Dirty Girls: Zinester Friends I Didn’t Have Until 25

16 Mar 2013 4 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Reviews Tags: , , , , , ,

This video is grabbing attention all over the internet as being an outsider in the 90′s is thrust into the spotlight.

When I watch this video, I think of these girls as the friends I never had. These girls were in Grade Eight in 1996. I was in Grade Six that year, being tormented by the other kids and withdrawing into silence. I stopped being honest about what was going on in my life with anyone except my teachers. I wrote to them in my school journals, secretly telling them about my life that my peers couldn’t understand. At home I kept a journal written in code, afraid of the consequences of being found out. I remember being at a sleepover at age twelve, being made fun of for not telling my peers what I could write down. I knew I was lucky to even be at a sleepover – if people knew the real me they’d surely kill me.

As I got older, from aged sixteen on, I saw myself as a “dirty girl” and dressed in black and avoided the entire world, listening to what I liked and reading what I liked, but never thought anyone on the planet would relate to me, EVER. I self-harmed every day instead of opening my mouth and talking about my experiences. I skipped class to attempt suicide. It was hell.

It took all my courage to survive. I wish I could’ve loved myself for being different before the age of (roughly) 25. I am surprised on a daily basis that I have survived up until this point. This video makes me happy that these girls existed in 1996, somewhere out there.

How do YOU relate to this video?

The Pulse of Impulsivity

25 Feb 2013 7 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Run Fast Run Far cropEven for a blog about depression, my posts have been fucking depressing lately. Talks of suicide, crisis, not finding support when I need it. Yeah, things have sucked lately. I even had to perform a half-ass dead squirrel memorial service this week! Yes, it involved a shovel.  (Erin fun-fact #135: squirrels are the best animals in the world after cats and pugs/bostons.)

One of the weirdest things about having depression is the feeling that I get when things actually go well. It scares me because it’s so unusual, I feel like the universe is making a joke at my expense. But that isn’t always the case.

See, this past January I did a somewhat-secret experiment. I’d recognized that some of my choices in the fall had led me to places of shame and self-loathing, so I decided to attempt something that I knew would boost my self-esteem if it worked.

Blame it on feeling impulsive. I haven’t been acutely suicidal in years, but I entered that territory in the fall. So as a form of backlash, I stepped outside my comfort zone to expose myself in a positive way. I submitted two collages into The Art Exchange‘s annual Miniature Show here in London, Ontario.

I’ve visited the Miniature Show at the Art Exchange for years with my mom and my sister. Every year we promise ourselves that we’ll do it the next year. I don’t think I actually ever meant it when I said that, but this year, when I got the notification email saying that submissions were being accepted, I thought, “What the hell.” I knew I didn’t have anything to lose. Plus I was curious. My art has done well in mental health circles – could it do well in a purely artistic environment, too?

The Miniature Show asks for a piece 3″ x 4″ for a two-dimensional submission. So small that it seemed like it would be a piece of cake to complete. It wasn’t actually until I cut a piece of paper that size that I realized almost all of my individual collage pieces are larger than 3″x4″. So it was an interesting challenge, but I swear, in making those collages, I hadn’t felt that alive in years. It gave me purpose and the hours fell away as I carefully arranged my first piece. Click on it to see it full-sized.

MiniatureShow-Scissorkix

“Scissorkix”

I named it after my Etsy shop/business name. It cost $22 to submit one piece, and since I’m living hand-to-mouth I’d only planned on submitting one collage, BUT I COULDN’T STOP. I decided to “let myself” do a second piece, and just keep it for myself. I spent only a fraction of the time I’d spent on my first piece on the second; I was far less critical and let myself play more. Here’s what I came up with. Once again, click on the image to see it full-sized.

MiniatureShow - Run Fast Run Far

“Run Fast, Run Far”

Those of you who have read my zines are familiar with the themes of childhood showing up in my art, most often through illustrated girls in dresses. I don’t want to explain a lot about this piece because I want it to speak for itself, but I will point out that the raindrops in the background change direction as the girl skips by with scissors in hand. Where is she going? What has turned her world upside down?

