Writing it out loud



The last month of 2014 and the first two of 2015 have bought me to my knees.
I am a heart on my sleeve kind of person, melancholy and introspective and, like a lot of people, I always find Januarys and Februarys tough. They are tough.

I don't talk about my experience of anxiety and depression here because I am a control freak. I like to keep things in their little boxes. This blog is for art and joy and looking forwards. But I want to be whole and in order to be whole the bad must be embraced along with the good. And the bad very often moves us forwards and allows us to grow in ways we never would have anticipated and I'm afraid that if I don't talk about this my voice will continue to fade.

So this is a post dedicated to the blip, the bit-of-a-wobble, the feeling-a-bit-down, the black dog and the blues. And here are some things about me and my experiences of late...

I am incredibly sensitive but recently I feel like everyone else got handed armour to see them through life and that, not only did I not get that armour, I am missing a layer of skin as well. I am a bundle of exposed nerve endings. I cry, like, a lot. Over anything. Something on the news, a line in a book, it doesn't take much to set me off. I cry when I am angry, I cry when I am tired. I cry when I am stressed. I cry when I feel vulnerable and unsafe and also when I am joyful and moved. Sometimes it feels like a superpower, to be so in tune with everything around me. Sometimes I would just like to be able to get through an episode of Paul O'Grady's For The Love Of Dogs.

I suffer from anxiety. I think I always have. Over the last few years it has got quite bad. This is because of big, good life shifts. And some other not so nice stuff too. My brain has wired itself a certain way. Actually- I have wired it a certain way, and now I am trying to unwire it. CBT, mindfulness, meditation. I'm chucking everything at it. Some of it is actually sticking.

Sometimes I can convince myself that not only will everyone I love die horribly but that it's happening right this second. I can get to the weekend and have grieved my loved ones several times over. I will have written countless mental eulogies. It's exhausting. I call them panic attacks but really they are more like grief attacks. Terminology aside, it's pretty much the same thing that's happening- cortisol and adrenaline flood my system and then my body struggles to right itself.

The results of this are long weeks when all I want to do is sleep. I can't seem to finish the page of a book. That's usually when I begin to realise that something is very wrong. Not when I am sat in bath crying and hyperventilating but when I lose the ability to read. When I get in from work I put on my pyjamas and get in to bed. I get around 10 hours sleep a night.

My body has lots of strange reactions to the hormones flooding my system. I get a horrible rash on my legs. I have psoriasis behind my left ear. Despite teenage levels of bed rest, put quite simply, I look like hell. I self isolate. Friends email or text me are you okay? I haven't heard from you in a while...

So yeah. January was a lot of fun this year. But some things have helped and continue to help...

I rewrite the internal monologue that berates me for being in this place again simply because it's not the same place. Or rather, it is but the view is slightly different. I feel that each twist into darkness brings with it the possibility of finding out something new and valuable, then my moods begin to drift upwards and the sun shines again only this time I know something deeply important about myself. Some new layer has been revealed. I worry that I romanticise these journeys into the shadow self because I make it sound indulgent because it's not all golden and we don't all have a flowery vocabulary to hang on this experience and God, some people are really struggling out there and don't have access to my Neals' Yard sponsored therapy centre with its aromatherapy diffusers and Buddha cards. Who the fuck am I to talk about anxiety, I don't even know what it's like to have real problems. Sometimes my internal monologue adopts the tone of a right wing Daily Mail reader. All this aside, these days there is a lot less self judgement and more self noticing. A little more kindness and a lot more humour because, frankly, the shit my brain comes up with? It's so absurd it has to be funny.

I take a long look at my eating habits. Sugar, caffeine and alcohol all exacerbate my symptoms and I am quick to abuse them when I'm feeling delicate. I try to be gentle with myself. I notice that the times I reach for the sugar correspond with the times happily coupled up folks would usually be getting a hug. Coming home from work, in bed on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I am replacing physical affection with food. My instinct is to berate myself for this but instead I try talking to myself as I would a friend, Rach, you have been single for years. Of course you want some affection. If chocolate helps, have the fucking chocolate. But maybe get the really good quality dark stuff so you're not sending your blood sugar levels loopy.


I reach out if I can. And if I can't reach I shuffle closer to the people I need to be around until I can eventually tap their arm. My mum. My doctor. Sometimes reaching isn't a grand gesture but a series of tiny movements. Last year I tried anti depressants for the first time having been offered them six times before. I don't know what to say other than that they worked. Very quickly in fact. I remember lying in bed one morning and thinking I might plant a herb garden and then I actually got up and planted a herb garden. I didn't agonise over where to by soil from, how I was going to get it home, whether I would accidentally kill everything, what I would wear to the garden centre etc etc. I had parsley and thyme and rosemary all summer. Taking anti depressants is a very personal choice for people and, for many many reasons, I didn't stay on them too long. I am very high functioning and I say this without any pride at all because I struggle on even when it injures me further to do so. But I do feel that as long as I am getting out of bed and still finding joy I will be okay. And I know that if I need them there is a doctor on hand to walk me through it.

