Pages from my BOOK. ( includes personal art peices)

As you can probably tell from the amount of charcoal all over my crap and the many notebooks in my schoolbag that I am an artist. Today I want to talk about some of the illustrations I drew earlier this year when I was suffering really badly with self harming behaviours,  negative thinking, and anxiety.

*Note: these illustrations are drawn in the past. Although there are still times in the present where I do experience these emotions, I know how to handle them. I know my life is worth living. I know I have support all around me, and most importantly I  know that  I am loved.

                          "I could disappear into thin air and I doubt a soul would care"

During the first term of school I was in a very bad head frame. I thought the whole world was against me. I felt alone, unwanted, and invisible.  I thought that if I was too fall off the face of the earth, not a single soul would care.
Or notice.
 I don't think I really wanted to 'die' and just wanted to fall asleep and wake up when things got better .I felt so exhausted and hopeless and I just did not know what else to do anymore. I truly did believe that not a soul would miss me if I was to drop of the face of the earth.  I couldn't see that I had people who cared about me. 

Now I do.
Now I see it. I see that I am loved. I see that I have friends,and most importantly I see that people WOULD miss me . I am loved and important.

"I don't want to remember anymore"

Have you ever seen the Rick and Morty episode where Rick and Morty review Morty's memories that Rick has deleted? 

Whenever Morty goes through something traumatic -or when Rick does something that he wants Morty for forget-, Rick uses his "mind blowing" device to delete the memory from Morty's mind. 

I was I had a device  like that: A device that deletes  certain memories out of my mind and stores them in a space I can not access. 

Ever

Because there are memories in my mind I want to forget. Memories of when I feel paralysed, terrified, and hopeless. They come flashing back into my mind when I do not want them to. The force of the memory can be so strong that I feel like I am back in time and I am in danger again and I feel scared. I feel so scared that I can suffer from a trauma-induced panic attack. 

"I'm getting deeper into this ugly pit of loneliness and I HATE every second"

 My anxiety made me feel like I was quickly sinking deeper and deeper into a giant, ugly pit of ugliness. I felt like I was being pulled in to this ugly pit with all strength and I couldn't fight it. It was a force that was just too strong; I was defenceless and powerless.

Everything just kept getting darker and darker and I HATED every second of it. I HATED waking up to just re-live the same, boring day over and over again. I HATED coming to school to spend my break times by myself crying. I HATED being unable to concentrate in class and falling behind.

I HATED EVERYTHING. 

I am still in that pit. 

But I am not as deep as I was before. I have learnt how to grab hold of the sides and climb up a little bit.  I can see the light shining at the top that is signalling hope. 

"I swear sometimes my hear is on a treadmill inside my body, and it is trying to run as fast as it can.... I just wish it would walk instead of run" 

Sometimes it legit feels as if my heart is on a treadmill inside my body  and it is running as fast as it can.It feels like hell. Everything around me is going so fast,  so fast that I can not slow it down.  It over takes my body and this experience leaves me feeling paralysed.

 My life is evolves around this feeling. I can't function with it taking over my body.  I can't do the things I want to do.

I can't make friends.

I can't speak

Sometimes I can't even leave my house.

If I had one wish-- JUST ONE: I would wish for it to slow down. I want a break from all this mayhem .

"I'm going to lie in bed and PRETEND I actually matter to anyone and I'm not just a giant waste of space.. Oh, why doesn't pretending work?"

I remember drawing this in tears. I had got to the point where I just felt SO TIRED.  

I felt like  I was alive but I wasn't. (If that makes any sense) I felt like I was walking through thin air and not a single soul could see me. I was  invisable. 

I felt like I did not matter to anyone. 

I thought that if I pretended that I was important to others then I would feel better (which is a technique that works for some people!) but I did not feel better. I felt worse. I couldn't find a person to "pretend" to be important too

Not. A. Single. Person.

(... you know you are getting bad when you can not even list ONE person in your life who loves you)

Now I can. I can count them on my many  fingers and  toes.

There may be 7 billion people (and more!) in the world, but I am one of them. I matter. I am loved. 

"I feel like I am all alone and that nobody wants to be my friend"

That tiny figure drawn in thick, black charcoal represents me.  I am surrounded in blackness whilst everyone is above me in their friendship groups living their happy lives with large smiles on their faces.

(to me) That is what isolation feels like.

It feels as though I am surrounded by a thick blanket that I can not shake off, whilst everyone is around me with living their perfect lives that I can not be apart of. That I CAN'T be apart of. 

But it wasn't the case that "nobody wanted to be my friend" . People wanted to be my friend, they just did not know HOW, and I completely understand that. I WAS THE KID SITTING ALL ALONE.

to anybody else I just looked like a shy, introvert who wanted to be left alone, but really I was that shy, anxious person who desperately wanted a friend but lacked the skills to initiate a conversation. 

Art gives me a voice. 

When I was mute, the ONLY way I could speak to those around me was to illustrate what I wanted to say.  In the instances where I wanted to speak, I would draw messy figures with lines all through their body to indicate that I was stressed, or figures with thick scribbled lines coming from their head to indicate that I was feeling overstimulated, or figures in frightened positions with thick, bold lines all throughout their body to indicate that I was in a panicky mode and I needed to escape my environment. It was like a secret language for the mute.

Art is something I use to help recover from anxiety. 

I keep a book (which is were these pages come from)  that are filled with pages much like these: pages filled with emotion and desperate quotes expressing  complex emotions that I have extreme difficulty expressing out loud.

I find it easier than speaking.


Plus, it comes in handy when I feel anxious. 

When I feel uneasy, I get my book out and I illustrate how I feel. It is much easier and quicker than writing it down.
It also comes in handy when I want to destroy something, aka: I rip pages out and rip them into a trillion pieces. (self harm strategy number #1)

There are many, many, many pages like this in many notebooks that illustrate how I feel. There are  slightly happier and more positive pages now compared to notebooks from the start of the year. Illustrating my emotions is something I enjoy and something that helps me. I will never stop doing it.