harold_maude's journal

I wonder if super heros ever got depressed? Or mother Threasa?
I know all the great artists over time have suffered routinely from bouts of depression and mixed that with some kind of drink.
I can't spell so good right now, and no I have not been drinking.

Tonight, or this afternoon I realized that I am fighting depression. All of this, with this old debt and trying to sort through what ever to figure out how I'm suppose to make an income. I've been searching want adds and they all look the same, like a old smelly gym sock.

I realized somewhere along the line that all of this has made me feel like a failure. And I can't deal with me failing.
From that very driven part of me I can hear "There is no excuse for any of this!" and demanding that I stop whining about things and just get going already! That's my father talking.
I can hear him, from years ago, how nothing I ever did was good enough, no matter how hard I worked, or what I created, or who I was even...it was never, I repeat never good enough.

The man scared me most of my childhood and well into my adult hood.
He never beat me, or hit me, but he was this scary man who could yell and blow up if he didn't like something.
And to an empath who is a child, it can be terrifying.

I waited all my life for his approval. I created so many things and would show him and all he would do is find things wrong with them.
I hoped until 3 weeks before his death, that he would tell me that he was happy I was his daughter.
Three weeks before his death I found out what he really believed concerning parents and their children.
I sat there completely stunned, as I listened.
He believed that from the time a child is born they must earn their parents respect and love.
Out of his mouth this came.

From that moment on I hated my father, and after he was burried, I so wanted to just go take a big shit on his grave.
I never did, I really didn't want to have to explain why I was doing that.

It took me a few years, but I finally got to the place where I could just accept that he was what he was.
I put the anger to rest. I found peace from the pain of finding out the truth so late in things.
If I had known this was how my father really felt, I would have left home as soon as I graduated high school.
I don't think I would have ever gone back.

So I have a problem when I feel like I've failed. Back to the orignal point here.
I had this view of myself on the inside for a very long time. It was that I was strong. Resilliant, able to handle anything.
That's what I have been living for the past 7 years.
I've been in want and sometimes not so much in want.
I've made a few friends along the way.

So in that respect I've done ok for myself.
I've held alot of different kinds of jobs, and that is always a good thing when you want to and like to learn new stuff.
And there is this mandate from back at the beginning, to make a living from my art, which I did in the beginning, it wasn't a living exactly, it was more like keeping my nose out of the water so I don't drown income.
There was more than one week that I made about 20 bucks and that was it.
No one would hire me. I refused to lay down and stop.
I was persistant, and driven to get a job or find a gallery that would take my raw work and show it.
One did. My work sat there for three months and nothing sold.
I had both jewerly and paintings. I remember putting a necklace together outside on a sunny day in the park and the temp was somewhere in the low 20's.
That I even was able to do that in such cold weather still suprises me.
I ended up giving the necklace as a gift to someone who really liked it but didn't have any money to buy it. I got that alot.

I kept trying though. Finally I found a normal job and took it. I was tired of eating once and day and running all over the place trying to sell my wares.
For a long long time, I kept doing art, and had two one woman shows, both went over well. I sold peices. Yes, I sold more than one. Actually I sold 22 at the first one, and I'm not sure how many sold at the second one. There was this local artist who has some kind of big reputation around here who showed up at my second show to check the work out.
When I first saw the man, he looked like he was ready to set sail somewhere, he was wearing everything from the captians hat to the pipe and the pants, coat and boots. This guy would have made a perfect ad for some kind of liquor bottle.
He was a bit cold and said very little. I stood there for a few minuets with him, and decited I had had enough of mr. sea captin there.
I can't remember his name, just his clothes.

It makes me smile thinking about how silly he looked. All full of his accomplishments. I was only impressed with his outfit.

Somewhere along the line, in the fast paced road everything just sort of slowed down, art wise. I couldn't find room or space or energy to paint after awhile.
I kept trying and everything just looked like crap to me.

I was spending my life working now. Trying to get ahead, so that I could figure out a way to get a peice of land and just go there. Leave city life for good. Leave the madness of people driving like they are the only person on the road, leaving a working world that wants happy and zoned out and very excited workers.
I wanted to make enough money to just go away. Sell things on line and actually try to find my way back to some sense of who I am once again.
I thought that was happening. It felt like it was, I could see it all being so sucessful that I had to have help running things.
I believe that the first step to something becomming real is to dream about it, let it become so real that it just happens.
The work you do to get there finally has some purpose besides getting you to the next paycheck with at least a couple of bucks in the bank.