Once my piece was finished, I dipped into my meager savings jar so I had the funds to submit my second collage to the show. Why not jump in with both feet?

My mom submitted two pieces of her own work (“Sunflowers” and “Autumn Evening“) to the Miniature Show with me and it was very exciting to deliver our works and our Artist Bios to the gallery together. We were told that each submission would be scanned and featured on the gallery’s website a week before the show opened.

On February 8th I received an email saying that the Miniature Show scans were up on the gallery’s website so I immediately clicked on the link and found my collages. First the “Scissorkix” piece, and then “Run Fast, Run Far.” When I clicked on the latter I was dumbfounded to see “SOLD” written beside the title of my piece.

To be perfectly honest it scared me shitless. It was hard enough to share my art with the world, but I wasn’t prepared for one of my pieces to be sold before the show even opened! It sold almost as soon as it was posted on the website.

I still had a week to pull myself together before the show’s opening night, so that I was composed when it finally did arrive. That night I learned that the owner of the gallery had bought my piece! That’s why it had sold so quickly – she was the first to see it and then couldn’t let it go. What a compliment!

I’m still wrapping my head around this whole thing, but I’m relieved to know that not only have I earned my submission expenses back, I’ve also made a little money on top of that.

I need to go back to The Art Exchange before the show ends on March 2nd, just to have the honour of seeing my art framed in a gallery. It’s a pretty big deal in this small little life of mine.

If you’re interested in going to view the show, The Art Exchange is at 247 Wortley Road in London, and is open the following hours:

Sun/Monday – Closed
Tues/Friday – 10 – 5:30pm
Saturday- 10 – 5:00pm

Art show details aside, this experience has taught me that feeling impulsive doesn’t have to mean self-harm in one way or another. Think about the word “impulse” – if you take away the “im” you get “pulse” and your pulse equals energy. Your pulse is your heart beating blood through your veins, your pulse keeps you alive.

Impulsivity can mean courage to break out of your comfort zone. Part of feeling suicidal is having nothing to lose, so if you can harness that energy and use it in a positive way, you have power equal to your entire life force.

Think about it. The next time you’re feeling impulsive, what can you do to shake up your world in a positive way? Feel your pulse and USE IT for something good, something that makes you feel alive instead of dead. See how far it can take you.

Drowning in Traumatic Waters

04 Dec 2012 13 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Art Month, Symptoms and Side-Effects Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I am almost drowning in traumatic memories right now. That’s why I’ve been so depressed lately. Here’s a bit of the back-story:

I was traumatized within an inch of my life as a child. I had repressed my abuse memories until I was twenty-five and then the memories started to surface in recognizable chunks. It took me two years before I had the courage to speak up. This past September I went to the police about it as a way to prevent my abuser from hurting anyone else.

Before going to the police I thought I had dealt with the bulk of my trauma-related memories and feelings but I had not. Now, I keep feeling like I am four years old again and that the world is crashing around me. I feel scared and out of control and like my life is in danger, even though it isn’t. It is hell.

I keep thinking back to my early years of swimming lessons, when I learned that if someone is drowning and you don’t have a ‘life saving device’ to throw to them, it’s better if you don’t jump in the water for them at all. In their desperation to be saved, the drowning person can pull you under, causing two deaths instead of one. I feel like if I reach out for help I am going to drown someone with me.

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How to Have a Good Cry & Cover it Up (If You Need to)

09 Oct 2012 6 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Survival Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Lately I’ve experimented with revealing my tear-stained face to friends and family as a way of being honest about my feelings. If people see that I’ve been crying, that tells a lot about my current state. But what if you don’t want people to know that you’ve been crying? What if the fear of people knowing you were crying keeps you from crying in the first place?

