Why should I keep fighting Anorexia and Depression when it is so damn hard, I just want to give up today

 Fighting Anorexia and Depression is soo damn hard

It is a struggle each day to find a reason to get up, to move, to use up energy to get out of bed.  Yes my kids are my motivation, if I didn't have them I do wonder what would happen to me.  I am pretty sure I wouldn't be here. And yes my pugs are also my reason. Can't let a pug miss a meal, they'll die lol.  Lately though it is getting harder and harder to keep going every day.

I know I am in a dark dark place when I don't even want to "Art".  I cannot find any inspiration to paint, to sculpt, or a reason or desire to paint.  It's the lack of desire that worries me, painting has kept me going for a few years, but I have hit a road block, why bother painting when no one is willing to buy them?  Maybe they are not good enough, maybe I don't know how to sell myself, or maybe I am just too fat to deserve to have anything good happen.  These are only a few of the "nice" thoughts that flow through my head daily.

Just recently I was painting the chocolate Easter bunnies for the Art and soul Studio blog, and I was also recording it for YouTube, when I felt like a hammer hit me and I just went from "ok" to barely able to talk, move or paint.  The depression literally hit me like a bat, right to the face.  I had to stop videoing because I started to cry.  I felt like this for hours, but I had to get this painting done, so I forced myself to keep going, but I barely spoke at the end of the video.  I just want to know why?  Why do I feel this way, why do I have to have this feeling.  Why can't I be normal?  

I don't shower for weeks sometimes, nor wash my hair.  I always get up for my kids and do everything I have to do, but it is like I am a non feeling robot that feels too much.  Does that make sense?  I feel nothing, empty, but I also feel too much.

I recently applied for a job, for mothers returning to work.  First off they asked for professional references.  This bit broke my confidence a bit, I don't have any, I am a mother, nothing more.  So I got around this, and I actually got an interview (of course my head justified it by saying I was the biggest loser of the people who applied).  I recently had the interview, and the people conducting the interview were friendly and nice, nothing bad to say about them.  The questions I had to answer though were all based around work experiences and problems.  I got flustered to start with, like I said this job was aimed at people who hadn't worked for a while.  I had no "stories" about work to tell, all I had was my family life, so I tried to relate it back to that.  Meanwhile my heart was breaking knowing that I sounded like an obsessed Mum, when the truth is I just want to get out there and support my family financially as well.  I'd prefer that to be by selling my art and making wonderful YouTube tutorials, but alas it may not be lol.  Needless to say I have not received that phone call saying I got the job.  Good luck to the person who got it, well done.

I live in the past, my husband will tell you that, I regret having my daughters so early, I DO NOT regret them at all.  I just wish I had the same perfect girls 5 years later, so I could experience life.  I am kind of over that one now, took about 20 years lol.  
I regret gaining weight in the past two years.  I regret trying to beat Anorexia, because now I am what I feared I would become.  Fat, the worst thing ever to happen to anybody, ever (insert sarcasm there, I am joking), except I do believe it :(

 See, there I was, skinny, I never sweated, I barely got hungry and I could walk for hours and not get tired.  It was when I stopped moving that the exhaustion would hit.  I lost another ten kg on top of this photo.  I miss being that skinny that I would give up painting for it.  Unfortunately I know I will have to give up everything, including my family and my life if I go back to this.  It calls to me all day everyday, I cry for it, I yearn for it, but I can never have it again.  I just can't seem to get it out of my head.  The only thing in the world I was ever good at.  Losing weight, and losing it fast.  I am not allowed to date her again, to dance with her, to embrace her.

I took worse photos than this, my back was so bony it hurt to sit on anything, but I liked it.  No pain, no gain.  Why am I posting this, good question.  I have no idea, maybe it's kind of a therapy for me to talk about it.  I don't have many people to talk to, most people just want me to shut up when I talk about being skinny.  Others just don't know what to say.  All I know is that I miss it like crazy.  That said I never ever want to go back to the Doctors appointments every week, people thinking I am crazy, the brain fog and the inability to do anything.  I wasted so many years because my brain just didn't work.  What if I had of started painting then?  I'd be years ahead of what I am now.  Regrets, I am filled with them.  A wish I have.....that I got help earlier for my Anorexia.  When I was young there was only really television I had as a reference.  I believed to be anorexic one had to starve, never eat. so with that in mind I never was Anorexic.  How could I be?  I did eat, minimally.  Now I know that is a fallacy, but I learnt it too late.  So how do I stop yearning for something I know will kill me if I embrace her again?  Any answers?  Me neither.

 I hate myself for not being able to go to my eldest daughter's university graduation last year, that sucker broke my heart.  Anxiety won on that one and I will never ever forgive myself for that.  "She doesn't want to be seen with her fat mum," is all that played in my head for months. 