I was so happy.
For one week.
I was excited and a bit scared, stage fright a bit, I had everything almost in place...and then the bomb dropped.

Here it is three days later, and I am struggling to get through the day. I have no idea what to do now. I keep going back to the etsy site only to be faced with things that I can't do anything with until this is all resolved.
I have no idea what to write in those spaces anymore.

I found myself wanting to take care of everything send a few letters out and then blow my brains out this afternoon.
But I didn't.
I have this habbit I've created to help myself when things go really haywire, I will brain storm and talk to myself out loud, I become my own cheerleader. And I get through stuff.
I meditate as well.

This thing, has made me feel like I have failed so completely tha there is no point in doing anything.
It has shattered or at least slammed hard enough to really damage my view of how strong I am.
I needed help with this and I had to ask for help. That is part of what my failure is about.
I have this really screwed up idea that I should never need help of any kind. I'm suppose to be there for other people.
I'm suppose to be strong and capable and able to move mountians when every one else fails.
I expect it of myself.

I really wanted to talk to someone tonight about how weird I'm feeling, how all of this feels like someone just died.
How it makes me want to send back the extra of what was sent to help after the bill is paid in full, send a few letters out and the blow my brains out.
I was told I'm probably one of the few people who would do that.
My response was, "I'm backwards"

I do alot of stuff completely backwards to the rest of the world.
Well maybe not the rest of the world, I'm sure there are some other people who do things back wards too.
I just haven't met any of them yet.

I realized that to me, the idea of failing to be able to take care of myself is devistating.
I guess now is a good time to learn huh? What happens when I get too physically old to do anything for myself?
I think at that point I'll just stop eating.

This one is a hard one to get past. I now have to rethink everything. Start from square one. That's what this feels like.
I don't know how to change this hardwired stuff that is running over the loud speaker in my head.

Who knows, an astroid may hit this town tonight and then all of this would be a moot point.

This is my bat cave I've decited. It's the place where I can come and dump my stuff out on the capet and figure out which are the marbles and which are the rocks.

I'm not too bad at marbles by the way. I spent alot of time playing marbles with my son after I taught him how to play.
It's been a while, so maybe I should take some time off from this emotional wrecked state and just go play a really long game of marbles.

I'm getting pissed off. It takes alot to piss me off, really it does.
And I am getting there, fast.

Here is the latest fun thing that I need to fix. I started working on getting a site up on Etsy, so that I could sell my art and hopefully make some money. It's under construction, but I have an account and it part way finished.
All the stuff you gotta fill in for an on line store has been part of the delay, it's been a real pain in the ass.

Anyway, a friend asks for the link to my store. I decide to try it, and it says that my store doesn't exist! IT just sort of feels like one more bit of bulshit to the huge pile that I have had to wade through every time I turn around. And it's really starting to piss me off.

This whole mess with an old medical debt and getting sued over it almost 6 years later, I really thought when the hospital sued me all of it was included in that.
I found out that no, it wasn't.
And this last job with all it's bulshit and needing to quit because working there exposed me to somthing that made me so sick that I really felt the need to go to the hospital, but couldn't stay up right long enough to do that. I survived it, but I still don't feel quite right, not quite 100%.

I really felt that this store was going to be the turning point into better things...and now, it doesn't exist!?!?!?!

All the shit from people who have walked into my life in this town and taken and taken and taken and then just walked away, leaving me holding the check so to speak.
I am really getting pissed off...really, really pissed off.
I am so tired of everything in life being such a pain in the ass and having to go through more crap to get it fixed. What is up with all of this? GRRRRRRRR.....

I DO EXIST!!!!! And I am NOT, I repeat NOT A DOOR MATT!!!!!

To help myself maintain a resonable sense of balance in the mist of what is going on in my life, I spent time wandering around the Van Gogh gallery that is on line.

I read the biography, looked at the letters and read some and his health. He is one of my favorite artists. His works over the years have influenced my own studies and work.
His art was genius, but for that genius he suffered greatly.
Art in it's most extreem borders on the edge of great madness.
His art and his drive and the madness he suffered under made it hard for anyone to live with him.

