Dear Complicated

Dear Complicated who isn't my husband but isn't not my husband. Yet again I find myself living in limbo with you, something I didn't want to have to do anymore. I value honesty, so I can't call you my ex-husband because according to law you still are my husband... and you are still wearing the ring. Worse than the limbo is the push-pull I feel around you. Something has changed, like really changed. Solidly, irrevocably changed. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something different. Perhaps the difference is within me, but I don't think so. You haven't done anything to leave me feeling hurt in a long time. You have become more easy-going than I've ever known you to be. You seem to do more than you ever have. Cleaning the toilet bowl, keeping the place clean, filling the car with petrol, having the lawns mowed, doing laundry, spending real time with the kids... granted I don't have to witness you bullying the kids in to doing most of that, and you wouldn't be willing to spend the money on a lawn mower person if I was around because if I'm at home 'doing nothing' then I should be doing the lawns, but knowing you clean the toilet bowl and spend proper time with the kids.... things have changed. I have a migraine today. I have a migraine yet I need to hang out the clean clothes, I need to unpack the dishwasher and repack it, I have to go to work soon. It is nice to fantasize that if I still lived with you I could just relax in bed or a hot shower until I left for work and not feel guilty for not doing all this stuff. Not only that, but perhaps you would do it for me. I can't help but scoff at the thought. This is good, it reminds me why I can never go back. I need the reminders you see because I still love you and the longer I have to go without touching you, hugging you, kissing you, the more I want to go back. But I can't. I can ever go back. While you are now a better father and a better future partner for someone else, I don't think you will ever be good for me, even if you wanted to be. I believe deeply within myself that you have never truly loved me. I believe deeply within myself that you much prefer your new life. You are happier without me and my son in it. You are better without me. You are happier without me. I am so angry with you. You were meant to love and adore and worship me. Not criticise and leave me feeling like I'm not good enough cause I don't want to have a muggle job, or I don't keep things as clean as you want, or I can easily ignore the children bickering, or because I love art. You were meant to praise my art and tell me how amazing I am and remind me over and over how much you love and adored me. You were meant to leave me with no doubt that you thought I was the best thing in your world. No one else wanted you, I did. You should have cherished that. Instead I ended up with someone who took the only person who wanted them because that's the best he could get. Pity I wasn't the best though. I feel like a very last choice. I once thought I was a great mother, but soon learned I wasn't thanks to you. I once thought I was intelligent and funny, but soon learned I wasn't thanks to you. I used to think I had something to contribute to the world, to life, but soon learned I didn't thanks to you. I once thought I was powerful, but soon realised that I gave you all my power. Now it's time for me to go to work with a pounding brain and no support. Not much different than when I did live with you. Just, no guilt when I get home and don't do all the things that are left for me to do cause no one else does them. No guilt is a massive relief. It has taken me way too long to type this because of my migraine and it's time to go to work so I will just post this. Not that you will ever read it, and if you do, you'll never acknowledge it. You will just pretend you haven't read it so you can continue to leave me hanging around in limbo. Fuck my life. Forever Unworthy.

