Category: Depression

Posted in bipolar disorder, Child abuse, Depression, Mental Illness

Ketamine

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ve finished five ketamine treatments and have one to go. My original goal was to be able to decrease the dose of my psych meds. I was trying to find a dosage that was high enough to be effective and low enough that I didn’t turn into a zombie.

Ketamine is supposed to cause the brain to form new neural connections. And it does. After I had a ketamine infusion in 2021, my brain felt full and illuminated by a golden white light. Suddenly, the debilitating depression was gone. I was hoping at home ketamine would be as helpful.

I’m using ketamine from Mindbloom https://www.mindbloom.com/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=PM_Search_Branded_Exact_12.2021&utm_device=c&utm_content=634257646790&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY3DwvUHrMYjpVEMOfzeIRw_Vp33LvOZiZEw9mBxC2bj0EcZkQ7l1nIaAvhDEALw_wcB, an on-line treatment for depression. Instead of the Magical Mystery Tour with hallucinations, I was merely relaxed during the ketamine session. My brain would daydream. And progress was made without hallucinations.

I’ve been able to decrease the dosage of lamictal and wellbutrin. I have less brain fog. I still lose words and thoughts, but not as often as before ketamine.

There have been some interesting effects I hadn’t expected. Sixteen years of child abuse followed by 18 years of being treated like crap left me with complex PTSD. While I don’t remember the last time I had a repeating nightmare, I still had flashbacks. The flashbacks were no longer debilitating, but they were unwanted and irritating. After struggling with flashbacks for more than 50 years, the flashbacks are gone. The memories are now powerless. I feel stable. Freedom from complex PTSD was unexpected, and wonderful.

I find I’m eating less. My misery with food has a history. The earliest memories are about my grandmother making me toast and a soft boiled egg for breakfast and my mother making pancakes on a weekend. The pancake memory features me sitting in a high chair. A month before my 4th birthday, my mother married, and my life became confusing hell in which I tried to stay quiet and small enough that I wouldn’t get hit. I was never successful. My mother didn’t eat breakfast, so she refused to feed me, or my siblings, breakfast. I remember sitting in school being so hungry and waiting for lunch. Food became a symbol of love. As I tried so hard to get my mother and her husband to love me, all I had of love was food. And fear of fat. So I ate. Or I didn’t eat. Am I “cured” of emotional eating? I don’t know. I just know I’m not eating as much.

My sixth and final dose of ketamine will be sometime this coming week. I haven’t yet scheduled the session. I have options. I can do nothing and watch my emotional responses. I can go to the next step, going deeper, and have another six sessions. I haven’t yet made a decision although I’m leaning towards going deeper. I don’t want to lose the healing momentum.

Posted in Depression, Emotions, PTSD

I Detest Christmas

Posted on by debthumanblog

Holidays growing up were horrible. The Drunk would pick a fight – usually with me – and wouldn’t stop until someone – usually me – was crying. My mother would be screaming, literally, that we didn’t spend enough time eating after she spent two days cooking. The Drunk would complain because my mother used boxed mashed potatoes and would tell her she had three daughters so there shouldn’t be boxed mashed potatoes. Notice that my brother, who could have crapped in the middle of the living room rug and it would have been okay, didn’t have to do anything. Many times, I got the flu a couple days before Christmas. Being too sick to notice the hell that was going on around me was good. Very, very good.

Every year, the deep, unrelenting depression and nightmares started the third week of November and lasted until New Year’s Day.

I was the odd kid out and I was 34 before I knew why my mother and The Drunk hated me. Turns out, while my younger brother, sisters and I have the same mother, I’ve got a different father. One Christmas eve, my younger brother said The Drunk’s advice to him was to have fun but be careful. I was appalled and said that kind of advice leads to someone knocking on your door 20 years later and says s/he is your daughter/son. The Drunk said, I mercifully forgot what, caught himself, and said that might happen to him. That’s when I knew I was someone else’s kid.

It’s not easy being someone else’s kid.

Finally, Jim and I decided a solution to the hell that is Christmas was to take a vacation and be gone at Christmas. We traveled to assorted places. Kentucky is closed for Christmas except one truck stop in Lexington that served the best biscuits I’ve ever had.  One year, we stayed at a resort in West Virginia and the resort restaurant, decent but not memorable food, was open. Another year, we stayed in Freeport, Maine. The only place open was LL Bean. No restaurants. Jim found a convenience store that was open for a few hours and bought us day-old sandwiches. We sat in our hotel room ate day-old sandwiches and watched A Christmas Story. I thought how pathetic it was that being in a hotel room eating not quite stale, forgettable sandwiches was far better than being with family.

