When life just feels like it is not worth the effort, major depressive mood

Where do I start?  Feels like there is no point starting anywhere, I mean why do we bother in this horrendous miserable world?  Why bother going outside when you meet the types of arseholes I just met today?  They just reaffirmed my belief that the people in this world are, for the most part, not worth even giving the time of day to.  I know said arseholes today will eventually get their horrible behaviour thrown back at them, but what is the point when I won't be there to see it?

I have been fighting this mood for a while now, but today it has won and now I just want to curl up in a little ball and cry.  I don't want to give a shit about the world, I don't want to eat or drink, I just want to disappear.  So why don't I?  Kids, my kids.  They can't stop this mood, but they can stop me giving up completely, for now.  It is getting harder and harder to find a way out of this tunnel, and the more I feel like a burden to my loved ones, the more I just want to run away.

What is depression?  Well, it is different for many people, but it always ends in the same damn hole that you have to crawl out of.  Depressed is my normal state of mind, I have not felt happy or excited since I was a young girl.  Nothing excites me, I have to fake everything for everyone in my life.  Getting a present should be an awesome thing yeah.  I have to get ready to put my fake face on, smile, laugh, all the while dreading everyone looking at me.  Knowing that my response is not what they wanted.  Or maybe I over did my "happiness", or maybe I should just go and shove my head in a hole, because I don't deserve their love or gifts.

Just normal depression is actually a relief for me, it means I can get things done, enjoy the sun, talk to people, go outside, go to my safe spots.  It is the major depressive mood that I am in right now that I hate.  I am so low I find it hard to even open my mouth to talk.  My lips literally feel like they are glued together and when I go to answer someone I just give up.  The voices in my head are very insistently letting me know how awful I am, how I messed up something twenty years ago, how no one wants to know me etc etc.  The world just seems like a horrible place, and why should I be here if I can't do anything right anyway.  That train of thought always leads to suicidal ideation, and I try my best to avoid that tangent, but it always gets in.  Right now I want to lay down and cry, but crying seems so hard to do in this depressed state, so maybe I should just lay down and not move.  Maybe it will go away if I do what it wants. Nope.  It wants me to hide from everyone, pull away from my loved ones and isolate myself.  Then I will have a bloody good reason to kill myself, but I will not let it win that battle.  I know that I do not want to live, I have known that for a long time, but that said I do not want to die either.  In amongst all of the pain and hurt and sadness, there is a desire to be here.  To feel, to live, to experiment.  It is just so hard to find the energy, motivation, desire, strength to get up and do the things I want to when I am here, in this own private hell.

Why am I like this?  Well, according to all of the shrinks I have spoken to, they all take it straight back to my childhood, and they all say the same thing.  I am like this because when I was a young girl, probably 9-14 years of age, my parents were not around.  Let me say this, I do not blame them in anyway, they were working damn hard to get money for our family.  They bought a hotel and they ran it.  Apparently because of this "neglect" (I do not call it that, they were just being parents), because my parents weren't there for general conversation, or really anytime at all between the hours of 7am-midnight, I got it into my head that if my parents didn't want to be around me, then there is something wrong with me.  The more they weren't around, the more I began to truly believe that the error was me, there was something wrong with me.  I mean if your own parents don't want to spend time with you, who will?  I just want to reiterate that this was not a conscious process.  I had no idea their business was affecting me like this.  From this little seed my hatred and anger within myself grew.  The psychs say I could of gone one of two ways, where I am now, or if I didn't have empathy I would of become a sociopath.  In my youth I did try to get rid of my empathy, I hated that I felt things about others so deeply, I just wanted to hurt them instead.  But fucking empathy always got in the way, so I figured out the only person that I could hurt, was me.  I deserved it, and no one would care.  I still hate that I have so much empathy it hurts, I would give anything to be rid of it.  Maybe I would be someone that's worth something if I didn't have it, you know.

I'm not going to go all over my history, but as a final slap to the face,  I was left alone in an apartment while I was still inschool, with my parents in two different cities from me, no one else there, except for my school friends. Who very gladly came over to spend time with me, and drink, and smoke pot.  So yet again I was left alone, and I still have no hatred or anger for my parents.  They were not able to foresee the failure of the original hotel they purchased just after they leased another.  Ok, I digress, I do have anger towards my father, he did make my Mum sell the only home I ever had, even if it was only for a couple of years, it was my home.  His desire to be someone, do something, took over his desire to be a Dad, and fair enough, at this point I had already realised that my Dad hated me.  How could he not, he never wanted to be near me.  

That is all in the past, but I did find it interesting to know why I hate myself so much though.  I have never told my parents this truth, there is no need.  I harbour no ill will, I know they were doing all they knew.  I love my Mum and I do not want to hurt her, and I know for a fact that she doesn't read my blog lol.  
  
