snowball in hell

2019

here's another diabolical selfie to update..
(mr dad says toxic made this same face in our old home movies..lol)

my first glimpse of 2019 was of the crescent moon & venus out my bedroom window.. we haven't had any snow here yet in portland, but the mountain is gorgeous & white & now we are surrounded by freezing fog, everything's covered in frost, so i'm hopeful ~
new year's day moon

we're getting alot done on innsmouth house & i'm still painting my acrylic abstracts despite freezing hands..

my only resolution is to try to worry less this year.. lol

lyrics of the day:

all the holes at once are coming alive
set free, out of sight & out of mind
they're lonely and they're prey
the one you light your fires to keep away
is crawling out upon its belly
and all you have to do is say  yes..
all the birds stay up in the trees
all the fish swim down to the deep
they're lonely and they're prey
i am here
come to me before it's too late
the one you light your fires to keep away
is crawling out upon its belly
all you have to do is say   yes.

rorschach

bren/ghost

into our darkest hour..

winter's coming, my favorite time of year, we stock up like all other creatures, for the holidays, for the freeze, for whatever's ahead..

we've all been sick here for weeks, despite flu shots, & i've been lost down in the undead ditches of dark souls 2 as i recuperate & force-feed, my therapy cat beside me hard at work.. snug

it's too cold to paint, but it is lovely sleeping weather, a perfect cure for my insomnia & bad dreams,

i think i'm going into another hibernation..

i went through an unexpected trauma one morning as i noticed our neighbors were trimming limbs off of one of the tall pine trees out front in our shared yard.. soon we heard house-shaking thuds & were horrified to realize they were cutting the huge tree Down entirely, leaving only the smaller of the 2 trees nearest our front window.. i can't explain how devastating this was to me, to change my landscape in this way so suddenly without notice, to kill the tree for seemingly no reason, i was upset beyond reason about it.
i left a note in their mailbox asking why they hadn't at least let us know beforehand & making it clear that the other tree was there to stay, & the following day they caught us on our way out & apologized & explained, it seems the roots were doing damage to their driveway & front porch, causing voids in the yard & cracks.. ok, but communication would've gone a long way toward reducing the shock, you know? i cried for that tree. & now i panic whenever i hear vehicle sounds out front thinking they're coming for the other one somehow..
i photographed birds in that tree & depended on it to help filter sunlight into our vampire lair frontroom..

i'm still estranged from family, & my sister is the same, drs & conservators remain useless as we approach 4 years of her in limbo.. i pray each night for her to cross over please..
so anyway i'm feeling the cold as we head into another winter, i lose track of dates & days & feel kinda lost..
i've left an extensive system of breadcrumb trails throughout the ghost gallery quarantine,
but there are ravens..

dissociation

ave maria
maiden mild
listen to a maiden's prayer
thou canst hear through from the wild
thou canst save amid despair
safe may we sleep beneath thy care
though banish'd, outcast and reviled
oh maiden, hear my lonely prayer
mother, hear a suppliant child
ave maria

ave maria, undefiled
the flinty couch we now must share
shall seem this down of eider piled
if thy protection hover there
the murky cavern's heavy air
shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled
maiden hear a maiden's prayer
mother, list a suppliant child
ave maria

ave maria, stainless styled
foul demons of the earth and air
from this their wonted haunt exiled
shall flee before thy presence fair
we bow us to our lot of care
beneath thy guidance reconciled
hear for a maid a maiden's prayer
and for a father hear a child
ave maria

frozen charlotte

ave maria
gratia plena dominus tecum
benedicta tu in mulieribus
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus
sancta maria, mater dei
ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae
amen

ave maria

to be continued in the comments..

darker places

it's terrifying when you find yourself looking at life through the dark slant of depression, where everything seems to signal to you that you can only make your escape to end your distress.
as someone who has dealt with depression & suicidal ideation all my life i can still get pulled aside by its lies even after all this time. my weakness is when i am sick or not doing well with pain management, or both of these things simultaneously like this last week.

you add up all your challenges & see no bright future ahead, so it has a horrible seeming logic to it.

but what is left out of the equation are all the random things that happen in life that make you glad you are here, once you've made the leap of faith & find you're on the other side of another of life's black puddles i have learned to not look back.

whatever is distorting your experience Will eventually shift back to appreciation, no matter how long it takes you must trust the bigger picture, it is there even when you aren't seeing it.

i'm not being naive or underestimating the seriousness of depression or candy coating anything, i've spent years in the blackest of holes i assure you.