Then, I moved 2000 miles away and there was no more Christmas Hell.

I thought.

I was wrong. The misery of complex PTSD is that it’s hard to treat and the flashbacks last a lifetime. I’ve been married for 50 years and gone through nearly 20 years of therapy and if there was a way to stop the flashbacks, I’d have found it by now. The flashbacks are no longer debilitating, but now they come in clusters.

About 20 years ago, I discovered that my grandmother’s really bad German was actually Yiddish. And who spoke Yiddish in 1888 when the family left East Prussia and came to the US? Not German Lutherans which is the story the children and grandchildren were told. There’s an unbroken female line from my great-great-grandmother, who left East Prussia with her husband and 10-month old baby (my great-grandmother) to me. I am Jewish. Formal conversion, which I call reversion, was 11 years ago. I’ve celebrated Hanukkah ever since.

Still, the flashbacks come. Jim and I love to binge on baking contests. While I enjoy seeing different ways to make things, watching the Holiday Baking Championship can be painful. Sometimes, the contestants explain the inspiration for whatever they just made is a lovely family memory of Christmas past. Where do the producers find these people? Or are the contestants lying? Or do I have to live in a cave to avoid the flashbacks? I insist on having a normal life and not running from the triggers. I refuse to give the triggers the power to contract and constrict my life. That helps, but doesn’t cure cPTSD.

I detest Christmas.

Posted in Bigotry, Depression, Emotions, words

Define Attractive

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m 70. I’m no longer 22. Acne notwithstanding, I don’t look like I’m 22. Since then, I’ve put myself through college. I’ve put myself through law school. I’ve had a lifetime full of experiences. I’m not the person I was at 22 and don’t want to be that person.

So what’s the problem? The problem is what I think people expect. I watch TV and see anorexic women. I have to tell myself these women have eating disorders. They aren’t at a healthy weight. What they are doing to their bodies is going to catch up to them.

I watch TV and see women who have obvious facelifts that they deny having. Their faces will again fall. I see women who have had way too many facelifts and they look terrible. I see women who have obvious breast implants and lifts. I see Jamie Lee Curtis wearing a low cut dress, and her breasts jiggle just like mine. I see her gray hair and wonder why I am not that confident.

I was 25 when I started college and 30 when I graduated with degrees in biology and journalism. I started law school on my 38th birthday. I appeared before the US Supreme Court when I was 44. I moved 2000 miles across the country while Jim stayed behind to sell the house when I was 47. I argued the first of three times before the NM Supreme Court when I was 50. When I was 54, I began a nine-year fight to keep a job I loved. I retired when I was 63.

It took me a lifetime to achieve what I’ve achieved. Now, I look at my face in the mirror, and new lines form each day. I have lines across my forehead. I have weird lines going from my nose to my chin. I’ve considered botox, but I think I’d be even more upset when the lines come back – and they will come back – than I am now that they are arriving.

I’ve watched myself go through life changes. I was 38 when I realized my life is mine and no one else should run my life. When I was 39, I realized I could learn anything I wanted and my life was incredible. When I was 50, I went a little crazy and got my bellybutton pierced. When I was 60, I spent the next few years realizing my life is finite and worrying I wouldn’t get everything done that I wanted to get done before I died. I was 60 when a client told me I’m a kind woman. I had never thought of myself as kind. When I was 61, someone who is much younger than me found me sexually attractive. I turned 70 and suddenly, I can do anything, learn anything, achieve anything. It’s like how I felt when I was 40. A few weeks ago, I realized I’m almost finished writing the novel I started writing 8 years ago. I also realized that if the entire story can be told in 44,000 words, I would be foolish to try to turn a fast paced interesting story into an 80,000 word boring story.

It has taken me a long time for my hair to go gray. It’s still not gray, but there are more gray hairs than there used to be. Once, when I was about 53 and after dying my hair flaming red, someone told me that color was much better than the color I had before. The color I had before was my natural color. I decided if people wanted to think I dyed my hair, I’d dye my hair a color that doesn’t exist in nature. I’ve been a woman with flaming red hair ever since. Now, I dye my hair because I’m upset at the few but ever increasing number of gray hairs I see.