Love hurts

Love is entangling. It is a mess. It leaves me feeling sick. The rejection that comes with it. It is completely ridiculous that I should feel any kind of rejection. I don't want to feel that way. It isn't rejection. Yet the hole around my throat chakra and the lump in my stomach tells me otherwise. I'm the one who fucking left. I'm the unworthy one. So why do I have to keep feeling the pain, over and over and over again. I'm so over crying about this. If I don't eat I cry. If I cry, I want to eat instead. I ache, so deeply. Why do I have to be the one to want me. I just want someone else to want me... but that isn't true. I know my 1DS's father wants me. But that isn't what I want at all. What I want is this deep ache to go away and not be part of me anymore. I want this feeling of emptiness to fuck off. I want to not feel rejected or criticised at every turn. I want to stop feeling so sad. There is this never ending hollow echo inside me and the only way I ever shut it up is with food. IF I don't shut it up with food I get no break from it at all. That is why I am feeling so fragile and broken today. This feeling is almost like the feeling you get before you gag. That is what I'm feeling in my chest. This deep need to gag. Like I need to puke out the darkness inside me, the emptiness. The vast wasteland that is the garden of my soul. I refuse to buy coke though. I went to the shops just then. I did not buy coke cola. I did not buy an iced coffee. I did not buy chocolate, or chips, or cookies, though I stopped briefly in front of the caramel ones, I did not pick up the packet. I did buy fruit loaf though and I'm probably going to eat 8 slices and even then I will likely need to force myself to stop. Just because I was rejected without it being a rejection. Definitely not intended that way anyway. I invited my husband to come to the movies with us. The 1DS father had previously piped up that he wanted to come see finding dory with us, so when I looked it up this morning I sms'd him and he of course got straight back saying he was in. Then I sms'd the soon to be ex husband to ask if he wanted to come. His response was that he didn't want to see it, so no he wasn't going to come. So of course my mind spins out into it's own little world of self-destruction and ranting about how it wasn't about seeing the movie. It was about spending time with the kids (read, with me). It was about seeing the kids (read, me). It was about being part of the family and doing something together. The 1DS father shows up for me every single time because he will go above and beyond to spend any amount of time with me. The YOs father doesn't. Why can't he love me as much as the other one did and still does? Why can't he be as devoted to me as the other one was and still is? Or why can't I just love the other one the way I love YOs father? Why? He would look after me well, he would take care of me, he would allow me the room to be how I am or who I want to be without complaint or criticism, hell he would encourage me every step of the way. He would praise each success. But no, the one I love with the deepest of aches complains, criticises, never praises. There's no sway there. There's no ease. Just pain. Piles and piles of pain. Because love hurts. I was born in to this world and show how badly love hurts and I continue to exist in this world to be shown that love hurts. So how could I ever, ever believe otherwise? I wish I could numb my heart. I wish I could numb my feelings. I wish that I was numb. As always, I am not worthy. This is Your Unworthy Art Therapist signing out.

Self-Saboteur

I am a self-saboteur. I know it. I hate it. But I rarely change it and when I do... well, it never seems to last for long. Today I read something that opened me up to yet another layer within myself. I am self-abandoning. I don't think you can be a self-saboteur if you aren't self-abandoning. What do I mean by that? I mean, no one else has or will abandon me but myself. Not since becoming an adult anyway. It's my biggest crime when I am in a relationship. I make it all about the other person and I completely and utterly abandon myself. I place all the weight on my partner which is completely and utterly unfair on them. I stop putting time in to my own spiritual practice. I stop delving in to the deep areas of my self and my spirit and all the other amazingly deep stuff I enjoy. I just stop. For instance I'm still unwinding myself from a decade long relationship where I no longer tracked the moon and the stars. I no longer celebrated the solstices and equinoxes. I no longer sought space to meditate or practice reiki on myself, I barely even read my cards. I stopped lighting candles and incense and just being present with myself. Worst of all... I blamed my partner. *facepalm* He never stopped me. Why would he? He didn't want me to be miserable. He never asked me not to believe in what I believed in, he never told me to stop my practice. He may have criticised certain things or aspects, he may have scoffed at some of my beliefs, he may have complained heavily about the smell of my candles and incense, but at the end of the day, none of that matters because that is him and I am me. I allowed him far too much power, which isn't his fault. It is mine. If I'd been a stronger person I would have put a boundary up that didn't allow his opinions and discomfort through and I could have continued learning and deep diving. I also abandoned my self-esteem. I stopped loving myself and praising myself. I stopped feeling good about things I did unless I got outward validation. I'm still a prisoner to this one. I'm still learning how to truly love who I am and how to stop relying on the outside world to tell me I'm worthy, lovable, awesome, beautiful. This could be the most difficult one of all. The more I dive in to healing the wounds I've inflicted upon myself, the more I realise how much I hate on myself. I find this really interesting because I don't hate who I am. I actually think I'm fucking awesome. I have an amazingly creative spirit. I love to produce beautiful things. I love to love. I love to forgive. I love to accept everyone the way they are. I love people. All people. I see the world from every angle. I see the