Blame Your Green Eyes

watercolours…

Finished this TODAY – 22 nov 2007. Tis of my friend and ex Kylie, who rules.

This piece is part of a diptych (did I put the ‘y’ in the right place?)

The second work is “For What They Have Seen

 

The diptych… Blame Your Green Eyes, For What They Have Seen

 

The song that sang the title (I wrote it this yer sometime. As in 2007. I think.)

 

You nail my guitar to the bedroom wall

You lick your lips promise me more

Take my nail polish, go out to score

But I can’t, I won’t help anymore.

 

That final appointment waiting in line

A scar on the flesh of your inner thigh,

A casual promise and a white lie

Where the old bridge splits the hot night sky

 

CHORUS

Our little deaths

Holding your breath

I’ll always be less

Always a mess

Ill never confess

To the cuts on my flesh

Or the tears on your dress

Are all we have left

 

You carry the heat all bloody and keen

Hot with this fever since you were 15

Stones you’ve kept for each lie you have been

Blame your green eyes, for what they have seen

 

We kissed on the beach last Halloween.

And now we’ll never forget the shit we have seen

The hell in the wall the gorgeous machine

The tiny mad children that we have both been

 

and here’s a rant… from around 2002 or so. heh.

 

I have coped sooo welll for soo long I have tried so hard I know u will

understand, I gave up drinking and it nearly killed me so many times and I

WANT A DRINK RIGHT NOW this is why I keep a dry house except when it is

raining or i play with the hose

haven’t had a drink since ‘98 not a sip not a drug nothing to ever

stop the shit in my head from going round and fucking round and i feel so

SICK all the time

what the fuck are we all looking for where is an answer? i have read

Descartes and Kant and Nietzsche and the bible there’s nothing the fuck

THERE!

i can’t stop shaking and it is hard to type, but i will not call some

guys in white jackets with sombre kind expressions and very clean shoes.

i have taken my clonazepam n i did NOT od even of i wanted to; i will do

some WORK and call my doctor tomorrow and this desperation will continue,

part of the answer, the real answer is that there is NOT AN ANSWER and i

will have to trade my mind for my life for a while WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF

DEAL IS THAT??

 

EXCISE my personality remove expunge it – all my work will STOP

and it can’t hold me close to it hangs me -

balancing and teetering but heavy with velocity and density

 

but for right now my meds r squia=shing down my brain like a printing press

and i

i have avoided it one more night.

i will sleep

i willbe ok

but i migh

maybe i can finally find someonewho can beat me at chess…t o to hospital

tomorrow if they let me take my paint and my giant books.

I have had some experience with ppl in complete denial of the reality of mental illness. I didn’t tell anyone at uni about my bipolar. After i had graduated, i had made a lot of friends, and eventually told them about it. reasonably soon after that i had an acute, and prolonged manic episode. They basically thought i was just being a prick by shouting “I am king!!” from anything tall i could find and stand on. the worst part was when i crashed after that – no understanding, not even an attempt. They were (mostly) completely against any sort of treatment.

These ppl were very important to me, and i was living with several of them for this period. Fortunately my family was able to help, and i stayed with my father for some time.

 

While i was acutely manic (really starting to lose it thass fer sure) i had a psychology STUDENT explain to me how i wasn’t sick, the drug companies were exploiting me, in my infinite naiveté. I was a lamb to their wallets. Being manic, I tore her to shreds. She was very close to one of my friends and flat mates – told her and everyone else that i had yelled at her because SHE WAS sTUDYING PSYCHOLOGY. Scary thing is she was about to graduate and go out into the world with this idea. scarier still that someone in the psyche faculty had taught it to her.

 

i don’t see any of the friends that i had made at uni – indeed i have very few friends. I am cautious (um apart from right now with um women). I always tell ppl about my bp if they become close to me.

It is incredibly common, and still amazes me how little ppl know, or more importantly, WILL ACCEPT AS TRUE.

me:

“i have bipolar affective disorder.”

Member of Public (shall be acronominised to “MOP”)

“huh?”

me

“i have manic depression.”

MOP:

“oh. sure. NO YOU DON’T!! HEY AND SHUT UP I’M TRYING TO READ tv week!! Don’t you know what’s happening to ridge and Taylor??” (um had to do some research but Taylor is a psychiatrist apparently? hahahahhahhahahaaa hahaha)

hahahahahaaa

 

i forgive her

she is hot.

rambling now huh? sorry.

hm yeh.

 

sold a painting… yay. paid my bills yay. got fined for crashing into that guy . boo. hiss.

am having scary efexor withdrawals. boo. hiss. yuck. boo. hiss.

 

halucinating. boo hiss… little natalie portman monsters scuttling around at the corner of my vision. boo hiss. not even naked. booo hiss.

 

painting more than ever bfore in my life i think. yay.