I first started to self-harm because a cut was easier to hide than a tearful face. Then, of course, that backfired because I had to hide scars once t-shirt season arrived again, that were proof that I’d been hurting months and months ago. Had I cried at the time I was upset, people would’ve known for maybe an hour or two and then the evidence would have been gone.

Crying can be embarrassing but we get the urge to cry for a reason: it’s our built-in coping mechanism for dealing with stress and pain. Our bodies don’t waste energy on things that aren’t helpful. Even getting goosebumps when you’re freaked out has a purpose: it’s to raise the hair on your skin to make your body look bigger and scarier to potential predators. Just like a freaked out cat!

“Maybe crying is a means of cleaning yourself out emotionally. Or maybe it’s your communication of last resort; the only way to express yourself when words fail the same as when you were a baby and had no words.”
-Aristotle

It might seem kind of dumb to write a how-to guide for something we all do naturally within seconds of being born, but I think our urge to cry gets smothered in today’s culture that label such normal coping methods as weak or unflattering. Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be to say to someone, “You don’t have to pee! Don’t be a baby! Do ______ instead?”

Anyway, I’ve cried a lot lately because things have been difficult and I’m trying really hard to cope in healthy ways. Sometimes I don’t hide the fact that I’ve been crying but other times I really want to, especially if I feel better after crying and don’t feel like talking about it anymore. That happened yesterday and I think I did a stellar job at hiding the evidence. But first, I needed to cry it out.

How to Handle a Good Cry

1. Let yourself feel everything you’re feeling

Give yourself permission to feel everything that you’re feeling. Don’t beat yourself up by calling yourself names. (My mom used to tell me not to feel sorry for myself so now I think, “Damn right, I feel sorry for myself! And it’s okay!”)

2. Keep Kleenex/tissues nearby.

Yesterday I needed two boxes. Also get a garbage can so your dog doesn’t eat your snotty mess.

3. Re-hydrate.

Keep a glass of water with you. You’re losing a lot of liquid through your tear ducts and your runny nose. Taking a drink can also help you slow down your sobs if you feel overwhelmed by them. Drinking extra water also prevents a post-crying headache from hell.

4. Remember to breathe.

Breathing helps your body cry. Think of it like “Oxygen in, tears out.” Plus, if you don’t breathe while crying hysterically, it can lead to throwing up. Trust me, you don’t want that to happen on top of it all. If you think you might vomit from crying so hard, cry in the bathroom.

5. Comfort Yourself

Crying can feel scary, especially when you aren’t used to letting yourself do it. I held a teddy bear super tight yesterday as I bawled. Teddy bears can’t be squished!  Hang on to whatever you need and it will get you through the tears.

6. Rest

There is nothing more physically exhausting than a good cry. Work rest into your method of comforting yourself

Although I believe that crying is never shameful, sometimes the fear of people knowing about the tears can keep us from allowing ourselves to feel.

How to Do a Post-Cry Fix Up

1. Rest Easy

My last step of the good crying process is “rest” but you will prevent puffy eyes if you don’t lie down during or after you cry. Lounge on a chair or with your head propped up to prevent your eyes from getting extra puffy. I’ve tried using ice (or freezies) on puffy eyes before but it never helped me much.

2. Dry Off

This is kind of a “duh” tip but make sure your face is dry before attempting any more cover-up steps. You can wipe your face but even then it still needs to dry a little.

3. Concealer

Even if you don’t wear make-up in general, a good concealer will hide the redness and dark circles under your eyes. I use Maybelline’s Cover Stick Concealer. It’s amazing and is available at most drug stores.

4. Eye Drops

Yesterday I used regular Visine and it took the redness out of my eyes.

5. Distract

Were you wearing eye makeup before you cried? Removing it and redoing it should help. If you weren’t wearing eye make-up, adding some now will make your eyes pop in a different way.  If you don’t wear make-up, try adding earrings or anything else on your head/face to draw attention from your post-cry face. Sunglasses work especially well if you’re going to be outside.