space for everything in this world, the good, the bad, the ugly. I'm always ready to be emotionally available to people. I'm always happy to listen to people vent their current problems and help them see it from all the different angles. I love when I feel passionately about something I am like a fricking boulder that can't be swayed, yet at the same time I remain moveable and not stuck in the earth, so my position can alter if needed. Yet deep down I hate on me. I wish I knew where it came from. I wish I knew how to eradicate it. That little heartless, foul, critical bitch inside me. I try to send it love, but most of the time her voice is so insidious I don't even know she's been whispering to me until after I've bought the food, or said the horrible thing. I don't blame my partner at all for the end of our relationship. Yes, he took way too long to start stepping in the right direction. He decided to get the help he needed and the help we needed when it was beyond salvage. Yet he has taken the steps, he was willing to step up. That's more than a lot of people do. I'll be forever grateful for that. The beauty is, he'll be a better father for it to my gorgeous kids and if he ever finds someone else to enter in to a relationship with, he will be a better partner for them. I hope he never does. *snort* I can't handle living with him ever again, but it doesn't mean I want him to be with anyone else. I still love him after all. Deeply. So deep I have days, sometimes weeks of feeling like my heart has been ripped out of my chest and it is just hanging there on the outside of me, drip, drip, dripping blood all down my front leaving me sticky. So sticky that the smallest amount of dirt sends me in to a tail spin. Yet I know it's for the best, that I walk away and stay away. I know this, because I haven't had a single thought of wishing I was dead since I declared it. Not one thought. I remember a time where I used to think about dying on a daily basis. To the point where I almost committed to it. Two nights in a row I sat on the lounge and seriously considered doing it to the point I knew exactly how I would do it. That was before, this is now. Now I'm pretty damn sure he got his official ASD diagnosis and is getting more focused help because he's changed. Something in him has shifted. He is softer, gentler, kinder. Not words I would have used to describe him before. Before he had very hard edges, very defined harsh edges. He loved, but he wasn't kind. But this isn't about him, I digress. This is about me and my lack of self-love, self-caring, self-nurturing, self-supporting. This is about me and my shame. My shame over how morbidly obese I am, because I am unworthy. I am not worth fighting for, everyone has proven that to me over and over and over and over again. Every fucking time. My (ex)partner probably thinks he fought for me, but he didn't. He only ever had excuses. The only person who ever fought for me and held on tight no matter how much I pushed and shoved, is my sister. Which is probably why she is my most beloved person in the world. She cherished me from the start, before I even wanted her affections. I damn near hated her but she loved me anyway. She adored me. She thought I was the best thing ever. So now, now she is the best thing ever. She never gave up on me. I guess my 1DS's dad didn't either, which is probably why we are such good friends still after all these years. He still loves me to this day and I have no doubt that if I showed any kind of interest in reconciling with him, he'd be in feet first. Sadly for him... and for me I guess... I just have no interest in being in a relationship with the man. I love him, but I love him like a brother and nothing more. Which is good in a way, at least I have one brother. So this whole self-abandonment thing has gotten stuck in my head, which is a good thing. It's a good thing because today I didn't buy another coke even though there were about 5 or so conversations in my head where the ittybittybitch tried to convince me I needed some. Even when 1DS went to 711 I had a full-on internal argument with ittybittybitch about it. It only took a couple seconds but if you saw me, and I'm pretty sure 1DS noticed, he's perceptive like that, I was blank to the outside world for a second or two. Yet I prevailed. I didn't get him to go get me anything. I feel accomplished by that. I feel like maybe I'm getting back on the damn wagon that helped me lose 10kgs at the start of the year, before I finally quit my decade long relationship that send me in a massive downward spiral where I put all the fucking weight back on again. Instead of berating myself about only having 1 shake today, I congratulated myself for at least having 1 shake today. Today I have had about 3 cups of coffee, with whipped cream - sad but true. I've had two bowls of cereal, and a massive bowl of my sausage casserole and rice. Probably enough to feed about 3 people who aren't morbidly obese like me. But that is ok. Do you know why? Because today I didn't drink any coke cola. I didn't drink any iced coffee. I didn't have any biscuits. I didn't have any chips. I haven't had any chocolate other than the hot chocolate variety I put in my cuppa. I've had barely any water, I had just 1 shake, I haven't had any magnesium or iron, etc, but today is still a good day. Today is still a day to celebrate, because of what I didn't have. And because I DID have that 1 shake, which is better than none. It's time for me to get back on track to loving myself again. To stop blaming myself for my failed relationship. To stop berating myself for not being good enough, strong enough, wise enough, aware enough.... enough. It's time to acknowledge my unworthiness and be ok with it. I am the Unworthy Art Therapist and I own that today. I own that in a way where I can be OK with that, where that title doesn't have any negative connotations. It just is what it is and I am what I am. Today is a good day, despite the tears. Today is a good day regardless of all the things I didn't do. Today is a good day to be me. I am alive today. I earned money today. I got some small things done today. So no matter how unworthy I am, there's that. Peace out nigger. Much of enough from the Unworthy Art Therapist.