but one morning you wake up and feel glad you're in your own room, you'll see the snow out your window & smile, kitties will meow goodmorning to you & want love, good people will make kind gestures that restore your faith to go forward..
and in my case stupid funny things might even be what start to laugh you back to life.. (well, laughing/coughing/laughing almost passing out.. i'm just starting to recover, just posting at my blogs has felt like a valiant effort for me today)

mr dad has been very sweet & helped me, making me half a grilled cheese sandwich (on the second try) that saved my life..
my son has been chattering politics, which is music to my ears because it means he is getting well & back to normal..

over this winter's illnesses at one point mr dad was trying to make a bill payment over the phone using a voice activated system while his chest cold was affecting his vocal chords. they charge you $10 if an actual person has to talk to you, & mr dad won't give them the satisfaction, but his voice was so low saying 'yes' & 'no' that the system couldn't recognize what he was saying, so after several failed tries he panicked & attempted some high-pitched answers, which then caused him to realize i could probably hear this from the other room & wonder just what the Hell is going on?
hearing him tell this story was priceless, i haven't laughed so hard in a long time..

& this old scene from the mighty boosh always cracks my son up so bad that i consider it a gem..

my challenges still feel great & my body is weak, but my will is strong as always, so i'm back in the fight.

i may always feel like a ghost, but i'm not giving it up yet,

bren

dark places

i figure it's probably time to change my avatar since it's been well over a decade..
(i'm still a ghost..)

we tried to get out & about today to some vintage toy & collectible shops since the sun finally came out.. it has been the longest winter ever for me, & having lost my little tabitha just days ago after a nightmare period of illness, i needed some kind of distraction to get my mind out of the dark places it's been going to. she was 17 years old & had lived for many years with IBD on meds with around the clock care for the last 2, but at the end i was tortured trying to get my OCD mind to make the necessary decisions for her care, i second-guess & doubt myself so much.. i know i will have to live with it & i have traumatic 'kitty issues' from childhood.. toxic had her own kitty graveyard for all her little companions that got killed right & left..

more than i can count.. it left us broken.

still no change with my sister..

maybe i'm finally losing my tired mind..

ghost

agoraphobic

yeah i've reached new levels of agoraphobic reclusiveness these days, this old ghost blog is appropriately spooky quiet, a safe place to vent my latest grumblings.. i'm not someone who trusts, but i've reached an all-time low over this nightmare situation with my sister, cathy.. it has been over a year and a half now with her lying in braindead undead limbo despite our family's wishes to have the drs sign a dnr & repeated cross-country trips by my other sister to try to get this accomplished. the conservator is completely useless & now she's so unrecognizably skinny, usually choking on her trach tube without any alarm going off or anything to summon attention.. i have to believe she is no longer in there or i'd never sleep at night. the world seems batshit insane to me these days.

living up here in portland for nearly 11 years now i have realized how i lived on overwhelm at all times down in socal, my poor high-strung traumatized nervous system just stressed beyond my limit so chronically that i didn't even know i could live differently. i haven't had a drink or resorted to si to cope in like 7 or 8 years now that i have some control to regulate what i allow into my life, & although i still dissociate, it is no longer a chronic state. yes, it does mean i'm alone too much & the isolation is not always good, it is lonely. but i'm just fine with my online friendships, thanks to the antiseptic safety of the internet i can blog & tweet & comment & be more present than i used to actually be in person. 

my kitties are getting frail & that scares me to death, we've already lost 2 of our 7, & our remaining girls are all over 16 years of age, all special needs, snug is deaf & she & her mama, tabitha both take meds. imagine this concept if you will, Kitties on Steroids. literally. this is my life 24/7 as tabitha's food needs require daniel & i taking shifts long-term. but she is round & fluffy & happy so it's all worth it.. i just don't exactly sleep..

mr dad & i went out to a new spot yesterday in washington state to try out our new gopro camera. the ridgefield national wildlife refuge is cool, there's a 4 mile loop you can drive by car, you pick up a cd at the gate & pop it into your car player to hear the tour, all about the birds & wildlife you're seeing around you.. for us here at the end of summer it was mostly ducks, egrets, turtles, birds & nutria, one of which tried to stop us on the road :O we found a new pioneer cemetery for my album there too.. i love the pac nw, even someone who hides from other humans can have a ridiculously cool life here.. 

as always feel free to check out my albums & gallery, although i'm demoralized that you have to have firefox or google chrome browsers now for the music to play, it just is not the same without it :(

btw, fuck off, summer. it's halloween now.