I want to end this long ramble by saying that I am really okay. During the last month I have felt my heart swell a bit with each new day and this weekend I feel good, actually really good. I am reading proper books again. Big ones with weighty themes. I bake cakes, last weekend I even made hot cross buns. I feel lighter than I have in months. Also, I've just seen the trailer for Pitch Perfect 2. So really, things are looking up.




Hiding from the world




I had lots to do yesterday; class prep, 3 paintings to finish and a short story to be redrafted for a monthly creative writing class (FYI this writing thing is really hard! Give me a thing to describe and I'm away but ask me to plot something and develop characters whilst thinking about figurative language and stylistic devices and I'm hopelessly lost. I'm on the verge of throwing my two main characters off the nearest cliff).

Instead I reorganised my books. In order of colour. There was a point, midway through the afternoon, when I thought I might have bitten off more than I could chew.

I think I might start another anonymous blog. There are loads of blogs that I love; painterly ones, bookish ones, cookery ones... but the ones that keep me coming back and subscribing are the ones that Tell The Truth*. About important, trivial stuff. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes cynical and sad but always sincere. I had hoped that one day I might come back to this archive and find not only a creative diary but an account of what life was like at this point in time for me. What I have found when looking through old posts is a blog with a bit of an identity crisis. The posts that shine for me are the ones when I decide to just spill, regardless. I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have blogged under my real name. People I know read this and, though I know they wouldn't judge, I do hold back because of it. Here are some of the things I'm not blogging about at the moment:

1) Financial meltdown at work

2) The possibility that I might be made redundant and have to move back home

3) The future: what the hell am I doing with my life?

4) The writing thing

5) Weight loss and exercise. I'm not blogging about this because I thought to myself, somewhat haughtily, "this is a blog for creativity and intellectual, important things not something as girly as weight loss". But the thing is, I have lost about 2 stone since Christmas and this has made a WHOPPING GREAT BIG difference to my life. I'm not carrying around 15 years worth of self loathing for a start.

So, there's quite a lot of stuff that I've been editing out of this blog and I'm not quite sure where to go from here. What do you think peeps? Am I just worrying too much?

*The Truth, specifically, about what it's like to be a woman at this point in time. Because this is a heady, difficult, confusing, potentially amazing thing. And we're all in this together. But, God, it's hard. Basically.

Of lost voices and printmaking



These are the prints taken from the dry point I was planning in this post. I didn't mean for them to be quite so detailed, it just seemed that once I had started with that needle I couldn't stop. Still, it was a worthwhile exercise I think. It hasn't been put in the artweeks show. I have hung a couple of more restrained efforts.

I've been meaning to post for weeks but I find that in stressful times (as they are at the moment for oh so many reasons) my articulacy fails me. I'm finding it a struggle to put even the most simple of sentences together. I wrote in my diary yesterday for the first time in 6 weeks and managed a paragraph. A concise whinge. None of this is to say I haven't been working on making pictures as I have. Loads. But it might just be images for a while at least until my voice returns.

Tulips and lilies




Since October last year I have managed to break two cameras. This may be why my posting has been slightly sparodic. I did something strange to the Samsung which caused it to take streaky photographs so I borrowed Mum's Cybershot. Last week I stood on it and the screen cracked. What followed was a week of berating myself for being clumsy and not being able to look after anything properly. If I spend money on a much coveted white shirt you can guarantee that within 24 hours I will have spilt something indelible down it.

Not sure about the above paintings. They seem a little wishy washy. I like my work more when it has a little depth and drama. I might have to do something drastic to them tomorrow.

I'm still waiting for my spring surge which everyone else seems to be getting at the moment. The last few months have certainly been fallow. Actually desolate and drought stricken might be a more accurate description. Though it is very nice to be sat here with a glass of wine at 7.30pm with the sky still light and the birds singing.

Still life class with my students, part one.




These are the paintings of rusty objects that students in my watercolour classes have been undertaking. We have made little concertina sketchbooks out of them as well as collaging the paper before painting. Hence you can see little bits of newspaper and sheet music underneath the work. You start a class thinking that all anybody will want to do is paint pretty landscapes and flowers and it turns out that everybody loves rusty clamps, nuts, bolts and spanners.

I'm posting this as a distraction from the Oreo cookie brownies that are cooling in the kitchen. It's either dither on the internet for half an hour or tuck in to the still warm tray with a spoon and a tub of ice cream. I've spent two months exercising and eating in moderation (cereal and muller rice) and was beginning to wonder why I felt so joyless.

Participation's what you need





Ironically, I had a word for 2011 and that word was participate. Ha.
I have been away and now I am back. For how long I don’t know. Truth be told, I am not very good at this blogging lark. This is because I am quite antisocial , quite shy and prone to extended periods of introspection and inactivity. Which is what I have been doing for the last 2 months; being maudlin and lazy and watching period dramas. I would love to say that I’ve been terribly busy, juggling creative projects, gadding about, being single and fabulous but no. That would not be true. There has been chocolate and Drinking Alone. Which is never good. So I haven’t blogged because I didn’t want to drag my sorry, miserable arse over to this space and complain and not offer up anything creative as some small compensation.

However, here you are. Some paintings and scribbles. Just for you.