I gave my kids "the anxiety" and I wish I hadn't.  I am taking every step needed to get them the help to fight it themselves.  They deserve every happiness and I will fight for that, that is worth fighting for.  That is why I get up, because if they see me give in, then maybe they might too.  That is not acceptable.  They cannot give in.

I have considered ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy aka Electric Shock), but I have heard that it takes away memories.  Memories of my kids being born, meeting my husband, getting married and of course, the pugs.  If I could be guaranteed I wouldn't lose them I would do it.  To get rid of the depression.  I just want to feel content, to feel something other than despair and emptiness.  Anyone had ECT?  Did it work?  Is it the magic pill I have been looking for?  Will it make me normal?

This is me, 2016, June, winter for Australia.  I can tell you that I weighed 34kgs here, I can tell you that I walked endlessly in the snow to make sure I got my exercise in, I ate some dinner, I drank a little.  I also threw up some dinner as well.  But this moment, we were all jumping off a little snow bank in slow motion, all the kids and my hubby and I.  I felt normal for a fleeting second, I enjoyed myself, I was normal.  This is why I keep trying I guess, to get this moment again.  Just one more time.  I wasn't worried about my weight while I was jumping, quick as it may have been, it was glorious.

So here I am, wondering what is next, because I was sure 2019 was going to be my year.  Do I get up everyday and keep going, yes I do, because it's what humans do.  Do I have to get over this damn obsession with skin and bones.  Yes I do, I have to but it's so damn hard.  Do I keep painting and trying to get better and find my style.  I don't know, I just don't know. 

Sorry for the sad downer post, I just needed to vent today.  I hope everybody is having a day, just a day, where if all you can do is watch tv, then watch tv and do it well.  You can only do what you can do, and mental illness is something that needs to be understood, because Doctors think they know, but they don't.  Like Jon Snow, they know nothing, and they are usually nowhere near as good looking as Jon Snow.  

Please take care of yourselves and be kind to yourself, you deserve it.  Until next time........

Mental illnes and trying to cope. Fighting Anorexia everyday. Sinking into depression all the time.

I was Anorexic, technically my mindset still is, just not my body weight.

I wish every day to be super skinny again.  To see my bones, to hurt when I sit, to fit into kids clothes.  God I miss that so much.  I hate what I look like now, to have a shower is a chore and I despise this body.  I get so angry and depressed just having to move, I am so angry that I am not skinny anymore.  That is how I feel everyday, and it is damn hard to get going.  This body is mine and I cannot escape it.  I have to use it, and I have to deal with it.  

I didn't beat Anorexia, I just pushed it down low.  Most days I don't eat much.  I certainly hate eating meals, I hate the feeling of food in my stomach.  I still get angry at it.  I continue to take laxatives because that is just me.  Where I used to take over 30 a day I am down to 11.  That is a positive, and that's all I can do most days, accept the little positives, even though most people would not think 11 laxatives a day is good, in my situation it is.  

I wish I could just have a normal relationship with food.  I hate it so much, I dread any meal time.  I will not eat in public for fear of being judged.  My mind is a prison, and to anyone who wishes to be Anorexic I say DON'T!  Thirty years of hell I have endured, I think back on all the times I could've eaten and I didn't.  I went to Italy, and I could not bring myself to eat their food.  I regret that, so much.  I'd love to sit down in a restaurant in Italy and shove pasta in my mouth, just as a screw you to Anorexia.  

That was (and is) me.  I truly believed I was fat, I had to take these photos everyday to make sure I hadn't just exploded with fat.  About a week after this was taken I got a vomiting bug, it was bad, the whole house got it.  While laying on the bathroom floor vomiting every 11 minutes all I could think about was how much I was going to weigh the next day.  That was when I dived in to the 30 kilograms.  BMI was under 11.  I was riding high, I have many pictures of being that skinny but none are suitable for this blog.  

I had kids, they couldn't save me from myself.  The doctors couldn't help.  To get into an Eating disorder Clinic in Australia is virtually impossible.  I got to the stage where they said they wouldn't take me I was too underweight.  Psychologists didn't help, psychiatrists, family, getting two turtles and also getting a Pugalier puppy.  None of it helped.  How could this cute little ball of cuddles not help???  Why could I not get the demons out of my head???  Why, because I was the demon.  I still am.  All the voices were mine, me.  How can I shut my own head up?  Pills???  Antidepressants, they helped with the suicidal ideation, which I had because I was sooo hungry, and I couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to eat.  Death was better than the hell I was in.