well, here are some timely song lyrics for today, taken from the patiently perfect last radiohead album, a moon shaped pool:

burn the witch

stay in the shadows
cheer at the gallows
this is a round-up
this is a low flying panic attack
sing the song of jukebox that goes

burn the witch
burn the witch
we know where you live

red crosses on wooden doors
if you float, you burn
loose talk around tables
abandon all reason
avoid all eye contact
do not react
shoot the messengers
this is a low flying panic attack
sing the song of sixpence that goes

burn the witch
burn the witch
we know where you live
we know where you live..

check out this tweet from the christian science monitor ~
i love thom

ghost/bren

p.s. now you can follow me on twitter & instagram ~

ghostatthegate on twitter

ghostatthegate on instagram

 

my gloomy place

it's just me in my little post-xmas depression..
(yes i have eeyore pajamas.)
at least now it's truly winter as we have our first snow..

oh my god, what a world you have made,
what a terrible world, what a beautiful world,
what a world you have made..

(now there are many new & deeper trapdoors to explore far down right in the sidebar..)

bren/ghost

some thoughts on adult insecure attachment..

it's been a long time since i've talked to anyone about adult insecure attachment. that's what i live with i believe.. i test to be the fearful-avoidant style, but i've come to realize how preoccupied & disorganized i must be as well. this was not anything i talked about in my many many years of therapy as it was just becoming better understood right as i left therapy for the last time, but i always knew i was just like harlow's distressed little monkeys.

i was 10 or so when i had my first conscious awareness of my ocd (although i didn't know
it was called this) & something else.. something even more basic to my survival, that i had
this need to find a guide in this life, a parent, an older sister, a mentor, a teacher, a friend,
somebody to rely on since i'd never had this in my life before. i won't rehash the story of my
childhood & the circumstances which brought that about, i already wrote an entire book about it (see down in the left sidebar) & you'd have to just take my word for it, it was what psychologists have told me is 'one for the books..' the situation was a perfect setup for me to be insecurely attached, & the kind of lifestyle i grew up in only continued the trauma & worsened my predicament. i spent my childhood in a blessed state of dissociation, a gift from god to protect little children who have nothing else to provide emotional comfort or safety, a gift from god that can eventually turn into a dark night of the soul.

so although i excelled in school & was told i could do anything i wanted to do in life, in fact
i left just as soon as i could & holed up in agoraphobic isolation the moment i could get away. i married & had a son, & thank god began reading john bradshaw right at the time so that my eyes were opened as i set about being a parent myself. i nicknamed my inner child 'toxic' at that time.. (straight from bradshaw) anyway that was when i first started trying to help myself & began some therapy. at first therapy was hard & didn't really help, but all the same i attached to the male psychologist i saw then as if he were the dad i never had. that was brutal because he really couldn't have cared less about my care as far as i could tell, so i was just repeating a painful situation.

i have had a lifetime of gi problems & have been on every stomach med imagineable, one called reglan turned out to be a total nightmare that took forever to figure out. it messed up my metabolism so bad & caused crippling depression, which sent me back to a psychiatrist who tried me on ssris & more tranquilizers, which i'd gotten used to being prescribed to me routinely, no matter how i'd try to get off of them. that year was such a black hole nightmare to try to survive through & when a dr finally figured out what was going on i stopped the meds entirely & quit therapy too. it was like coming back to life in one way, but i then seemed to have worse health issues like migraines with aura, tmj/tmd (or what i think is a kind of mild td from the black-boxed reglan) & the onset of an eating disorder.

eventually the eating disorder forced me back into therapy. it still didn't help. emdr was traumatic, supposedly safe, but i learned it shouldn't be used with dissociatives like myself. i became convinced that others were trying to get rid of toxic just the way my mom had tried once.. very very terrifying. i swore to protect her above all else no matter what anyone else & so-called pros said, as always i had to take care of myself based on my life experiences & my own reading & not trust anyone over that. although i had learned something from each attempt at therapy i never felt trust. i went to several other psychologists & therapists at that point until i finally found what i thought was a better match.

at first this therapy was very positive. i believe now that the hope i felt for the first year or so is what allowed me to improve, the hope that i found someone i could trust. i came back from the brink in many ways & gained back ground i had lost in the years before. but testing my therapist proved disappointing. as much as i liked her & thought she wanted to help me, eventually i came to the conclusion that she just really didn't understand me or know how to help me. & then that led into thinking she just wasn't inclined to want to try to help me. in other words all my insecure attachment issues came forward to thwart me, & i was so dissociated through the process that i could never actually be emotionally present no matter how hard i tried to be, something that i think must have frustrated her completely. i became more & more self injurious & self destructive in my disappointment in myself & in her. but i kept trying. it went on for more than 5 years. at some point my inability to cope with therapy & my family of origin drove me back into drinking, something i thought i was done with a decade or more before. it was just far too painful to be in my own skin, (or what i believe to be my lack of skin) that i got through it by being anesthetized to the point of alcohol amnesia just to keep the attachment of someone who would be there at the end of an email when i really needed her.