My face reflects my life. It has been a good life and I achieved more than I ever imagined I could achieve when I was 22. So why am I so upset about the lines on my face? Why do I think I’m no longer attractive just because I’m developing lines on my forehead?

What does it mean to be attractive? Is carrying my life on my face attractive? Interesting maybe, but I don’t know if I’m attractive.

Why the hell do I think lines on my face, gray hairs, and not being anorexic matter?

There’s a quilt in here somewhere and fuzzy ideas are forming in my brain.

Posted in anxiety, bipolar disorder, Depression

The Trauma That Never Ends

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m finally at a point where I can talk about what the misogynous judges on the Supreme Court did when they overturned Roe v Wade and sent us back into the 19th century.

If you don’t know what the items in the photo are for, you better learn because the Supreme Court has made pregnancy mandatory.

In the mid-70’s, I went to Planned Parenthood for my annual checkup. I got checked by a foreign doctor whose English vocabulary consisted of “you’re pregnant.” I was on the pill, and told the doctor that I wasn’t even one day late. He still insisted I was pregnant. After I gave a urine sample which showed I wasn’t pregnant, he still insisted I was pregnant. I got hysterical, and one of the Planned Parenthood workers led me through the waiting room to another room to discuss options. I was crying hysterically and felt like telling the women in the waiting room that it was okay, I didn’t have to have both breasts lopped off, I was only pregnant. I got referred to a gyn who performed abortions. I asked about birth control and the woman opened her desk drawer and brought out a handful of condoms in assorted colors. I told her I better use plain condoms because I couldn’t stand any more excitement.

At the time, a husband’s signature was required for a wife to get an abortion. I had no money of my own. I’d have to take off my wedding band, pretend I was single and had no health insurance in order to get an abortion. At the time, the cost of an abortion was about $180.00 and I only had a about 6 weeks to come up with the money.

I took the bus home, and got to listen to a screaming baby. I remember what I thought at that moment. “That’s what I’m going to get stuck with.” The next day, I had blood, lots of blood, in my urine. I weighed 110 at the time, and I lost 6 pounds in two days. Shortly thereafter, I got my period. Crisis averted.

I thought this trauma was just me until I found someone else who had the same horrendous experience with the same doctor.

As I write this, the horror comes back to me. No woman should ever have to go through what I went through.

Posted in bipolar disorder, Depression, Fiber, Mental Illness, Peripheral neuropathy, Photography, Sewing

Sewing. Depression. Eclipse. Wildfire.

Posted on by debthumanblog

1. Find pattern. 

2. Order fabric in one of my designs. 

3. Print out pattern. 

4. Discover the printer was set wrong and all 37 pages have to be reprinted. 

5. Print out pattern. 

6. Tape 37 pages together matching notches. 

7. Mark correct cutting lines on the multi-size pattern.

8. Trace pattern onto pattern paper. 

9. Make a muslin. 

10. Discover the size that matches my measurements is waaaay to big.

11. Adjust pattern pieces. 

12. Discover that the special order fabric has disappeared. 

13. Find suitable fabric in stash.

14. Iron fabric. 

15. Discover that 42″ fabric isn’t wide enough for the pattern. 

16. Find the sewing directions.

17. Find the instructions for the seam allowance. 

18. Remove center seams on the front and back. 

19.Discover I hate the dress. 

20. Discover one pattern piece is cut 4 and I cut 2. 

21. Discover there’s not enough fabric to cut 2 additional pieces.

22. Design begins when there’s not enough fabric. 

I’ve got the dress and interfacing cut out. I’m working on this dress in small increments because I’m afraid I’ll make irreparable mistakes if I try to make the dress in one day.

The wildfire in the Gila – due west of us – is causing haze, stinky air, triggering allergies, and hiding the mountains.

The wildfire in northern New Mexico has consumed more than 300,000 acres. It was started by a controlled burn that got out of control. The Forest Service didn’t follow their own protocol, set a fire on a windy day, and now we have a disaster. The governor wants the feds to pay for firefighting, cleanup, reforestation, repair and rebuild structures that were burnt. 

I’ve been battling severe depression for several weeks. My doctor tweaked my psych meds, and I’m much better. The depression is gone. I have energy and a desire to do things. 