6. Smile

I’ve been told that if you smile, no one will know you’ve been crying, but I don’t believe that. It will help people see that you feel better after your cry, however.

What do you do to help yourself cry when you need to? What do you do when you want to cover it up?

(Wondering where my Monday posts have gone? I’m changing the “Monday Theme” to a “Monday Challenge” because I’m typically not able to post more than once a week right now and I’m sick of only writing about music, medication, and memories.)

The Power of Being Needed

27 Jun 2012 18 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Relationships Tags: ,

My cat is missing. He’s all I can think about. He’s been gone almost a week now and since he’s diabetic,  it’s really is not looking good.  :(

Have you seen him? I feel like he might have run away to go to Hollywood, since the movies I’ve made of him for YouTube (forgive me, they are 5+ years old) are very lame and he’s embarrassed. He knows he has talent and says he can be a star but I wish he’d told me his plan so I could have packed him his insulin in his kitty suitcase.

So, worst case scenario: he’s gone forever and I have to make up some ridiculous story to comfort myself. Best case scenario: he reads this post and comes home.

Jasper taught me something so important to my recovery that it saved my life on more than one occasion: the power of being needed.

Have you ever felt unimportant until you got a phone call from a friend asking why you missed school? Sometimes it takes the devotion of someone in your life to remind you of your value. I don’t trust people easily, and I don’t have a lot of friends, but my pets have filled in those slots in my life, dependent on me enough for me to feel of value.

Out of our household of four people, Jasper choose me as his favourite. He followed me around the house and cuddled with me at every opportunity. When I brushed my teeth before bed he would jump onto my shoulders as I spit in the sink; he kneaded my hair, purring me to sleep at night. I quickly started calling him Bebe because he was my baby.

Once when I was in the hospital, Jasper really wanted into my bedroom because he thought I was in there. Since my parents knew I wasn’t home, they didn’t open the door for Jasper to look for me no matter how hard he cried. His solution? He went into the back of our basement, broke into an air vent with his paws, and climbed through the walls into my bedroom.

When I was about seventeen, I was sitting on my bed just about to self-injure and Jasper put his paw across my arm, indicating that he couldn’t stand to see me hurt because he loved me so much. The thought of him having to live without me saved me from suicide on multiple occasions.

I remember being taught in high school that some people decide to have a baby only because they need to feel loved. On its own, it’s never a good idea to have a baby or adopt a pet only to fill a void in your life because the responsibility of raising a child or an animal is a huge commitment. I agree, but if you have the time and the money to devote to even just watering a plant, that responsibility just might be enough to keep you going when you feel like the world would be better off without you.

Who or what needs you? The more things we have that tie us to life, the stronger we are when stormy winds threaten to push us over. I have my pets and I have my readers, two very strong anchors.

Do me a favour and let me know if you see a Manx cat on TV. His tail is two inches long and he has a really good singing voice. Tell him to call home and I’ll bring him his insulin!

Self-harm & Tattoos

30 Apr 2012 13 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Life Events Tags: , , , , , , , ,

(This post talks about self-injury. Though I never write about what I find to be triggering, I do advise self-harmers to read this post with caution. If it is triggering you, stop reading or sit with someone who helps you feel safe. )

I have a consultation for a new tattoo on Thursday and I’m super excited. This will be my third tattoo. On my left forearm, I have a typewriter with cherry blossoms bursting out of it, designed for me personally by Cassandra Warren. Another of her designs is on my right shoulder: a birdcage with a burst of light coming from within, indicating that the bird has disappeared. My upcoming tattoo is my own design, and it will be the smallest. It has a very special and secret meaning for me. It’s going to be on my left wrist. Maybe I’ll share its meaning with you someday.

As a kid and younger teen, I never ever thought I’d get a tattoo. After I started self-injuring, however, the idea of permanence no longer scared me. One of the reasons I cut myself was to mark myself permanently, to tell my story, the pain of that day or week or moment. I have hundreds of scars and I can still remember the stories behind some of them. If you could wave a magic wand and make all of my scars disappear, I wouldn’t want you to do it. They are part of me and my history. Tattoos cover the scars so they aren’t the first thing people notice, but they don’t erase them. I like that. Getting tattoos marked a new chapter in my life. I chose to love my body instead of hate it.