I am Unworthy

I realised I needed a blog where I could be authentic. Where I don't have to put on a public mask. I can just be all that I am and try not to give a fuck. Though in all honesty, if I didn't give a fuck I wouldn't be being authentic. Cause I do. I do give a fuck. I give a fuck about what people think of me. I give a fuck about how people judge me. I give a fuck. Yet this, this is going to be about all the real things that are happening. No holds barred, just a straight forward this is how I am feeling, what I am thinking, how I am kind of blog post. Probably the most real thing about me is that I feel unworthy. All the time. Even when I'm being praised and I have people buying things I've made or reacting to my face painting, I feel unworthy. I'm not even sure if I've ever fully admitted that even to myself until right now, but I know it's true. I feel unworthy. Always. It's not something that runs through my conscious all that often, but it is a pervasive belief encompassing my subconscious. I don't like it, I don't want it, but it is there. I don't know how to fix it, or get rid of it, or just accept it. I don't know how to live with it in a way that allows me to reach my goals. It's always there and it hinders me at every turn. I'm not here to get advice. I know all the advice. I've heard it all. From the positive thinking to the being in the moment to the get the fuck over it to the pills will help to the eat better to the everything. However, none of it helps. Not a single smidgeon of it helps. Because no matter what I know consciously, it doesn't help on a subconscious level and I do not know how to access that and alter the synapses in my brain. Or perhaps I'm just a professional self-saboteur and victim who continues to perpetuate the problems because it's safe here and I know here and I do not know who I would be or how I would be without my unworthiness. Who the fuck knows and who the fuck cares? Do you ever just think to yourself that it's all bullshit? Does it ever occur to you that shit is what shit is and that's all shit is? Sometimes I get tired of being better. I get tired of doing better. I get tired of always failing to do those things. Sometimes I just want to lay down and go to sleep and never get up again. I am weary. So weary. Sometimes it feels like no matter which way I turn, no matter what path I take, no matter how often I put one foot in front of another THIS NEVER PASSES! Fuck the adage, 'this too shall pass' because this has not passed. This has not passed because this is my life. Since I can remember. I've come in to this life with this crap and it is heavy. So heavy that I have become heavy and weighed down by it. How the hell do I shift it? So I'm 40. I've done a lot of stuff in and with my life, and I also haven't. You know what else I get sick of, being able to see all the things. Being able to see that I have done a shit load of things in my life and I have come a very long way, yet also being able to see that I haven't really done anything and I haven't really gotten anywhere. It's all a big illusion. It's all a big waste of time... but I digress. What I'm trying to get to here, other than completing a first blog post for The Unworthy Art Therapist, is that I'm 40 and I'm doing a Uni course in Transpersonal Art Therapy. Hence the title of my blog. So what does that mean for this blog? It means I'm going to use this space to explore the lump of lard that is my life using what I'm learning in TAT (Transpersonal Art Therapy). It means I'm also going to use this space to vent the fuck out of shit when I need to. I hope people will read it, but I've learned in my 40 years that people don't see me. They don't hear me. The don't even notice my existance most of the time. So while I hope people will read my blog and perhaps get something out of it, I doubt it will ever happen. So what came first, the chicken or the egg? What came first? Me creating that no one will ever read this, or do I just know no one will and therefore have seen the future creation. And again I digress... get used to it. I do that a lot. What promped me starting this is the fact that I am ... well I'm all sorts of fucked up as you will learn if you travel this rocky terrain with me but today's particular fucked up is that I am having another moment in my life where the pain of my impending divorce is upon me. Yet again. I got through fits and starts of feeling the pain, being ok with the pain, forgetting about the pain, wishing it wasn't there, being angry, etc, etc. Well today I have the feels. It was a movie that triggered the feels, but it doesn't matter what triggered it, it matters what I do with it... right? Right?!! Being that I'm 1/3 of the way through my TAT course I decided instead of reaching for food to suppress this shit, like I normally do, I would reach for the art supplies. So I did. I grabbed myself some oil pastels, because this feeling of sadness and pain and feeling stuck is very evident in the stickiness of oil pastels. There is something very sticky and slick and thick and stuck and resistant