Category: Mental Illness

Posted in bipolar disorder, Child abuse, Depression, Emotions, Fiber, Mental Illness, Photography, Psych meds, PTSD

I’m Not Myself Right Now

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ve finally reached the point where I can start to integrate the crap that happened to me growing up, feel the feelings it wasn’t safe to feel then, and start to heal both mentally and physically. If you’re wondering what I’m writing about, it’s child abuse. My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist who had four children she didn’t want and made real sure we knew she didn’t want us. Her husband was a violent drunk. By the time I was 10, I had myself and three siblings to raise. I mirrored what I was my mother doing and did a lousy job of raising myself and siblings. I grew up hiding in my room so I wouldn’t have to hear them yell, literally, at me and hit me. I had no idea there was anything unusual about my family. At the age of 9, I had such severe depression that even the kids in my class noticed. One boy asked me what was wrong. His words had to go through many layers of water before I could hear them. Then, I had to formulate an answer, and the words had to go through many layers of water before I could say them. I eventually told him nothing was wrong. I wasn’t lying or covering anything up. I truly had no idea that there was any other kind of family.

I’ve been reading The Body Keeps The Score. It’s not an easy book to read and I can only read it in small doses. I’ve been doing micro-dosing with ketamine for little longer than a year and I finally found a therapist who takes my insurance and accepts new patients. The combination is allowing me to feel what I felt at the time the crap was happening. I’m even getting the stress pains I had at the time. It sucks. But it’s the only way to integrate what happened into whole memories and process them into something I can live with. At the moment, they are fractured memories that cause a plethora of physical problems.

Meanwhile, I’m working my way through the current trauma of a hate crime, antisemitism, and confronting terrorist wannabes – students being manipulated by real terrorists and being conned into thinking antisemitism is a good thing. I’m angry. I’m pissed. I want to scream. I’m considering a civil rights suit against the university.

And so I’m not myself. I’m having reactions out of proportion to events. I’m sounding like a crazed woman. I’m not having fun. It sucks.

Art. It ain’t called art therapy for nothing. I can lose myself in art. I can figure myself out in art. So often, I don’t understand what’s going on inside of me until it comes out of my hands. I’m working on a sequel to the novel I finished. Like the first novel, the main characters are a woman who is my age, Jewish, and a criminal defense attorney. Her lover is a police officer. In the first novel, I wrote about an officer involved shooting, mental illness and people who are homeless. (Unhoused is such a sanitary, offensive PC word and I won’t use it.) This time, I’ll be writing about antisemitism and hate crimes. What’s inside of me needs a voice. I’m considering taking a writing class in the fall. That could be dangerous for me. I’m hoping I can bring Brady, my service dog in training and the world’s cutest labradoodle, to class with me.

I’ve been playing around with my embroidery machine. And I’ve been surfing eBay for embroidery thread bargains. I found a doozy and it will arrive on Monday. I’ve played a bit with making my own designs.

The ferns are my design, the border is a stock design from the embroidery machine.

I bought a set of Hebrew fonts and started playing with them. The Hebrew is shalom. Shalom is one of those multi-purpose words. It’s use for hello, goodby and peace. Peace meaning the absence of war, but also a deep personal inner peace. The Star of David is done with variegated thread and I like how it came out.

We had a particularly bright moon last night. It’s a smidge past full, but well worth photographing. I used a 400mm lens. Sure would be nice to have something like a 12,000 mm lens, but that’s far outside of my photography budget.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://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 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 bipolar disorder, Mental Illness, Photography, Psych meds

Magical Mystery Tour and Other Marvels of Modern Medicine.

Posted on by debthumanblog

After a couple false starts, the Magical Mystery Tour commenced last week. I had to be put on blood pressure med only because my blood pressure was reliably in the dangerous range. Now, it’s in the normal range. That’s the good part. The bad part is that it’s taking way longer than I would like to get through med adjustment. I’m exhausted. I have flutters in my chest. I will be so glad when med adjustment is finished.