I wanted to set up the tripod, use my 150-600mm lens and shoot the eclipse. I had a neuropathy flare up and had to use my TENS unit. I had leads going from my feet to the waistband of my pants. Using a tripod under those circumstances is both stupid and dangerous. I used my 18-400mm lens, leaned against a post, and shot the moon.

I’ve been designing more fabric. 

We’ve got blooming yucca – both white and red.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My on-line store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

Posted in bipolar disorder, Depression, Mental Illness, Pain, Psych meds, Suicide

Help Me. I Am In Pain

Posted on by debthumanblog

One day, my neurobiology teacher asked the class what they thought about people who were mentally ill. 

“Scary.”

“Batshit crazy.” That was said by a graduate student who knew, prior to saying I’m batshit crazy, that I’m bipolar. I know he knew because I had told him. 

I’m not scary. I’m not batshit crazy. I’m in pain. The kind of pain that an OTC painkiller won’t kill. The kind of pain that is bone deep. The kind of pain that doesn’t go away. The kind if pain caused by 16 years of child abuse, by a violent, drunken, narcissistic mother who hated me, by her violent drunken husband, by a family that taught seeking help was the worst thing that a person could do. That kind of pain. 

The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 11. I stood at the kitchen sink holding the knife in my hand. “This is going to hurt.” That’s what stopped me.

Six times in my life, I’ve been suicidal. People who are bipolar have a suicide rate 20 times that of the rest of the population. I live in terror that my life will end by suicide. Suicide has been called a permanent solution. Bipolar disorder is a permanent problem. 

I’m on psych meds. They help. They don’t cure. They dull symptoms of depression and mania. They do nothing to protect me from the ignorance and fear of others. Some of the others are well meaning, but aren’t ready to look at mental illness. Some are repulsed as if I had some horrible, contagious disease. Some are terrified of me. Some try to push me back into a closet. Some, don’t want to hear me when I say that those who stay in the closet are a huge part of the stigma of mental illness. 

“If I read the words, why do I have to keep looking at this painting?”

You have to keep looking, because I have to keep living in this mental hell. I make you look because I refuse to live in a closet. If my painting were about a broken leg, would you have the same criticism? You have to keep looking because that painting isn’t abstract; it’s realism. It’s my reality.

May is Mental Illness Awareness Month. Look at me. Listen to me. I am not batshit crazy. I am not scary. I am scared. I am in pain. I’m locked in a mental hell from which I cannot escape.

Posted in Abstract Art, bipolar disorder, Depression, Mental Illness, Psych meds, Sketchbook

Inside Deb’s Brain

Posted on by debthumanblog

Inside Deb’s brain is all manner of odd things.

My doctor knows I adjust the dosage of my antidepressant from time to time. Most of the time, I only need 100mg. When the depression gets bad, I go up to 150mg. When the depression is really bad, I go up to 200mg. Yesterday, I started with 150mg. When I felt dangerously close to suicidal, I took another 100mg for a total of 250mg. I’ve never taken that much before. 

If there’s a reason for my depression, antidepressants don’t do much. If the depression is a function of bipolar disorder, I need as much antidepressant as necessary to keep me above suicidal. A couple hours after I took the final dose, I felt normal. That’s how I know it was bipolar depression. My brain didn’t work properly. Why? Who knows? Certainly not the drug companies. Although they aggressively market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, no one knows if there is an increase in the available serotonin. Or if any of the reuptake molecules are inhibited. 

It’s unsettling to live with a brain that has a mind of its own. To live with mood swings that aren’t caused by anything that is happening in my life. To constantly wonder if my reaction to something is a function of bipolar disorder or if “normal” people would react the way I’ve reacted. 

For years, I’ve wanted to do an art piece that shows what bipolar disorder feels like. So far, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve a final painting assignment for my painting class. We’re supposed to do something that’s post modern. I’ve talked with my teacher and I’m doing something that’s….I’m not sure what it is. I want to show what manic feels like. I want to show what depressed feels like. I want to show what the dreaded mixed episode – simultaneously manic and depressed – feels like. I want to show the thoughts that inhabit those episodes. 

The photo marked #1 is where the idea for the painting started. Using a brown sharpie, I wrote some of the crap my mother said to me. Using a blue sharpie, I wrote how I deal with that crap.  I thought about braiding the strips. Then I thought about sewing the strips onto fabric. I’m not sure what I will do with the strips. 

