other traditional Christian teachings. I may be able to find some areas of commonality with liberal Christians, but I also now consider a return back to Unitarian Universalism too. I miss in some ways who I was even back then. I spent over 12-13 years in that church as a young adult, at least there was one was free to question and seek. There was some interaction instead of just edicts from on high. My self esteem needs recovery. While I definitely was messed up from all the abuse and health problems and still in the narcissistic fog during my UU years, spiritually I was happier. I wasn't locked down in a box of fear and perpetual gloom that the spiritual abuser took advantage of.

Spiritually I can't live under the gloom of condemnation, and the ignoring of reality. I have to go where the love and compassion are. That's not in fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity for me anymore. It's time for freedom and whatever happiness I can find.

Scapegoats Will Have Guilt Projected on Them Too

I had a new revelation recently, concerning the relationship with my cousins. As you all know, I am now no contact with the entire family. Part of the reason I am writing this too is to remind myself that contact with the cousins is not good for me either and why. I felt a lot of loss that Queen Spider got to them too.

I was talking to another ACON blogger when it hit me. They projected guilt on me constantly. When I would contact them, they often were too busy or dismissive as well. These are not people I bothered all the time, I would write them on email or Facebook PM, at most three times a year, and more often only once or twice a year.  I live 250 miles away, these are not people I am calling crying about my problems, or to change a lightbulb or for asking any favors.

With one cousin, I realized how why and how he made me uncomfortable. When I talked to him, I noticed always how everything remained "my fault", everyone else even of the most worse offenses I pointed out, was always blameless while I was always at fault. I supposedly was a bad person for making them feel bad. He would admit that my mother treated me badly, but that's the furthest any relative went. However he followed my mother's bidding in the way, that if I made people feel "bad" or "guilty" that was to be projected back on me.

He wrote me these things:

"However I think your feelings make people uncomfortable sometimes - and they might invalidate you to maintain their own "reality" (with a small r.)"

and

"I know I've felt guilty in the past for not getting back to you. And feeling guilty is unpleasant, and it's human nature to go into a place of avoidance (i.e. I don't want to contact [my name here--Fivehundredpoundpeep] because I feel bad about not getting back to her, and I don't want to feel bad, so I'll just put it out of my mind.....}

That's a cycle I've tried to become mindful of in myself, and face head on (at least sometimes)"
I have felt "bad" over the no contact with the cousins, but then I see why I had to do it. There was no rescuing these relationships either. I tried. Even within these relationships, I was always at fault. He even managed to project his own feelings of guilt on me like they were "my fault". I made people feel "guilty" and gave them "negative feelings". For what? Just existing? Writing them once in a blue moon? He projected his guilt on to me. I made some crack back, at least he felt feelings of guilt unlike sociopaths in the family, but then I should have told him DEAL WITH YOUR GUILT, DON'T PROJECT IT ON ME! Maybe you have something to feel guilty about! Even with the line about my feelings making people uncomfortable, he basically is being honest about the family choice to invalidate me, lest I be an affront to their reality!

Lipedema My Chronic Progressive Fat Disease

Brooke Pearce who has Lipedema shares the challenges about the disease. My Lipedema came on with puberty, and then worsened in my late 20s, but many women with Lipedema will get it, after a pregnancy or even as late as menopause.  The water jet liposuction is very expensive and most insurances do not cover it. I'm in bed today from my Lipedema. If I go out even for a little bit too many days in a row, it's like I get slammed physically. Tomorrow I have to spend in bed too because I went out for a couple hours this morning. As I get older, some of my worries have grown. My bed is seeing too much of me.

When she says "My legs are so heavy", I relate. When she cries about always having this disease, I relate, I have had my own emotional reactions. The struggles with pain, are real. The more you do, the more you hurt.

 In my case, I was going to write about how the judgment after all these years has taken a toll on me It doesn't help for the very few I get a chance to tell, they always suddenly say, "Wow you never know what someone is facing", which tells me what they were thinking in their heads before about me! Well at least it was an opportunity for education I guess. Probably all of us in severe stages wonder what our lives could have been without this disorder too.

I worry for her too. I get tired of being told "to be positive", "to be strong" too. I hope she will be okay.  I am going to write her on her Youtube and tell her, "Yeah it does suck, if you need someone to come talk to, come write me". I definitely have dealt with enough "assholes who have something to say". I live in a polite reticient Midwestern town at least where no one gets in my face,but people judge women with lipedema HARSHLY. That needs to stop. Her sadness is shared by many women with Lipedema. This disease is hard enough on it's own. The stigma needs to stop!

Peep Writes on Lipedema

Unrest

People with fibromyalgia have been ignored for decades and now it's just as bad if not worse for people with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome. I am not diagnosed with fibromyalgia officially though with some doctors they consider it as automatically overlapped with high stage Lipedema. Fatigue complaints are all over my medical charts, and I live at least half my life in bed if not more, but many people have even worse fatigue where they can't get out of bed, and can barely move. Epstein Barr and all sorts of health issues are out there. Sadly one mistake too many doctors make it is to assume mental illness or depression instead of looking at physiological issues. I am glad these film-makers are getting the message out there.

Fat People Flipping You Off

This is just too weird

Is this what size activism has come to? I can cuss like a sailor and have done the middle finger salute when needed, usually that pops up when another crazy driver has attempted to crush us on the road. Since leaving repressive religion, and an idea of a God taking down a score like a demented Santa Claus every time I cuss or say a word  like "shit", I've let a few colorful words of my own fly.

This kind of stuff makes fat people look bad. Look the fat bigots piss me off too, there's a few I have had fantasies wishing I had punched them out. My desire to stay out of court and county jail, kept my fists down more then a few times. I wish I had made an art project out of those giant red joke underwear Queen Spider sent me just to take the piss and to fight back. I may have a pair of them stashed away in my stuff somewhere. Fat people do have a lot to be angry about. We are treated like crap, and the fatter you are the more of a second class citizen you become.

A lot of the people giving the finger aren't that fat, well by my extreme outliner standards, so should I for my 200lbs over them, put up a double-middle finger salute?  This makes fat activists look silly. It also plays into the societal belief that fat people are "REBELLIOUS" and fat because they won't do what is right and supposedly become slender people from "EATING RIGHT". I know middle fingers are supposed to be "edgy" but honestly I am bored. Even one word that begins with "F" got so overused in movies and shows, that it's fire power got greatly diminished, the same goes for it's related sign language.

Please size activists do better then this. 

Update on this one; I got too priggish sometimes from the Christian brainwashing. Some of the fat bigots do need flicked off! LOL