The ketamine dosage for the Magical Mystery Tour has been raised because I had minimal response the first Magical Mystery Tour trip. I don’t expect ketamine to cure bipolar disorder, but I’m hoping I can get by with a lower dose of my meds.

I’ve been reading Dean Ornish’ book UnDo It. He writes about lifestyle medicine and has about 40 years of research to back up his assertions. Years ago, I had a nasty cholesterol result and a friend recommended I read Ornish’ book abut reversing heart disease with a low fat vegetarian diet. I dropped my cholesterol 40 points in 6 weeks. I know his lifestyle plan works. Now, we need to go back to low fat vegetarian eating. Jim has clogged arteries and I need to get rid of inflamation as well as getting rid of more weight than I like to admit. Yes, there will be updates. Hopefully good updates.

I’ve been working with a physical therapist to banish my vertigo. Turns out, there are crystals in my ears and the crystals got stuck in a particularly difficult place from which to dislodge them. Two sessions, and I’m significantly steadier. I was steady enough last night to shoot a crooked grin moon.

I used focus merge and cropped the shot because I didn’t think I was stable enough to use my 150-600 mm lens so I stuck with the 18-400mm lens.

Then, I started playing.

Remember when the moon was made of green cheese? The magic of the moon disappeared that day in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong’s foot touched the surface of the moon. We learned, but we lost the magic.

I’ll be using these to work out fabric designs.

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

I have 126 new designs in my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

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

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, Mental Illness

Mental Illness, Paint Sticks, It All Works Out Sometimes

Posted on by debthumanblog

May is Mental Illness Awareness Month. You can celebrate by reading Mark Vonnegut’s “Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So.” Mark is Kurt Vonnegut’s son. He’s also bipolar and schizophrenic. And a pediatrician. 

Although I didn’t have Mental Illness Awareness Month in mind when I pitched this idea to my painting teacher, the final critique and my explanation of my painting to the class is on May 5. For years, I’ve wanted to create art that showed people what bipolar disorder felt like. Meanwhile, the rest of the class painted a post modern piece. Post modern is supposed to be about rebellion. I had considered calling my painting “What d’ya got?” That was Marlon Brando’s famous line from the movie, The Wild One. I realized most of my classmates were born after I went through menopause and I doubt any of them would understand the reference. Instead, I call the painting, Inside Deb’s Brain. 

I had something else in mind when I started the painting, but I think where I ended up is better than where I was aiming. I aimed at smooth transitions between each part of the painting. I can’t think of a single smooth part of bipolar disorder. My brain has a mind of its own and never consults me before deciding to be manic or depressed. 

I have synesthesia. Synesthesia is when two senses respond to one stimulus and there are many forms of synesthesia. There are people who smell words. Kandinsky heard music when he looked at a color. I see energy flows as colors. I only understand two of the colors – purple and golden white. Purple is healing energy. Golden white is Divine energy. The purple in the painting represents both healing and center – the nearly impossible to attain place where I’m neither manic nor depressive. Depression is below center. Manic is above center. The painting also shows a mixed episode. The last mixed episode I had nearly killed me. I was bouncing off the ceiling while deciding how, when and where to kill myself. The terrifying part is I had no clue I was depressed.

I wanted to show golden white Divine energy, but there’s no oil paint named golden white. Nor is there iridescent oil paint. I remembered I bought Sennelier oil pastels several years ago. The paint stick origin story I read was that Picasso wanted an oil paint that didn’t dry out, didn’t spill, didn’t need solvent, was portable, and could be used on all surfaces. He almost got what he wanted. I, and a whole lot of other fiber artists, discovered oil sticks and fabric are incompatible. We were told if we set the paint with a hot iron, the paint would be permanent. Nope. That resulted in a mess on the bottom of the iron, and paint that washed out of the fabric. Plus, the sunflower oil used to suspend the pigments bled into the surrounding fabric. And so the paint sticks sat in a drawer for many years. Until I remembered I had them and they could be used over oil paint. I decided to add iridescent gold to my bipolar painting. That almost worked. I learned it’s best to plan where to use the paint sticks before starting the painting. I learned other things while not getting the expected result. I found myself putting Divine energy throughout the painting rather than in the healing part. I realized there’s Divine energy no matter what I’m feeling, so there are inexpertly applied paint stick color throughout the painting. Moral: It’s Good To Be A Packrat. 

