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.