 

tried very challenging watercolours yesterday an d did em with no wu-ckerings. yay. 2 in one day. yay. can’t afford to frame all this new stuff but will try n get the grant folks to give me more moneys. yay/boo?

 

am lonely.

 

boo

 

am scared

 

BOO! (gah runs n hides behind chair)

 

my efexor (anti depressant) withdrawals… i have these shaky things and i think i am starting to act like a mad guy more than usual in public. The hallucinations are real, tho no natalie portman (boo hiss!). just keep seeing things out of the corner of my eye that are not there. I mean i think they aren’t.

very bad thing is i nearly had an accident today trying to avoid one of them. yeah and i was driving, didn’t mean, like a bedwetting accident or anything like that.

I am trying clonazepam and valium (together hand in claw, probably a bad idea. oops) they make me cranky and now i am forced to sit on my rocking chair with a shotgun, chew some baccy n whittle and now and then shoot at the natalie monsters.

 

had a wee bit of a collapse in the street, but got up again :). haven’t told anyone not online bout that. sensory overload.

it’s pretty strange, i think i recognise the brain-shivers that from a horror movie or book or comic or memory.

And yet i am not depressed. the painting helps a hell of a lot. focus i guess.

Am seeing my psyche tomorrow. i think i might have to go um to hospital but THEY ARE ALL NUTS IN THERE. and i don’t just mean the staff.

 

maybe not.

 

probably should.

and now, oh this is quite weird i think. i am quite used to having self-harm and suicidal thoughts- accompanied normally by mixed state, “black mania.”

But NOW i still have the same desires but in a very different way… almost like contemplating a far less important or destructive act. i am not joking now. only example i can think of is: do i have a cup of tea or stick this sharp thing in my neck? and i am not in a depressed state when thinking it. almost HUMMING. I come back into myself with a jolt of feeling, not afraid of it but guilty. Still wanting it.

 

I have been trying to deal with this illness for a while (9 years give or take an episode since diagnosis) and most of this is new to me. it scares me in rational moments, but most of the time the anxiety is entirely SEPARATE from the rest of the symptoms.

i believe that my disorder has pretty much taken over. Even while typing this i have gone thru a few moods irrationally. Up mostly, but i cried when i read some of the other posts.

I am being a very good boy; i mean, i am eating and excersizing, taking lamactil and cleaning behind my ears and it has been a while since i have set any pets on fire. None of this makes any difference.

 

I think it is well past time for bed. It is empty, should fix that. With perhaps consistency instead of diversity. Hmm.

 

I have been having an odd month. I went back to my psyche and was prescribed lorazepam (like valium sort of). It was wonderful – anxiety evaporated, sleep pattern returned to normal, and I wasn’t stoned out of my head all the time after the first couple of days on a regular dose.

then I came off it.

I thought that I had some horrible flu or something bcuz I lay in bed for a couple of days with horrible shivers bordering on convulsions, stumbled around heaps the 2 or three times I got out of bed to get more water, and had mild fever-type hallucinations. Which were kind of cool cause I thought, u know, hey I remember u from a few weeks ago from my mixed state – hi! Isn’t it nice to see the synchronicity of our bodies in distress?

But then the anxiety returned and I did some research; also talked to my psyche about it and twas withdrawal apparently. Haven’t gone thru much like that since I was a-drinkin’ still. It is a very affective but highly physiologically addictive drug.

I have also been having continual problems with nausea. Have got ginger. I eat it. It sort of works.

Came back full circle to where i was what with shakes and mixed state symptoms n al, so now am on clonazepam (ten times stronger than valium but the same shit basically). I have had some real problems with this too – I am slowly trying to get myself off it as it affects my coordination and O MY GOD MY SEX DRIVE but tried to do it last week too fast or somethin’ and was a real mess. I went to the drug sites for both lorazepam and clonazepam to get a full view of the symptoms and all that I am going thru is well documented. I just happened to be in the bracket that reacted strongly to withdrawal. Must be my addictive nature.

Bleh.

So.

Where I am atm is that I am nearly off clonazepam (I had real trouble reading the details on the bottle bcuz I wrote PROTON ENERGY PILLS in black marker all across it)

I am only on half a tab a day (1mg) plus my lamotragine.

I think I am thru the worst of this one and out t’other side. If I go for 2 days without any clonazepam I go straight back to the way I was just before hospital (not quite as bad though – I think the lamotragine is working.)

And I have been working constantly.

And selling stuff also. Have had an artistic epiphany of sorts and am working it out piece by piece (um that would b entirely literal).

Problem is I am producing far more than selling (2:1 ratio) which is pretty good but blew all my money on getting all my work printed properly for a walking folio – and am still doing dumb things like I left the heater on for a few weeks and just got a pretty large bill from mr gas company guy that I am impressed they fit in my mailbox.

It means that it is hard to get things framed mostly.

I am much less death fixated also.

Am not going outside today.

I saw a spider there just last week.

 

 

Done