The photo marked #2 is a more or less final sketch of what the painting will look like. Most people who don’t live with a mental illness aren’t aware that there are levels of depression below suicidal. A depression so deep, you have to feel better in order to kill yourself. It sucks being that far down, but at least I’m safe there. With bipolar disorder, the choices for the mood swings are: Manic, Depressed, Mixed – where one is both manic and depressed. Mixed episodes suck.

I have a form of synesthesia. I see energy flows as colors. When I see purple flooding into my brain, I know I’m healing.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My on-line store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

Posted in Brady, Depression, Memories, Mental Illness, Peripheral neuropathy, Photography

Another Day, Another Anniversary

Posted on by debthumanblog

For me, March is a month of anniversaries. 

March 5, 2012 was the day I was finally correctly diagnosed: bipolar disorder. Suddenly, my life made sense. 

March 9, 2021 was the day ketamine banished a bone-crushing depression.

March 13, 2020 was the day New Mexico shut down. I’ve had insomnia ever since. 

March 20, 2018 was the day I realized the reason I formulated a detailed plan to commit suicide was depression. It was also the day I decided to live and immediately went back on an antidepressant.

This past week was spring break. This past week was frustrating. This past week was, and still is, painful. I’m having a neuropathy flare up bad enough to keep me home rather than going in to school and working on the four self-portraits assigned in my painting class. I am significantly behind working on those paintings and fear I won’t have them done by the day they are due. The grade doesn’t matter because I’m not working towards another degree. What matters is having the work done on time, and it won’t be. I am embarrassed by this.

We are working on still lives in the photography class. This is part of what I handed in. 

Home made abortion tools; it’s a political statement.

Auditioning fabric.

Dead Life.

I rarely use live view, but I used it for this photo. I was setting up another shot, looked down, and saw what the camera “saw.” It was more interesting than the shot I had planned.

Peace. It’s my palate for my painting class. When I’m in the Art Zone, neuropathy pain disappears, the world disappears, I forget to use the bathroom. I love being in the Art Zone.

Cheshire moon. I love taking shots of a less than full moon. I wasn’t steady enough to set up the tripod and use the 150-600mm lens. The marijuana I use to combat neuropathy pain leaves me stoned and walking into walls. I used the 18-400mm lens that was on the camera.

I worked on turning some photos into fabric designs. Eventually, I’ll have them in my Spoonflower shop. 

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

Posted in Depression, Fiber, Photography, Quilts

Making My Way Through Time and Place

Posted on by debthumanblog

Each year, NMSU has a juried student art show. I’ve submitted work in the past without acceptance. Quilting isn’t taught at NMSU; therefore, quilting isn’t an art. I wonder what the jurors would say about Faith Ringgold’s art. My painting teacher has made it a class assignment to enter up to three pieces of art to the juried show. He has encouraged me to enter my quilts. I chose one quilt: Depression. It’s a depiction of how I felt in February 2021. 

The other two entries are photographs I took when it snowed a couple weeks ago. 

Because there’s a cash prize for best in show, entrants must register for Scholar Dollars. I answered questions about did I grow up in a single-parent home. Yes, for four years before my mother married The Drunk. Do I have a disability? Yes. Bipolar disorder doesn’t feel like a disability but I’ve no idea what normal feels like. Any veterans in the family? My father, The Drunk and Jim are veterans. Overcome educational barriers? Yes. My mother and The Drunk were convinced college made a person stupid and I wasn’t allowed to apply to colleges. I started college shortly after my 25th birthday and earned two degrees: journalism and biology – although I was not allowed to take math or science classes in high school. 

I’m not sure when the decision will be made and I doubt my work will be accepted. I don’t make normal art. Neither does Faith Ringgold. 

I need to come up with 10 additional photos for a sense of place for my photography class by Sunday. I’ve decided most of the shots I want although I’ve my doubts about how some of the shots will be received. Here’s what I’ve shot so far. 

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My store, Deb Thuman Art is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

Posted in bipolar disorder, Child abuse, Depression, Emotions, PTSD

In Honor Of The 49th Anniversary of Roe v Wade

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m alive because abortion was illegal in 1952.

My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist who was single when I was born. Four years later, she married a violent drunk. Although he adopted me, something I didn’t know until I was 34, he never forgot I was someone else’s kid. I’m told to be grateful The Drunk gave me a name – the same name of a Nazi war criminal who was tried and executed by the British. The Drunk and the Nazi were related – both by blood and by hateful ideology.