I have since I began to study his work, realized that it's that way for most dedicated artists. To make living work one inevidably will be hard to live with.
It takes over every other consideration, and at times becomes an immpossible achievement.
There have been so many times that I have looked at my work and could see nothing but useless efforts to the task of creating a work and wanted to burn everything I had put my hand to.

Reading about Van Gogh tells me I am not alone.
There have been many times that I was sure I had lost my mind completely, and in that place felt blind and helpless.

The effects of the storm that have come have taken their toll as well.
I know that I am in need of trying to fix damage done.
I appoligize if none of this makes sense to any reader of this, it makes sense to me, and in this place that is my primary concern.

It's a strange thing to wake up the morning after some really crappy news has show up.
My eyes are still red and swollen from the reaction I had to all of this last night.
Makes me wonder what else is headed my way.
I got to a place last night where I just went really quiet. Too exausted to feel much anymore.
I felt completely numb.

This morning the sky is grey, and it looks like it's going to storm again. Maybe there will be a tornado today. That would be something to get close to and watch it eat stuff.
That going through a house and it eating everything would be something horrible to watch, but maybe a once in a life time deal.
Anyway, it's sunday and I'm still breathing so things must still not be done.
I know somewhere along the line I'll bounce back because that's what a person has to do in order to survive. Be strong. Be resilliant. Be what ever. I'm thinking today I probably need to do something completely different so that I can at least try to have a reasonably good day.

Well, it happened again, good gifts found their way to my door step only to followed by another asteroid hitting.
This one threatens to wipe me out financially over a doctors bill associated with a surgery I had almost 7 years ago to fix something a doctor in another state said he fix and we got charged 900 buck for a peice of mesh that measures about 5 by 6 inches.
It is now past the statutes of limitations to do anything about the first surgery which has long since been paid for.
In truth I should never have had to have the second surgery which when I had it was at the point of being life threatening.

I was under the impression that when the fist lawsuit came at me it included everything, but not so, the doctor who did the second surgery waited till now almost 7 years later to come after me.
I have help with this comming, but I am seriously thinking about leaving this state. Even though I love it here, I'm tired of getting beat up every time I turn around.

By the way, I tried to work with the people at the hospital after the second surgery, and they refused to accept what I could afford to send.
So did the credit people. They said it wasn't good enough.
I had nothing. I have a roof over my head for now,for today.
Tomorrow they may show up and take it all.
I don't know. But I do know that every time someone does something kind or wonderful for me I get nailed to the wall...it makes me a bit scared to accept any gift from anyone.
If this is karma for some horrendous horrible act somewhere in my past then I deserve it, but if it's not then why does it keep happening again and again.
It started with the accident I had 3 octobers ago. The accident wasn't my fault, yet my insurance got raised and I had to live with a bent truck.
I could have taken them to court, both the girl who was driving and the guy who owned the vehchile, but I let it go.
Then there was the roommate from hell who put me through all that crap and everyone else in the house sided with him, and we had to leave didn't get our deposit back or anything else for that matter.
I let that one go too.
When the people who remined behind found out I was telling the truth only one came to appoligize.
The other appoligies only showed up at the funreal memorial for one of the other members of the house who died earlier this year.
The roommate from hell died by the way, last year.

If the other guy who died in feburary of this year was still alive, I would still be waiting for an appology.
I never once did anything to get satisfaction from anyone of them. I let it all go, including that cute little trip to the psych ward that should never have happened.
Then there is the guy who broke my washer and split town.
I never did anything to find him and make him be responsible...
I just let it all go.

Maybe I should become the avenging bitch with a big club to deal with this stuff when it hits...I have always believed that if you do your best, try to be responsible everything would work out.
If I was a nasty human being I would have gone after that girl, I would have gone after the doctor who did the inital surgery, I would have gone after all the men in this town who have burned me in one way or another...and beat the hell out of them.

But...I'm not a nasty bitch, nor do I want to live with that.
Knowing how things go I would probably get hit twice as often as I do now and twice as hard, keeping me alive just so I can go through it all over again.
Sometimes I wonder if someone out there hates me and just loves watching me get nailed to the wall.
I don't know.
I really don't know.