More doodles from my inner nightmare

I finally went to my Apple computer guy and he showed me how to get into my photos.  So I downloaded a few more doodles and paired them with some journal writings from the years of suffering.  I think it is important to show what it was like for me before my healing experiences as well as after.  The difference is extreme.  The years of suffering, however, certainly contributed to my growth and prepared me for helping others as a counselor.  As a "wounded healer," I can understand the suffering of others and have empathy and compassion for them in a way I wouldn't have without my own difficult journey...  Only one writing below was actually written in response to the picture I had just drawn (while riding in the car) and that is "The Voyeur."

Words... I just can't seem to find words to communicate.  Why?  I feel so helpless and alone.  What am I doing wrong?  I need others and try to reach out, but too often I come away disappointed and more alone.  I find myself avoiding people and our confusing conversations.  Their empty words stick in my ears like antiseptic cottonballs, and their presence, like an unwanted sedative, numbs my awareness and blots out my existence...  And yet I am desperate in my search for real words with real meaning.

    Perhaps there are none...  Perhaps there is no "real"...  or perhaps it's just me.  Maybe human beings like myself don't have the capacity to reach what is "real".  Sometimes it seems that we are like insects atop a plate of glass, able to see, but not touch the world of "real" below.  Prevented from immersing ourselves in a real existence, we content ourselves with sliding across the surface (or clawing in vain at the impenetrable glass) of our pretend real world.

    So why struggle to communicate anyway?  Why does it feel so important and what could be the purpose?  Is it meant to connect us to other human beings like the sticks in tinkertoys?  Or is it just a necessary, but meaningless means of energy release?  All the stuff in my head keeps piling up until I feel I shall explode - and the only way out is through words!  The problem is, it's like trying to slide circle pegs into triangular slots.  They just don't fit!   

There is always so much going on in my head - so much to say that I can't say anything…  There are times when this experience becomes especially intense.  It feels as if a door in my mind is flung open, allowing the winds of infinity to come howling through. Unequipped and unable to comprehend it all, I experience chaos and meaninglessness.  I am sucked into a whirlwind of utter confusion, helpless with despair.  I can't describe the terror.

And yet, there is something more… a kind of excitement and curiosity.  I feel somehow that if the door were closed and locked, I would die of suffocation or at least stagnate and rot away inside.  For if nothing else, this wind brings fresh air and new energy.  Perhaps the problem lies not in the “wind,” but in my inability to understand and accommodate it.  Perhaps I just need better mental “lungs” to process and control the experience.  Perhaps… but then how does one develop such a capacity? 

    I can't write and I can't draw - I just don't know how!  I've never been taught and I don't feel prepared.  I need instruction - classes in history, art, math, mythology, science, literature and psychology.  But even if I had the education and knew what I was doing, what could I possibly have to say?  

    There's too much to say so I don't say anything (still the pressure at my temples strain to hold something in).  All around and deep within life whispers with urgency (but my ears are filled with heavy air and they ring and ring).   Voices cry out, "See me, hear me - experience me!" (and I back away screaming silently to myself).  Awareness threatens to rearrange the furniture (and I am afraid).  Even so, electrical impulses charge into my arm demanding that I act (but it is dead and heavy - I can only twitch)...

    Still I cannot escape!  Every everywhere are poems and paintings crying out - longing to be heard!  But it is too late, my ear is broke and I cannot respond.  Slowly the blood of what might have been trickles down my window falling into a puddle of defeat...

  

    Hide, hide, shh, be quiet.  Cook, clean, scream, cry - Besides, what would be the purpose?

       

My head is all stuffed up with sadness and my thoughts are incoherent…  The other day it occurred to me that thought should be like the yolk of an egg fried sunny side up, but that my thoughts, instead, seem scrambled - no center or focus, just a mass of competing confusion.  But even that description seems to fall short.. It's more like a fried egg hardly cooked but cut up and bleeding - with yolk running everywhere and dripping over into a pool of nothingness.