My mother and The Drunk had three children – none of which my mother wanted and she made sure we knew we were unwanted. By the time I was 10, I had myself and three siblings to raise. I didn’t do a very good job; children aren’t capable of raising children. Don’t tell me to be grateful for a childhood in hell.

I endured 16 years of child abuse hell which resulted in bipolar disorder. The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 11. The last of six suicidal episodes was the fall of 2019. I live in terror that there will be another episode and eventually, an episode will kill me. Don’t tell me to be grateful.

When I was 25, I put myself through college and earned degrees in journalism and biology – even though I wasn’t allowed to take any math or science classes in high school. When I was 38, I put myself through law school.

50 years after marrying and leaving a home run by a pair of violent drunks, I still have complex PTSD. I still have flashbacks. After many years of therapy, the flashbacks are annoying rather than debilitating as they were 50 years ago. There is no cure for complex PTSD and I will have flashbacks as long as I live. Don’t tell me to be grateful for a lifetime of internal hell.

I’d have been better off if my mother had had an abortion.

Think about that the next time you want to condemn a pregnant woman to motherhood.

Posted in Beads, Depression, Judiasm, Photography

Let The Light Shine

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ve been working with beads this week. I have more snowflakes. The snowflake frames come in 3.75” and 6”. It’s interesting working with symmetry and finding beads that work well with each other. With necklaces, I use a necklace board that has channels for beads and inch marks to let me know how long the necklace will be. With the snowflake frames, I have to find beads that work well together but still fit on the frame. 

I’m having a hard time photographing the snowflakes. I want a blurred background and the entire snowflake in focus.

This is the setup I used to shoot snowflakes.

Once I get decent photos, I’ll be putting the snowflakes in my store, Deb Thuman Art http://www.DebThumanArt.com

I’ve had some sales of the designs in my Spoonflower shop, https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman It’s exciting to discover people like my designs enough to buy them.

I wanted to test out my new, cataract-free eyes, so I started working with 0/8 seed beads to make a beaded cuff. I haven’t figured out the best strength for reading glasses yet and I’m not able to work well with 0/11 although I’ve been trying. 

This one is made with 11/0 seed beads and it’s not finished.

This one is made with 8/0 beads and it needs a clasp.

Used to be, I’d go into a major depression the third week of November and stay depressed until New Year’s Day. If you had to suffer through holidays with my family, you’d be depressed, too. The screaming. The fighting. The crying. The yelling. For a while, we took off on a vacation over Christmas so we wouldn’t have to spend time with the families. My sister-in-law said we were just running away. Damn straight. 

It’s been a long time since I got depressed in mid-November and stayed depressed. This year, something odd happened. I decided to make Green Stuff. Every Thanksgiving, my mother would make Green Stuff. It was the only enjoyable part of holiday dinners. It took a while to find a recipe. It’s a lime Jell-o salad with whipped cream and crushed pineapple. I wanted to make it on Thanksgiving, but I forgot to tell Jim to buy whipped cream. He went grocery shopping today and discovered three stores are out of heavy cream. He bought a can of Red-I Whip so he could make puppaccinos for Brady. I’ll be using Red-I Whip in place of whipped cream. I think it’s a sign of significant healing that I want to make Green Stuff this year. 

I’m still suffering from malaise. I printed out a Seamwork pattern, taped the pages together to form one big pattern. Now, I have to transfer the pattern to an interfacing that has a grid on it. Or not. Maybe I’ll live dangerously and just cut out the paper pattern. I’ve marked the lines for my size. I want to make this loose, oversized dress so I will have a cover up for when I model nude. Can’t very well walk naked down the hallway to get to the ladies’ room. 

Hanukkah starts tonight. My favorite Hanukkah store comes from an article I wrote many years ago. I wrote an article about Judaic collectibles for AntiqueWeek. I visited a museum in one of the larger temples in Buffalo, NY. Among the fascinating objects was a small menorah. During WWII, a soldier took a tin that had held K-rations and 9 bullet casings. He attached the casings to the inside of the tin to make a menorah. Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of a small band of Jewish soldiers who vanquished Antiochus IV and re-took the temple.  During a time when Hitler was trying to wipe out all the Jews in Europe, a Jewish soldier celebrated Hanukkah. 