To be clear I have had severe anxiety my whole life.  I could barely talk to anyone, hated going to shops and I still to this day, I have days where I just cannot bear going out if there's a chance I will have to talk.  I was never diagnosed because I never really told anyone.  I mean people knew that I was "shy", but I thought all the voices in my head telling me how dreadful I am, how they're all laughing at me....... were normal.  I just thought I was weak because I couldn't control them.  Then the darkness of depression hit me hard.  Suicidal thoughts every day, in every situation.  Depression is nothing.  It's emptiness, it's lonely, it's a hole.  Throw anxiety in there and I do not know how I survived to be honest.  I remember being acutely aware of my space in this world from a young age, and I mean young.  Around 7 years I remember not wanting to try and squeeze through these two poles that my friend had just gone through, because I didn't want her to think of me as fat if I got stuck.  It just got worse from there and I just shut down.  

Enough sad talk, because I have in a way beat Anorexia.  

How did I do it?  If I were to be honest I would say in all honesty my plan was to gain weight, let my brain explode and go insane and I would finally get the courage the end it all.  In the midst of my cunning plan I discovered painting.  

I had tried painting before, and I sucked.  I still wanted to do it though.

I started small, with copic pens and graphite.  I actually felt something nice about myself for a moment in time.  While I was colouring or painting I didn't think about my weight either.  Of course after I had finished the painting I became so depressed that moving was hard.  I began to look for You Tube tutorials.  I found Painting with Jane...................

This was my attempt at one of her tutorials.  Nope, just nope.  I gave up for a bit.  I began to get so angry I wanted to hurt.  Why couldn't I do it like Jane could?

I began punching the brick wall, I just wanted to feel something, like when I drew pictures.  I wanted this goddamn emptiness to go away.  

So I tried Jane again.

Small, not blended at all, I could go through the list of bad things I see, but at that point in time, I felt that fleeting feeling again.  It was nice.  I had done something.  Maybe, just maybe if I ate a little bit then I might be able to focus on painting more.  I slowly tried that theory.

I wasn't amazingly happy with this, I am more into the....... even right now I cannot think properly, I've barely eaten all day and the word I am looking for eludes me.  Photorealism, that is the word!!  Took me five minutes to think of that and now I have a headache but I got there. 

I am overly critical of everything I do, so I can see every minute mistake on my paintings, and I get so angry.  I hate that part of me, nothing I do will ever be good enough.  Joy, it is something that I can say I've never truly felt.  I fake it, or I used to.  Now I couldn't be bothered.  I walk along like a zombie most days, trying to laugh and play with my kids, but all I think about is painting and resin.  If it wasn't that it would be fat, fat fat.  Always fat.

This is actually helpful to write about, it is hard to explain, but I might do a few of these.  Even if no one reads it, even if the whole world reads it.  I'm messed up, I'm depressed majorly, Anxious, recovering Anorexic who still wishes for the disease back, I'm obsessive compulsive and a few more things I could throw in there, but then this blog would never end.

I am going to do some more blogs on mental health, tips I have, things that are normal and just how I deal.  This is part of my life, actually it is my whole life.  Fighting, not fighting, just being and giving in some days to the overwhelming darkness.  

Today I can say has been a hard day for me, I finally put all the pieces together of something that has been happening to my body since about May.  Turns out I am allergic to resin.  The burning and itching and stinging I am feeling today is not fun.  All I can think about though is pouring a beach canvas in resin.  Finishing my stuff I had started.  

Now, bam, one of the two things I use to control my ED voices is flying away from me.  I can't even bring myself to paint today.  Then anxiety comes in and says, "what if you never paint again".  Panic ensues, then that sneaky little voice in the back of my head slithers forward like a snake and reminds me how good I feel when I lose weight.  That will fix everything.  Right now I am still fighting, sadly and slowly, and hopefully I won't give up.  Because life is kind of worth it.  Maybe not today, but tomorrow could be a better day.  I hope.

I will do another blog soon about mental illness, when I feel ready to share more.  I hope you, whoever you are, get something from knowing that we are all messed up in some way.

Have a great week, embrace your art, and yourself, or your Pug.

 

Please follow me on facebook........... KristinaObrienart
I am also on Instagram.......... https://www.instagram.com/kristina_obrien_art/
Aaaand Pinterest....... https://www.pinterest.com.au/krystalrose316/pins/

Hopefully within the month I will have my own website selling my one of a kind products, and if I can conquer my fear of being seen I will have a Youtube channel. 

Tips on oil paints and mistakes not to make.

Oils are FREAKING AMAZING!!