The Voyeur
Like the mysterious and secretive sea, her inner world teems with exotic life and unrealized potentialites.  And like those ocean depths, her existence lies submerged in darkness, embedded deep within recesses, untouched and beyond time.  All that remains as proof of their reality is a shell, a desperate attempt to camoflage the secret of her fearful presence.

This delicate armor shelters the fragile life inside.  It protects her from the harsh concrete world and its' seductive illusions of light and warmth.  For her, "life out there" appears as a dream from another dimension  - it may be watched from a safe distance, but neither felt nor embraced.  "Life out there" is like a ship at sea passing over the surface of her experience.  It passes indifferent to the passion play taking place below, and disappears into the vapors of deception.

“I feel so terribly distant and disconnected...It seems as if when I was created the life force injected into this physical body somehow missed the vein.  Like an air bubble, it has become trapped in existence, imprisoned in this body and in this world.  Unable to grasp the flowing, rhythmic beat of life, it is condemned to wander aimless and alone.  Without direction or purpose, it seeks only to be released and relieved of the pain and confusion it must bear in silence...”

I don't think I am experiencing depression as a means of superficial rebellion or simple resistance to feeling good - It's not like the calm silence of a pleasant summer evening suddenly being disturbed by the squealing tires of some mischievious teenager looking for attention.  Rather, I feel this depression, this discomfort goes much deeper...

    Actually, when I think about it, it is like a disturbance in an otherwise peaceful night.  However, the depression points to something deeper and more frightening.  This disturbance is more like the piercing shriek of a wild animal in a nearby jungle than squealing tires… It is a shriek that causes the villagers in their warm, cozy little huts to stop whatever they are doing and listen; a shriek that makes them shake with fear because it makes them aware of the world outside their tiny circles of light...

    This kind of disturbance shocks and reminds the villagers that just beyond the silent door is a dark and vast world, teeming with life and shrouded in mysteries - a very powerful world that presses in on their flimsy walls.  And at those moments they recognize the illusions they have built around themselves to create a false sense of security...  Then they realize how very small and vulnerable their circle of light really is and how frail their existence.

Then I started imagining the little girl in the picture growing up and  removing the snakes teeth and taming it.  I went downstairs to my art room to look at it and pretty soon I started seeing all kinds of stuff in the picture.  It was my “Garden of Eden” with dead , vegetationless mountains, a smoldering volacano, an apple pierced and bleeding tears, and the Tree of Life sunk in boiling  quicksand/lava.  The only road out is blocked. The pink (feminine?) blob above her of the thoughts and feelings that make up her personality is fragmented and confused, floating in a background of dark blue sky (masculine?) And at the top of the picture is a window into the other world where God’s eye watches and my arms reach out for help.

I then started seeing the replication of symbols in the other pictures hanging, along with  religious themes and symbols of a raging, all powerful masculine and a wounded weeping feminine.  I took a couple pictures upstairs and showed Gene (who had finally gotten up) and started talking about them and got even more insights.  For example, I associated money with my father (his obsession and what devoured him) and the snake is green and wrapped around the spear like a dollar sign!  I’ve said that green represented poison and money certainly seemed like an addiction and a poison for him!

I feel so drained from all the self loathing.  I want so terribly bad just to be able to like myself - to not always feel so embarressed and ashamed and angry that I exist...

In my head I see a picture of myself -  A woman lying on the floor, starved and lifeless.  Her bones are broken, and she is bruised, cut up, and bleeding.  She is crumpled silence bearly breathing.

There is no way this woman can even raise herself, (much less pick herself up).  And certainly anybody who tried would only inflict more pain, more agony...  No, nothing less than the compassionate tears and gentle touch of God himself could soothe such hopelessness...

Then I thought to myself, “If only she could be roused enough to cry - If only she could cry... But such a cry would make one sick and vomit to hear -  For such a cry would be like the wail of a mother at Dachau watching her baby tossed in the air and shot.