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Posted in Beads, bipolar disorder, Brady, Depression, Fiber, PTSD

Of Frustrations and Images

Posted on by debthumanblog

Bipolar disorder sucks. Near as I can tell, I’m having a mixed episode – both manic and depressed simultaneously. My responses to things are enlarged. I’m depressed and am having problems shaking the depression. The PTSD, which is likely driving this mixed episode, has taken a miserable turn. While I still have flashbacks about growing up in a house run by a violent, drunken narcissist and her violent drunken husband, the flashbacks are no longer debilitating but they are still a nuisance. Now, I’m having flashbacks about working for the public defender department. There was a lot of trauma in that job. I moved from western New York to southern New Mexico by myself. Jim stayed in New York to sell the house. I didn’t know anyone in New Mexico. My supervisor refused to talk to me for two days when I arrived. That should have been a serious warning sign but I wanted that job so I stayed in New Mexico. Nine years later, I had to sue the department because of discrimination based on my age. I had a boss who was, to put it gently, a raving, screaming lunatic. I had 11 jobs in one year because he was trying to force me to quit.  I stuck around because I wasn’t going to let anyone screw me out of my pension. Just writing this has unearthed miserable memories. I retired when I got pushed once too often. Within two weeks of retiring, I no longer had back pain and I didn’t need medication to sleep. Within six months, I no longer needed medication to control my blood pressure. 

Brady is now five months old and she either has the doggy version of the terrible twos or the doggy version of oppositional defiant disorder. At least she seems to understand that she needs to pee and poop outside rather than on the kitchen floor. Now that I’ve given up on trying to confine Brady to the kitchen, she and the cats are having peace talks. The talks aren’t going well. I’m staying out of the discussion. 

I’ve gotten some new, exciting beads and haven’t been able to work with them. The one time Brady snuck into the sewing room where I make clothes, quilts and jewelry, she picked up a discarded scrap of fabric and proceeded to chew on it. It’s not that she could hurt the scrap, it’s that the scrap could get stuck in her throat. Although I’m home all day, creating has to wait until the weekend when Jim can occupy Brady.

Three years ago, we flew to Buffalo, NY. In part to see a quilt show, in part to see friends, in part to give me the opportunity to bury the ghosts. We went to Rushford Lake where so much misery happened to me. I found a nice spot and buried the ghosts. Several years back, I took an acting class taught be someone who understood visions and intuition. During one class, I saw my spirit dancing in the woods. My spirit was an iridescent figure. I’ve been wanting to turn that vision into a quilt. I will be having Spoonflower print up one of the photos from that trip. Now to figure out how to make an iridescent figure and to show the figure dancing. I’ve got some chiffon that might work. I’ll have to play around with this idea some more. 

When things got unbearable, I’d take a walk. Here’s where my walk would start.

Here’s where I buried the ghosts.

My birthday is Sunday and major life events happen around my birthday. I started college the week after my 25th birthday and started law school on my 38th birthday. For the first time in I forget how long, I can eat whatever I want and drink whatever I want on my birthday. For a few years, I would either have a crown pop off or a tooth break. We’ll be going to Starbucks for my free birthday drink. I’m going to be baking a pineapple upside down cake and making croissants for my birthday. I’m also planning on going to Walgreens to get a flu shot. If I get my flu shot around the time of my birthday each year, I don’t have to worry about forgetting to get the shot.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

Posted in Clay, Depression, Emotions, Fiber, Mental Illness, Quilts

Where Did My Happiness Go? Did I Ever Have Happiness?

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m not sure when this happened. Used to be, my quilts were pictorial. Now, they are emotional. Apparently, I haven’t been in a happy emotional place in more than four years. During those years, my quilts were about suicide, frustration with neurologists who refused to listen to me, isolation, depression and sexual assault. 

Fury. 

It’s hard to get everything in one photo. The quilt says: If you touch this without my permission, I will break your fucking arm.

Suicide. 

Depression. 

Isolation. 

Mass shooting.

My quilts went from having beads, buttons, couched fancy threads to unadorned, stark quilts. The one exception is the quilt I made for human physiology.

Lots of beads and lots of whimsy on that quilt. The quilt is about my biology journey starting as an undergrad in 1977 and continuing during the last fall semester.

One happy quilt didn’t stave off a massive, all-encompassing depressive episode that left me so desperate, I considered electric shock treatments which I know are barbaric. During the last three years, my writing has become increasingly depressing. I write about suicide. I write impassioned pieces, which will never be shared while I’m alive, that are an attempt to calm the emotional roiling inside me. I write about the frustrations of having a mental illness in a world that still stigmatizes mental illness – an attitude that should have been dumped at the end of the Dark Ages. 