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

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

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

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 bipolar disorder, Garden, Mental Illness, Pain, Peripheral neuropathy, Photography

Ouch, WIND, and Iris

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m having a major neuropathy flareup. I’ve taken gabapentin,  put CBD oil in a capsule and swallowed it, 5mg of THC and my TENS unit. I’m stoned and I think I’m having hallucinations. It’s hard to know how much of what I perceive is real.  I’m also staggering around the house. And I’m still in pain. Bleah!!!

Art reliably helps with the pain. I played around making fabric designs.

The iris are blooming. The original clump got overcrowded, so Jim split the clump in two.

No idea if this will work, but here’s a GIF I had to make for my photography class. We’ve been having WIND in the desert. Right now, there’s a low pressure system blowing in. I could tell by the pain in my arthritic knuckles.

I have to put together a narrative for my photography class. So….I put together a bipolar narrative. I might have stumbled onto a way to show people what bipolar disorder feels like. That’s the beauty of being a multi-media artist. When one medium won’t work for what I want, there’s another one or two that will work. 

Rather than listen to my photography teacher explain how to do a GIF in photoshop (it’s much easier using PhotoScapeX), I played around with collages. They turn into interesting fabric designs.

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

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

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

Posted in Abstract Art, bipolar disorder, Mental Illness, Photography

Things Not Working Out As I Imagined

Posted on by debthumanblog

Odd bits of art this week. First, I got the self portraits done for my painting class.

This was the unrealistic realism painting. I suck at realism, but this has a goofiness that I kind of like.

Impasto.

Abstract. I have tried for ages to come up with art that looks like bipolar disorder feels. This doesn’t exactly accomplish that, but it’s closer than previous attempts. I’m bothered by everything being the same value.

I detested the optical illusion portrait, so I killed it and tried to show how a depressive episode feels. When I planned the two abstract portraits, I thought about paintings I had seen by Kandinsky and Kiefer. Not that anyone could tell by looking at my paintings…….

I’ve got at least one and possibly two more in this bipolar series – neither have been painted yet.

This is for my photography class. We had to insert a photo into another photo. We’re supposed to use photoshop, but I detest photoshop. It offers nothing that I don’t already have. Oddly, this photo stunt is easy to accomplish in Affinity. I started with a B&W photo of a part of the art building, and inserted a smiley moon in one window.

The original plan was to take B&W photos and insert a color photo. Except when I tried to insert a color photo of Brady, the color photo turned into B&W.

Artistic commentary on drought in the desert. I had to put an overlay onto the drinking fountain photo in order for the cactus to have any color.

Obviously I need to work on this idea a bit more.

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

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

My online 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 anxiety, Beads, bipolar disorder, Fiber, Mental Illness, Photography, Quilts

Finding My Way

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’ve been working on whole cloth quilt designs and I’ve gotten proofs for 42 of the designs. They are now in my Spoonflower shop here:  Click on “New” and all the newest designs will pop up. My shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I got my Pfizer booster shot on Thursday. On Friday, I had a reaction which wasn’t unexpected. I had a reaction after the second Pfizer shot. Brady knew there was something wrong. She insisted on sleeping in the bed with me. She covered me with puppy kisses because she’s convinced puppy kisses will cure everything that could be wrong with her human, and she brought me some of her toys to play with.

It’s not always easy living with bipolar disorder. In mid-September, I had reason to believe I had been exposed to covid. Even though I’m fully vaccinated, I could have a breakthrough infection or worse, be shedding covid virus while asymptomatic. I got the first available appointment for a covid test. The results were supposed to be available within 24 hours. The results were 9 hours late. By that time, I was having stress pains in my chest. Fortunately, the test was negative. 