Recently it has come to my attention that I have Agoraphobia.  My whole life I have been unable to go to new places, go out, talk to people.  I have my safe spots that I will go to on a good day, and if I need to go somewhere I don't know, or don't trust, then I need a safe person with me.  My husband is my safe person, as is my Mother and surprisingly my 5 year old son.  I didn't go to my daughters' University Graduation.  I couldn't make myself go and see Pink, or Christina Aguilera, ballet, classes, any fucking thing I can't go.  Do you know how upsetting this is to me?  It makes me hate myself even more, and wonder why on Earth I am allowed to exist in this world.  I mean I am absolutely useless.  Paralysed with fear over anything new.  Why am I bringing this up?  Well today there as an incident, and it happened on a street I drive all the time, but I can hear my mind telling me never ever drive there again.  I can feel the depression and the blinding fear building up within me, all because of some arseholes.  So I decided to type this, as a sort of therapy, and a way to talk but not having to open my mouth.  It has worked in a way, I do feel like if I keep trying I can dig my way out, or at least stop myself sliding down further.

There is something that has been bothering me for a long time though.  Anti depressants.  With the majority of the world on them, or should be on them, why are they so shit?  Why do they make me feel like a zombie?  With no sex drive whatsoever, and putting on weight like it's the latest fucking craze?  I mean how does that help a depressed person, oh you're sad, here put on some weight, become that fatty you truly don't want to be.  Oh you like having some emotions?  Well shit, on these little magic pills they're gonna make you feel like you're in slow motion and nothing matters, and I mean nothing.  And that sex drive you like?  Poof, gone.  Why is it that no one can help a majorly depressed person?  Why can't they help me?  Talking does shit, pills, I have taken enough to know I don't want to take anymore, they all do the same and that is not worth the side effects they give me.  Sure, they save lives, yes when I was suicidal they did stop those feelings, but they didn't stop the depression or anything else.  So yeah, if you are truly suicidal then take them, they do help that.  All of this said, they work differently for different people, so my experience may not be yours.  It certainly cannot hurt to try, anything, to get out of this tunnel of darkness, can it?   

I just want to say thank you for letting me vent, thank you for making myself feel just a little better by writing this.  Thank you for being you.

So when you find yourself sinking, and sinking fast, try and find a rope, or a life boat, or any little sliver of hope that you can to slow the descent.  I know that it is dark and lonely when you are lost, I know everything is too hard to do, but just remember that someone does care.  Even if you believe there is no one, there is always someone, even if you don't know them.  I care, I care very much about people in the dark tunnel.  I am there all the time, lost and lonely, and I know how it feels, so please just know that I care, and so do many other people.  Look after yourselves, even if it means just laying down and watching tv, or walking outside, just please look after yourself, and know that it will pass.  It will pass.

If you need help within Australia, please call LifeLine:  13 11 14
Kids Help line: 1800 55 1800
  

Glow in the dark resin dragon egg, painted with acrylics

Set backs, mistakes and frustrations.

As I sit here writing this I realise that I am not in a writey mood. All my effort and thoughts are elsewhere and I am struggling to put down the words.  The longer I type though, the more I am getting into it. I find that this is similar to lots of other things, until I actually start and make myself do something, it seems too daunting and big of a job.  Once underway, I actually enjoy it, so without further adieu here it is.  My blog post about my gorgeous dragon egg.

My vision was this magnificent dragon egg, glowing furiously, with a polymer clay dragon tail that protruded out from it.  First off, me using a jigsaw, ugh, we are not a good match.  My mdf cutting of an egg shape not so great.  So all my dreams shattered I had to wait until I had help to cut it.  This completely demotivated me and to be honest I did feel like a failure.  Every time I saw that badly cut egg I would remind myself how useless I am.  Why bother Kristina, I would think.  Nothing you do is good.

I put the egg in the too hard basket.  I would get annoyed every time I saw it.  There was always this part of me though, that saw it and wanted to start, wanted to make it turn into the vision in my head.  The old me, I have to be honest, would've thrown it away and never tried again.  I have this little bit of determination now, that I never used to have.



So with it newly cut by my wonderful husband I decided I could start.
I originally painted the base of the egg in Cadmium Orange hue acrylics.  Then I applied a layer of Golden's glazing medium mixed with the encapsulated glow powder.  It glowed, but not enough.  I wanted the orange to burst out from between the scales when I painted them on, like fire, not like badly painted s%#t.  This set me back again, I don't handle stuff ups very well.  So there the egg sat, taunting me, laughing at me, again.  Until I got so angry that I wanted to teach it a lesson lol.