Dark subjects started appearing in my work in 2007. I was going through hell at work – a hell caused by a lunatic supervisor who kept trying to force me to quit. Around that time, I started making dark ceramic art. Bowls with words written on them: I’m a nice person, why don’t they like me? If I stay small and quiet, maybe they won’t hit me. A ceramics classmate looked at the bowls, said they were pretty. Then she looked at what was written on the bowls. And walked away. 

Self-portrait ceramic sculpture entitled: Fuck You, I’m Still Alive. Complete with bullet holes.

I tell people that art is a snapshot of a tiny piece of the artist at the time the art was created. Depression, isolation and suicide don’t seem to be tiny pieces of me. I knew that depression was a constant emotion while I was growing up. I didn’t realize, because I chose not to look, how overwhelming depression is now. 

I tell people that I frequently don’t understand what I’m feeling until the feelings come out of my hands. When are those feelings going to be happy again? Or were those feelings never happy?

My on-line store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower store is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com 

Posted in bipolar disorder, Depression, Psych meds

At My Core, I Am Whole, Happy And At Peace

Posted on by debthumanblog

Does anyone really know who they are? I certainly don’t. I am forever a woman. I am forever an attorney. I am forever a wife. I am forever an artist. I am forever a writer. 

I never get to be all those things at once.  It’s as if my life were pieces of a broken mirror. Each piece is both the whole and a part of the whole.

All of those pieces. None ever changes. None ever leaves.

Floating above all the broken bits of mirror is bipolar disorder. I am forever mentally ill. I can medicate my illness, but I will never be free of moods that have a mind of their own. 

That’s the difference between me and the people who think they know what being mentally ill is like. I live with mental illness that will never go away. I will die being bipolar. I may die because of being bipolar. People who have bipolar disorder have a suicide rate 20 times that of the rest of the population. 

I wonder. What precipitates the deepening depression that takes me down and down until I must fight the thought that were I dead, I’d never again have to deal with bipolar disorder crap. Sometimes, I’m lucky. The depression takes me down below suicidal. It’s safe there. I’d have to feel better to kill myself. 

But what precipitates the depression? Is it a brain chemical composition that bypasses the need to survive and sends me soaring into mania or plunging into depression? Or is it the crap I endure at the mouths of those who both fear mental illness and have no clue what living with a mental illness is like. The subtle pulling away when I disclose being bipolar. The not at all subtle backing away when I disclose being bipolar. The people who exert a tremendous amount of energy in a futile attempt to shove me back into the mental illness closet. Don’t talk. Don’t disclose. Don’t upset my world with your brain. The jackass who told me he admires how I accept no shame for being bipolar. 

Damn fucking straight I don’t accept shame. 

The only difference between a mental illness and a broken leg is the location of the pain. 

The jackass’s stupidity belongs to the jackass. Fear belongs to the ignorant. Shame belongs to the jackass. Shame belongs to everyone who doesn’t fight to kill the stigma of mental illness. 

Shame doesn’t belong to me. Shame has never belonged to me. Shame will never belong to me.

You can be part of the problem. You can be part of the solution. 

To be part of the solution, listen to me. See me. Accept me when I’m in med hell with a med that no longer works for me. Accept me when I’m going through the three-month long withdrawal that always comes after discontinuing an antidepressant that no longer works for me. Accept me when I’m going through the three-month long adjustment to a new med. Accept me when I’m soaring. Accept me when I’m plunging.

Being part of the problem is easy. Being part of the solution is hard. 

You have a choice. 

I don’t. 

Posted in anxiety, Bigotry, bipolar disorder, Depression, Fiber, Photography, Quilts

Art Heals

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ve been working on fabric designs this week. After watching a traumatic presentation about trauma, I had to write out my feelings. You can read the post here: https://debthumanblog.wordpress.com/2021/06/25/i-am-not-broken/

There’s a quilt in there somewhere. Maybe my latest designs will help me find it.

This design might be good for a mental health quilt. The fractured triangles mirror how I feel at times.

I love positive and negative prints and to combine both in one garment.

This is what happens when I start playing around with a photo of a sunset.

Road map to getting lost in thought.

Splat.

These are all from a sunset photo. There is no end to the kinds of designs that can be made while editing.

My store, Deb Thuman Art is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com