Once I have a major anxiety attack, I’m susceptible to severe stress pain for a while. A friend passed away recently and the funeral was yesterday. For an assortment of reasons, there are people I never want to see again who were likely to be at the funeral. I made a plan. If I absolutely had to interact with one of these people, I’d say hello and walk off. Even with a plan designed to spare me the greatest amount of stress from seeing any of these people again, I still had severe stress pain. Fortunately, none of the people I never want to see again were there. 

Today, safe from people who tried so hard to hurt me, I’m having major stress pain. I’ve taken extra klonopin. My choices were increase the dose temporarily or have chest pain for a couple days. 

Now that I can see distances clearly, I’ve noticed I have invisible eyelashes. So I bought some mascara. Being a bit eccentric and not wanting boring brown or black mascara, I bought a tube of purple and a tube of green. If you’re going to a funeral, make sure your mascara is waterproof. Mine wasn’t. I had to try to soak up liquid purple mascara before mascara ran down my cheeks.

One of the side effects of cataract surgery is the need for reading glasses and the never ending search for my reading glasses. To that end, I’ve got more than one pair. One for my office, one for the living room so I can knit while watching TV and one for my sewing room. I’ve made beaded strings to replace the ugly string that allowed my glasses to go around my neck. 

Last night, I looked up at the sky and saw a thin slice of moon. I tried to get both the moon slice and the tree in focus but couldn’t. So I have three versions of a moon shot. 

Slice of moon. Nice, but boring.

Fuzzy moon. Almost, but I really wanted both in focus.

Moon in hiding. I like this one the best.

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

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

Posted in anxiety, bipolar disorder, Fiber, Mental Illness, Photography, Quilts

Printers, Frustration, Cactus Flowers Brady & Sewing

Posted on by debthumanblog

The cacti are blooming. 

Brady barks non-stop if I put her in her crate and leave the room. So I took her into the bathroom with me so I could take a shower. While she had fun trying to drink water from the shower spray, she didn’t like it when I gave her a little squirt. She tried to wipe off the water with her paws.

Jim cut a piece of foam and I made a pillow cover so Brady has a lovely, new bed….that she refuses to lie on. The cover is made from heavy duty upholstery fabric. I pre-washed the fabric in hot water and put it in the dryer. If it’s going to shrink, I want it to shrink before I sew. The pillow cover has to be machine washable. 

I went through computer hell yesterday. First, I tried to hook up a Brother printer. Per the box, it works with Mac. Except it doesn’t. Turns out, Brother hasn’t bothered to keep up with Mac OS updates and the only Macs that it will work on are at least three updates ago. Next, I tried hooking up a Canon that’s supposed to work with Mac. Except it doesn’t. Jim is dealing with the university book store to see if it will work with a cable or in the alternative, what do they have that works with the latest OS update for Mac. All I need is a printer that prints color as well as B&W, and will scan a document. I don’t need, and am not going to pay $200+ for options I’ll never use.  So far, I’ve brought home two overpriced doorstops. 

I don’t handle frustration well and was screaming (literally) at the inscrutable instructions. Would it kill manufacturers to put some words with those schematic drawings? Canon claims to have 24/7 customer service. It doesn’t. It claims to have a chat function. It doesn’t. I don’t know how to handle situations like this. I don’t want to be screaming at instructions. I did take three klonopin, but it didn’t help. I’m at the point where if I have to try to hook up yet another printer and can’t, I’ll gladly scream (literally) at a customer service rep. If a company puts out useless products, the customer service people deserve what they get. I’ll be discussing calming techniques with my psychologist. 

I had never tried binder clips, but after having miserable experience after miserable experience sewing binding on quilts, I bought binder clips. I like them. Not only do that make binding a quilt a stress-free event, they also work better than pins at holding two pieces of heavy fabric together.

After having FMQ misery, I wrote to Superior Thread and asked for help. I bought the needles recommended on the website – 90/14 topstitch. That sort of helped, but the real solution was to use a different quilting foot. Pfaff makes a sensor automatic quilting foot and a spring quilting foot. Superior threads work best with the spring quilting foot.  

I am 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