There are some people who argue that getting tattoos or piercings are a form of self-harm. When it comes down to it, these things do harm the body physically, so the argument is a valid one, but I believe it’s the reasoning behind the acts of “harm” that make body modification different. That said, I know I can handle the pain of a tattoo because of my experience with self-harm. Maybe that’s why tattoos mean so much to me.You can’t separate or define some things. That argument doesn’t matter much to me.

So, my typewriter tattoo spans over 50-100 scars on my one arm. At first when people asked me whether it hurt more to be tattooed over my scars, I couldn’t give them an answer because I only had one tattoo. Now that my shoulder is tattooed, I can say that getting tattooed over my scars didn’t hurt more than getting normal skin tattooed. Most of my scars were at least five years old, however. The minimum healing time before getting a tattoo over a scar is six months so that your skin is properly healed first.  I think my scarred skin is tougher than unscarred skin. Overall, your body feels pain differently all over, so it really depends on the location, the detail of the tattoo, and the tattoo artist when it comes to pain.

By the way, seeking to get tattooed over my self-harm scars was an awesome experience. No one has ever looked at my scars with less judgement than the tattoo artists at True Love Tattoo. It was as if we talked about me getting tattooed over a single scar from an accident. I felt no shame when I saw how little my scars affected those tattoo artists. So my advice is, if you are worried about the reaction you’ll get from tattoo artists when it comes to your scars, DON’T WORRY! These people alter skin for a living. They don’t care why your skin is a certain way, they just want you to love your tattoo(s). They go to tattoo conventions where there are people with the most extreme forms of body modification. Google it! I swear it’ll make you feel like your scars aren’t shameful.

So being a self-injurer made me consider getting tattoos, whereas if I’d never self-harmed I might not have considered tattoos as easily. But now that I have tattoos, I know they are 100% for me. As a writer and artist, symbols mean a lot to me. My typewriter tattoo mainly represents writing, but also the work behind writing. I researched flowers and chose cherry blossoms to grow out of that typewriter because of the meaning that flower holds and its tie-in with a favourite book of mine. My birdcage tattoo has many meanings that I expect to change as I grow. The tattoo primarily symbolizes escape, but the birdcage can represent so many things.

Tattoos are an investment. Take the time to come up with an idea you love. Then find a tattoo artist who is skilled and be prepared to pay them as much as they ask for, plus a tip. It’s worth every penny! They are giving you art that you’ll have the rest of your life.

If you want tattoos but are scared of their permanence and whether you’ll get sick of them, do what I did. I printed out a picture of each of my tattoos and hung it on my wall as I saved up my money. After six months, if you aren’t sick of seeing the design every day, then it’s a safe bet as a tattoo. Also consider getting your tattoo(s) in a spot you can’t see all the time. My shoulder tattoo is more visible to others than to me and so it’s always a delight when I glimpse it in a mirror or in a photograph.

Tattoos celebrate life. They help define who you are without you ever saying a word. They remind you of your beauty. Take the time and then take the risk. Life is worth living, however you do it. Go ahead and do it!

Breaking the Silence is Only the Beginning

02 Oct 2011 8 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in The Big Picture Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The recent movements in mental health awareness are hugely important. Stigma is slowly being dissipated because people are talking. It’s wonderful and the first step in the right direction. So why did I just turn off The National’s latest piece on teen mental health with anger surging in my veins?

I am angry because there is so much more to be done, and while I do recognize that it takes time for things to happen, teens who are depressed and suicidal do not have any time to spare. Now that their peers know a little about mental health and suicide, they need to know that midnight is striking. It’s time for the carriage to turn back into a pumpkin and for people to wake up to the fact that simply mentioning mental illness does not help the mentally ill as much as one would hope.