about oils. All the things I felt as I was experiencing the emotions. So I began. I got out some red and I began laying it on thick on the page, bawling my eyes out. I kept pushing it up the page up the page up the page and pushing down really hard and it really felt like how I was feeling. There was something really forceful about it. Then I added some black to the edges of the red. The black was heavy and made the lines thick, even colouring in whole sections of paper at times. After than I laid down some dark blue and mixed it with the black along the edges and when that was done the rest was done in a light blue. By the time I had gotten to the end the sobbing had stopped, the tears had dried and I felt calmer. The pain was still there, the depression was still dancing around my heart, but I felt calm once again. Or was it numb? Calm, numb, numb calm... they can feel so similar sometimes. No, it was a calm. But it was a sad calm. I feel so weighted like I couldn't smile even if I wanted to. That if I was told to smile the corners of my mouth would turn upward but it would never reach my eyes because smiling is counteractive to the feels I have right now. Uncannily right as I was finishing up I got an email from TH (The Husband) whom I've now been separated from for 16 months and this is where the feels stem from. I feel I need to stop here a moment and explain that I wasn't the one who was left. I did the leaving. I did the declaring of it being over. I packed my stuff, my kids stuff and moved out. I walked away from 10 years of marriage. I was the one who said enough. I was the one who couldn't take any more. I was the one who walked away. He's just the one who kept me away the numerous times I may have gone back. I'm also the one who, after a year of being separated, said I couldn't do this anymore and said I'm done for realz. I'm the one. Yet here I am in copious amounts of pain on a regular basis because I love him and I miss him and I miss parts of what we had, what we were and I don't think anyone could possibly understand that. Because I am a paradox. I see paradox, I live paradox. Just like before when I said that I have done so much with my life yet I've also done nothing. I love TH but I can never be with him again. Sad, but true. As I was saying, I was just finishing up my heart-wrenching artwork of pain and an email come through from TH. The man has an uncanny ability to contact me at some of the worst possible times when I'm going through so much stuff around him and us. Poor man probably cops way more emotion from me than he would otherwise at those times. Not today though. Today was... different. Somehow. I don't know, perhaps it was cause of the oil pastels and the artwork. Perhaps it was just because he'd gotten him self banned from Facebook for a whole week and that was pretty amusing. Perhaps it's because he still hasn't gotten his wedding ring cut off. Still, it was interesting to note that he chose right then to email me. So now I'm sitting here typing up a blog in my new blog where I want to come and record myself. I was sitting there thinking, I just want to be seen. I want my pain to be seen. But not by those who know me. Not by those who have witnessed my life on facebook so far. I want to be seen but I don't want to be fixed. I don't want solutions or pity or judgements. I just want to be witnessed. I just want somewhere I can pour out stuff and I can feel like someone somewhere might be reading it and seeing me and hearing me. I just want to exist. With my pain. I want my pain to exist. I want my pain witnessed. This is my pain:

In TAT we express our feels by putting colours and shapes on paper. We then try to separate ourselves from it. We do what is known as 'privileging the unconscious'. The first step to doing that is to view the image from a different perspective. We move it away, we turn it around and see it from other angles. We see if we can somehow change the story. This is why I've shown you the image in all 4 rotations. It's not so easy to TAT yourself and just like the oil is stuck to the page, I am stuck with this story. I acknowledge I need to take it in to a counselor and gain some professional guidance with it, but for now, this is where I'm at. So here I am. Sharing my pain with you. Hoping someone will see it. Will witness it. Will acknowledge it's existence. Will acknowledge MY existence. Will acknowledge MY pain. I will probably still go and get sausage rolls and coke cola from the 711 soon and stuff my face with food. I will probably get some chips too, maybe some chocolate of some kind and really stuff my face. This is how I eat. This is how I self-soothe. This is why I am morbidly obese. This is why I am always tired and sad and unworthy. I am unworthy of this amazing life and my awesome abilities. Someone else could do such a better job than me if only they had my skills and my able body. Yet here I plod along in life, knowing what I need to do and not doing it anyway. Here I am wishing I could be different but not actually changing anything to make a difference. I am Unworthy.