There are two types of glow in the dark powder available from Glowing gecko.  There is the normal one which can be mixed with most things except water based materials, like acrylics.  They also have an encapsulated powder that costs a little more, glows a little less, but it can be mixed with acrylic paint, water etc.  

I decided to just paint the egg, and make the glow between the scales by painting the areas in.  I started with red acrylic paint as the base layer, added black to make the shadows, and put the scales on.  OMG ick.  Just ick.  Anger again grew within me and I wanted to scream, it looks like crap!!  Well maybe a little more profanity than "crap" was used lol.  Walk away, again.  I walked back though, and even more determined than ever I decided after two hours of individually painting on the scales that I had to redo them all.  Then I had to shade them, covering some up in darker colours, but I was finally seeing an egg shape appearing.  GLIMMER OF HOPE!! 

 I put some cracks in so I could make them glow instead of the scales, less work shhhhhhh.

The cracks I hated with a passion.  I won't go over how long it took for me to get the darn things right.  I almost gave up again.  I was beginning to hate this egg.

NO NO NO.  It just looked wrong no matter how much fiddling I did.  GRRRRRRRRRRR.














I decided to focus on the dragon tail that I wanted to come out of a crack in the egg.  Using polymer clay I made the tail, baked it.  Then held it up to the egg and hated the way it looked.

 I had come this far I was NOT giving up.  I painted the dragon tail but it still looked like some weird tail that didn't fit with the egg.  I think it needed to be bigger.  I kept the tail but it is for something else.  This egg was not it's place.  Dammit.  My 9 year old son said to me, "I thought you were going to have an eye in a crack?"  Hmmmm, no I didn't but that sounds like a good idea, thank you lol.

 Painted the eye, wrong, wrong wrong.  It took me a while to realise that I needed black paint in the cracks, because inside the egg would be dark.  Once I did that it was like angels were singing in the background.

Still desperately trying to make the tail fit, lol.  

I got the normal glow powder, mixed it with the resin and slowly and delicately poured it on the cracks and the eye.  I left this to dry, because I wanted to make it super glossy so it needed another resin layer.  I used Solid solutions resin, I haven't had a problem with it, except for the occasional patch of the art or table that doesn't get covered with resin, no matter how much I spread it.  It's called a dip or something like that.  Very frustrating.  I call them oogies.  So I did pour another layer of clear resin over the egg, but I got oogies.  three of them.  FFFFFFFFluffy puddles!!!!!

I poured another layer, carefully ensuring that the oogies were covered, and agh, nope.  I love solid solutions resin, it does everything I want, and because I am still a beginner perhaps it is something I do to make the oogies happen.  I don't know.  I do absolutely adore that resin.  I'm just trying out new ones to see what I like.  Bunnings the hardware store here in Australia, sell a beautiful gorgeous glassy oh so glossy resin.  Oh I love it, perfect, but almost $60 a litre.  A little bit too pricey.  Save it for the special pieces.

The egg glowed, it was shiny, it looked like a dragon egg, the majority of it was a glass finish, but those damn oogies were killing me.  

You can see the defects in this video on the resin.

I ran out of resin while doing the egg so I bought in bulk a different resin.  It is designed not to have oogies!!!!!  It kept it's promise!!!!  NO oogies!!!!  YAY.

 AND SHE GLOWS!!!  I put glow powder and resin on the side of the egg to make it appear like there is a glow all around it. 

 This is the final product, after weeks of hatred, anger, disappointment and mistakes.  I actually really love it.  

 And here is my pugs reflection in the egg.

Wow,  I just realised that after my initial frustrations of writing something, I have gotten more done than I thought.  It is good to get this out of my head and accomplish something, even if it's never read by anyone, I did it.  I finished the egg, I didn't stop trying.  I love the end product and I feel good about myself momentarily.

Now onto the next project.  I have been focusing too much on tables and resin geodes etc that I have neglected my main passion, painting.  My next big goal is a huge canvas painting of Aquaman's face (Jason Momoa).  With water dripping off it.  In oils.  I cannot wait to grid it up and start.  I just have so many things to get done.  I also think Aqua man is going to take me two weeks to paint so it won't be done in time for my next blog.

I am unsure what my next blog will be about.  I'm thinking maybe a detailed (kind of) blog about the products I use in the resin geodes, like the glitter and the gems etc.  Or possibly I could do a blog about the Captain America table I will be finished this week.  Or the one I am looking forward to but I know I will fail and get angry at for a while, the harry potter glowing table I have plans for.   I also want to address mental illness and it's ability to kill every thing and every relationship in my life, and how I chose to fight everyday.  Some days just making sure my kids are happy and safe is enough.  Mental health is very important I am learning.

Anyway, enjoy your week.  It is my daughters birthday this week.  She is a beautiful 22 this year.

Enjoy yourselves.


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. 

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.