 Expensive, they are expensive, yes, but they last so much longer than Acrylics.  Oils are also not born equal.  I have the cheap ones (mont marte), the middle of the range (derivan) and a little bit higher on the scale is Artist Spectrum and Winsor and Newton.  They are definitely more expensive per ml compared to Acrylics (some of them lol), but a little goes a long way with oils.  If its kept right you can keep using the same little speck of oil over and over again for a while.  How long?  I do not know lol.  It took me ten days to paint my Peter Stormare (Czernobog) portrait, and I used the same squirts of paint from the beginning.  Except with the cheaper oils, they were not always usable.

I bought all the good quality oil paints I have recently from a shop here in Hervey Bay that I absolutely love.  It is called Art and Soul Studio and it has absolutely every kind of paint, including Golden paints (YAY OH YAY).  Here is the link for the shop if you want to check it out,  Art and Soul Studio oil range
I highly recommend it.  I could get lost there for days lol.  

I tried a long time ago when I was very sick to do an oil painting, didn't bother with YouTube or any instructions on how to use oil paints.  Mistake, bad bad mistake.  I didn't even realise this until recently though.  I am kind of embarrassed about the mistakes I made 😳.

 I, of course decided to use one of the biggest canvas available to me, and the cheapest oils I could buy (mont marte).  I also completely disregarded copyright rules 😰.  This was supposed to represent my anorexia, because at this stage I was lost in it, devoured by the darkness.  I still wish to paint my very own version of this painting.  It is supposed to be me on the top of a bed reaching out to touch the monster under the bed who starts turning me to bone.

Mistake number one:

• Canvas tooooooo big for a very beginner, no, just no.
• Copyright, ok I was only doing this for myself so no harm no foul, but in reality it's just plain wrong to copy others work.
• I (So embarrassed to say this), used oils like acrylics.  I had no medium like Galkyd or Linseed oil or liquin.😞
• I didn't clean my brushes (I know, I know).
• I didn't take advantage of the best aspect of oils, blending!!  I just dumped it on like acrylic and didn't blend.  I look at this cringe, I am so sorry for burning your eyeballs with my blasphemy lol.
• In theory I think this is a good idea, and definitely when I have more paintings under my belt I will take this on, just like I took anorexia on.  I may not win, I may just put it in the cupboard, but I am going to redo this idea. 
• There is nothing wrong with cheap oils for beginners, it is definitely money friendly.  I will say this about mont marte oils, they do not have the range the more expensive brands do, but in a beginner this isn't a problem.  They work quite well, unless they are old and then they are drier than my skin on a summers day in the Adelaide dessert.
• OMG I just remembered I didn't even (so sorry) gesso the canvas.  😨
• I apologise for my errors against oils and painting lol.  I threw this one away in a fit of temper because I couldn't do my face.  Then I decided I was worthless.

Don't ever let a painting or a creative activity decide your worth in this world. 

 Now I am still learning the potential of oils, they definitely have their benefits over acrylics.  They have more CADMIUM colours.  They have cadmium green, I have not seen that in acrylics yet.  It is pretty.  Oh so pretty. Still to this day Oil paintings are considered more valuable than acrylic or watercolour.  I think that is based on the Masters and their expertise with oils.  If I did the exact same painting in oils and acrylics the oil will sell for more.  I don't believe there is any reason for this except an ingrown belief that we all have that oils are more worthy.

I won't lie, I still haven't decided which paint I prefer, but from recent activity I'm leaning towards an acrylic base with oil on top.  Acrylics are forgiving, they can be blended like oils if you use retarder or Golden Glazing Liquid.  They are cheaper in the beginning, they are easier to fix mistakes, they do not smell anywhere near as bad as oils and their mediums and cleaners. It is so much easier to clean the acrylic paintbrushes.  I still have not found a an oil paintbrush I love.  I've figured out I prefer the soft smooth paintbrushes for oil but I do not have many of them.

Going from acrylics to oils is like going from scrapbooking to cardmaking.  They are in the same category but they are nothing alike.   

Oils just have this smooth buttery feel about them.  Thinning them with a medium or odour free solvent is amazing.  Painting oils on wood, yes, just yes.  It's like they were meant to be together.

This is my very first fantasy painting, done all in oils except for the base coat.  Oils can go on top of acrylics but acrylics can not go on top of oils.  Why I hear you ask, well here is the very technical answer, because everyone says so.  Maybe one day I will try it and maybe my canvas will explode, or crack, or come to life, but right now I follow the rules.  

 You decide for yourself what is best for you, I thought acrylics were the bees knees until i actually used oils how they are supposed to be used.  For a quick painting I will chose acrylic, I still love acrylic.  But oils, they just have sooooo much potential.  This is my oil portrait.....

 This is my acrylic portrait.....

 
 I love them both, but oil has so much more potential don't you think?  I would love to hear your opinions and even see your oil vs acrylic paintings.



Love

Kristina O