i was frustrated with her bringing up meds as i'd made it clear from the start i wasn't going there
again. i'd become so used to the prozactive atmosphere that i couldn't bear to lose the one person i hoped i might be able to trust to not push that on me, it made me sick as a dog anyway, so what was the point? and so trust was not really achieved. she couldn't trust me & my clouded judgment & i couldn't trust someone who couldn't trust me, that just made no sense because it's like treating someone you really don't know, & so it deteriorated rather badly. when the opportunity to move far away up to portland as we'd always dreamed became possible, i left therapy behind me just like my family of origin, thinking at that point i was so far gone i'd probably die soon anyway. i guess you have to be sort of suicidal to leave behind everything you've ever known that way & jump off into the unfamiliar, but it also felt like i was just possibly saving my life.

so into another self imposed isolation i went, & after learning how my heart literally had been damaged from it all i settled into a self protective mode of practicing taking care of myself, how novel. this took me years to learn. i only look back now at the brutal self-loathing & self destructiveness & can see how horrible & reckless that was. at the time it was all i knew. i never want to return to that state, & i have learned to love and embrace toxic in all her aspects in a way i never imagined i could do. in fact if it weren't for her i wouldn't have joy in my life, & she has her hand in all my expressionist creative art projects, which is our therapy, along with our perfect therapy cats. but i won't lie, the insecure attachment issue has never gone away in my lifetime so far. i work around the edges of a crater. all the meditations & relaxation exercises in the world meant to help my anxiety haven't touched the insecurity that is at its root, i needed to trust myself when i told myself that it would be ok, i would look out for toxic. self-soothing was what i needed to learn. empty exercises meant little & only invalidated what i was really experiencing in my body & mind. it was always about trust.

for a couple of years i ran a support forum for other adults i'd met with similar insecure attachment issues as i'd hoped we'd be able to support each other in a way that our therapists could not. i learned so much from listening to others with similar stories. but i still felt attached to my old therapist & many times just wished i could email her again when i needed to. i knew leaving the therapist i'd attached to would be incredibly hard for me, but at least i felt ok with it in one way, if i had to attach to someone at least it was someone i genuinely did like & respect, someone alot more pallatable than others before.. i had trusted her just a little bit, so i could live with that being in my head if necessary..

but why couldn't my insecurely attached friends and i be enough of a support for each other? i mean, in a way that a therapist cannot, since we do not have 30 other people who need our ear, & we don't have the frame of therapy there placing a boundary on us in the same way. i felt like we deserve better than being dependent on these well paid for figures, who by their own rules place such painful limitations on the relationship. isn't it just the same as having love withheld from us the way we experienced in our own early lives? even the best intentioned therapist can't be a substitute. i understand they have expertise & knowledge we laypeople may not, but we well-read folk are at least an improvement from our parents & we can be real. all the insight & awareness that can be gained through therapy still seems to fall short of having the power to really heal, & i've come to believe the whole basis for cognitive behavioral therapy is flawed, leaving it undermining & inevitably invalidating. true we regular folk are just as apt to disappoint & make mistakes as anyone else, but i've come to wonder whether therapy really can even ever help us, you know? or is it just reopening the same wounds ad infinitum & keeping us miserable? is it even more harm than good with some of us?

i know saying this would upset & depress many of my insecurely attached friends, but after my years of isolation my only enlightenment has been that i don't believe therapy is ever enough, just like dedicated friends may never be enough. the loss we've suffered runs so deep as to be unhealable really. but we must still try to have the most quality of life we possibly can. i still read what i can on this subject where i can find it. i have not returned to therapy although at times when i feel dreadfully bad i think about it. but i talk myself out of it. it's so hard to find someone really experienced with this subject. sometimes the ones really experienced with it are the ones going through it. (also who can afford it?) is it just my avoidance that talks me out of it, the way i left therapy the last time? or is it actually my resolve to take better care of myself & toxic that makes the decision, (also the way i left therapy the last time..) something to ponder. i don't think isolation is the answer. so much goes forever unresolved & no amount of going through the pain ever seems to lead out of it in the end.. i want better for us than this, but right now i don't know the answer.

is there anybody out there still haunting like me that has any thoughts?

bren/ghost
(& toxic)

love

p.s. i realize i am a scary invisible ghost that noone wants to see or hear..