Reaching out for help is crucially important in getting well again but reaching out does not equal getting well. I am tired of the media constantly talking about teens who showed no outward signs of anything being wrong suddenly committing suicide and their families are left stunned. Yes, it is horribly tragic when that happens, but more often than not, teens who commit suicide have friends and family that know about their condition and are trying to help.

When my friends first found out about my mental illnesses at the age of sixteen they were supportive and very caring, until I asked them to visit me in the hospital. Only one friend was brave enough to do so and that visit was so overwhelming for her that she actually fainted on hospital grounds leaving me feeling fucked-up enough to cause mass heart failure to anyone in a ten-foot radius.

When I was discharged from the hospital I was still acutely depressed. This meant that I did not want to go out and do anything fun. I refused to put on a bathing suit at my friend’s pool party because people would see my self-injury wounds. I was often angry and would walk away from people mid-conversation. I quit playing basketball, going to dance class, and trying new things. The Erin that my friends and family knew died inside.

Some other symptoms of depression include weight loss or gain, insomnia or hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness), irritability, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, et cetera et cetera. This does not make for a happy camper, a fun friend to talk to on the phone, or a lively party goer. It can be really difficult to be friends with someone who is acutely or even mildly depressed.

One of my favourite Post Secret postcards of all time says, “It’s easy to tell me not to kill myself. The hard part is actually giving a shit about me once I decide to stick around.”

While those words sound pretty hostile, they describe the fact that choosing life over death does not mean an easy road from there on out. It also means that support from those around you is not always going to be what you need. Friends are not always going to be there to talk, parents have to go to work, and sometimes even when everyone around you is doing everything humanly possible to help you, it can still feel like they don’t give a shit. Welcome to depression, population 1: YOU. It is one lonely illness.

So yes, talking about depression and suicide is a good first step, but it’s about time that we moved on to the second, third, and fourth steps. How can teens support a friend who suddenly cannot get out of bed? What are you supposed to say when a friend says they have had a bad therapy session? When your brother attempts suicide, how are you supposed to trust him alone again?

My emotions are so strong here that I’m afraid I cannot write a list of what to say in these circumstances, but even then it’s important to know that everyone is different. While symptoms of depression are similar from person to person, they are not the same, and recovery rates differ from one month to ten years or possibly never. My depression has lessened significantly since it first affected my day-to-day life, but I don’t believe it will ever be gone. I will never be fully well. How do I share that with a friend and what do I do if they don’t want to hear it?

Yes, the silence has been broken and people are finally talking about this illness that affects millions, but the conversation should not stop there. I want my blog to embody that fact and push us all past our comfort zone. Let’s explore the depths of depression, let’s talk about the aftermath of suicide. Let’s talk about making your friend laugh even though she’s locked up on a psych ward. Let’s talk about life after things get better, let’s talk about it all and let’s never fucking stop.

How to Survive the Impulse to Hurt Yourself

28 Sep 2011 5 Comments

by daisiesandbruises in Survival Tags: , , ,

Hurting yourself is an individual thing. We all have ways we hurt ourselves, whether it’s overeating or smoking or driving too fast. Some methods are conscious, others are not. Obviously, hurting ourselves hurts us. Why on Earth would we choose to do something that weakens us, makes us more vulnerable, and threatens our survival?

I can’t explain it except that, for me, hurting myself has been a way to align with the world hurting me. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” kind of mentality. It also has made me feel in control of some of the hurt in my life. Actually seeing my physical pain has helped me accept the emotional pain. So it has helped on some levels, or else I never would have done it to begin with.

For a long time I embraced the urge to self-destruct, but I’ve learned the hard way what it does to my physical and emotional strength, not to mention my self-esteem.

Today I had a rough patch and I pulled through without harming myself. What works for me might not always work for you but we can’t be THAT different from one another. Here are some tips for you to try to survive the impulse to hurt yourself, especially if it involves self-harming through injury or suicide.

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