it gets worse before it gets better.

Welcome to my mental health art blog. I am an artist on a multi-year therapeutic journey. I just want a space that I can look back on and see my progress. Anything else gained is incidental.

Working through traumatic dissociation of the personality, anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc.

I don't do party tricks. Please be respectful if you're asking about my experience.

- PLAYER 1 + PLAYER 2

🗃 #ART

🗃 #MUSINGS

I came to do a job today,

Not here to laugh, not here to play,

It's serious, it's not a game,

I'm at your service, baby

You could push some people around here,

You could flex some muscle and thrive here,

But every time you're talking 'bout why you can't,

You bow down surrounded by your fears

You've been walking, you've been hiding,

And you look half dead half the time,

Monitoring you like machines do,

You've still got it, I'm just keeping an eye

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life

Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die

I know exactly what I want and who I want to be,

I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine

And you say, "As long as I'm here

No one can hurt you,"

Don't wanna lie here

"But you can learn to."

I'm a machine (Should I pretend that you didn't exist?)

An emotional being (Should I act like you're somebody I miss?)

Since I was a teen (A velvet glove around an iron fist)

Cut my feelings off clean, clean (If you wanna survive, then ignorance is bliss)

When the storm cut you to the bone,

There was always shelter

'Cause I was born to destroy you,

And you know I don't mean to hurt you,

But you know that it means so much,

And you don't even feel a thing

But who cares if it's not real?

Because I can still feel,

And I hurt like a child with an unreconciled—

Need to carve out a smile on a face I revile

Hold me now,

Clip my wings when I misbehave

I'll never let you go,

If you promise not to fade away,

Never fade away

I've been on fire and yet I've still stayed frozen,

So deep in the night,

My smooth contemplations will always be broken,

My deepest concerns will stay buried and unspoken,

No I don't have any change but here's a few subway tokens

Hands getting cold,

Losing feeling is getting old,

Was I made from a broken mold?

You tell me what to say and when,

You say that it's because you care,

But I prefer to be alone,

Instead of seeing a scene, like my workplace, my brain focuses in snapshots: my planner on the desk, the warning sticker on the window screen, the outlets, patterns of light and shadows. They don't follow the Gestalt that makes up reality. I often don't see distortions aside from my hands looking weird because my eyes are operating like a go-pro headset and not eyes. I get really frustrated trying to find some validation in my experience. It's incredibly difficult to put to words the Unreality of it all.

A key memory of my history of dissociation was when I was car-rotting, which is bedrotting but in your car. I was at a park, and I had been there so long it became evening. When a streetlamp over me turned on, I was completely disconnected from the Gestalt of reality. Motion was smooth and had a higher frame rate. I sat on the swing at blue hour, fascinated by how the world was swiveling around me. I watched thunderclouds gather in the distance at blue hour, completely detached. It was pretty—not every moment of dissociation is stressful, but it wasn't right. I wasn't even me, I believe, given the context I have now.

Everyone is capable of dissociation. It's a feature, not a bug. But when you have a high degree of it, it can be very lonely, very numb. You can feel defective. You feel isolated, like you're the only real thing that exists. I wish it was easier to be understood. I don't want to be alone in what I'm looking at every day.