Mirror, mirror on the wall (and my first picture-y post!)

    I'm going to start this by saying that I don't really have artistic skill. Not to put myself down, it just isn't something I do much of. But when I have a project I wanna do, for the most part, I do it anyway. Just keep in mind that this idea would probably come out better with someone who picks up a paint brush more than maybe once a year. XD

     Anyway. It's a common suggestion to do affirmations or write a note for yourself to see every day, things of that sort. Things that to me generally seem like cheesy bullshit buuut then I'm having to change my mind about the bullshit-ness of a lot of things lately. I've equally been thinking about how I literally look at myself, and how often times I hate my reflection. It's not just a matter of how I perceive my physical self; sometimes what shows on my face seems to be how ugly I am inside. I've had a thing for mirrors recently. Wanting to see myself more as I try to look deeper.

      So I had this thought of decorating a mirror with the specific purpose of reminding myself of what I want to see. Either positive traits that I should see, or traits that I want to develop.

       Step 1: Think About What You Want To Say and Get Supplies
       I used a 12 inch circular mirror. Glittery seemed like a good idea, so I got extreme glitter acrylic from Folkart (including a clear one... a proper sealer may have worked better in places). I also used dried roses to symbolize love - especially the self-love I'm trying to cultivate -  and ground up voice tea since I associate it with free expression. I also tried to be a little symbolic with colors: green for growth, purple just because that's kind of my color, red for energy and love.
       I cleaned off the mirror (gloves may be good for this project, so the mirror stays clean), and brainstormed words on paper to describe what I wanted to see in my mirror.
     

   

        Step 2: Decorate Your Mirror

        This is really several steps in one, I suppose. Starting with my name at the top, I painted my words around the edge in alternating colors with a lining paint brush. It took a couple coats to get bold enough color for my taste. I took apart a couple of roses and set individual petals in dots of clear paint between adjectives, and tried to do the same with whole flowers next to my name. This worked on the petals, not so much for the roses. I ended up removing the whole roses and putting new ones on using super glue.

          Not pictured, but I also did a red heart over my name and a little green sprout. On the sprout, I used clear paint first, sprinkled on ground tea, let it dry, blew off the excess, and then painted over the plant-matter with green.

         

        Step 2.5: Glitter-fy (or at least protect)

        I painted clear glitter paint over the petals and roses to add glitter and add a bit of protection. This is where an actual sealant might be good. After I was done with the words and such, I did a coat of clear on the edge for both decoration and trying to add an extra bit of durability (since the paint only kinda likes sticking to glass).

        Step 3 (which should have much much earlier): Apply hanging

        Oh, I felt so stupid when I realized that I'd put myself in the position of having to deal with adhesive and ribbon on the back when I couldn't let much touch the front. But oh well. I used roughly half a yard of dark red wired ribbon and super-glued the ends to the back of the mirror. I then reinforced this with duct tape because, well, a bit of ugly on the back beats a broken mirror. 

        Step 4: Hang and use! =D
        I figured this mirror should be placed in a spot where I'd pass close to it, comfortably framing the face. For me this meant behind my bedroom door. I held my new mirror by the ribbon to find the proper placement, and pushed a nail slightly in to mark my place. I nailed about an inch of leftover ribbon to the wall, hung my mirror, and clipped my butterfly (for change, and it's just pretty) to the inch of ribbon.
        So this is my take on the affirmation-type ritual. Look into the mirror, morning and night. Look at my words, the words that I want to see in myself, surrounding my reflection.

       

         So this has been my first how-to post (kinda) and my first picture post! Yay! I'd love to hear if anyone else tries this, and if you want more of this type of thing. ^_^

It's so cliche...

     I may have to come off my pedestal a little bit. I'm not that exceptional. I'm not that complex. Somehow I seem to have this subconscious belief that I may be a horribly broken person, but I'm broken in an interesting way, dammit. At least, I can't think of many other reasons why the idea of my issues stemming from low self-worth/self-loathing/whatever bothers me so much. Well, that and calling my beliefs "insecurities" implies that they are false.

   So I don't know. It's so simple. On an emotional level, it's easy to go "there's no way it's that simple." But then, you go into science, you hear over and over again about the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the right one (Occam's razor). Not that it being the simplest answer is proof of veracity, but then, emotional response is hardly proof by itself either.

    The other thing that occurred to me is that this is markedly different from the past. I'm starting to consider the kinds of ideas and approaches that I used to automatically label as optimistic/denial-ish bullshit. Very bitterly and dragging my heels and still with a high degree of skepticism, but nonetheless.
   
     This is actual change. This is evidence that it's not just like last time.

      I'm moving towards somewhere new.

      There is hope.
   
 
   

Relationships on low esteem

    I have a hard time believing that my loneliness is simply a matter of self-loathing, but I can't justify that by any means that don't just circle back anyway. At least potentially. In my mind, I'm a worthless person who doesn't deserve to be loved. On some level, anyway. Am I right, or is it simply self-fulfilling?

    It's frustrating because I know that I was different before I learned to hide away. I can see the spiral, and how it started. At least, I imagine that I can... I seemed to take a turn for the worse when I got bullied when I started school, and the more I hide, the more rejected I became. I'd say that, well, this means that there's no inherent reason for me to be where I am... but almost two decades later, I feel like I've been broken. I developed wrong.

      I don't know. This wasn't supposed to be such a downer.

      Once again, the best plan seems to be a pseudo-scientific approach. I am in no way convinced that I'd be a better person if I convinced myself that I was a better person... but let's test that hypothesis. Let's see what happens if I try to force a nicer self image, just change that one variable...

      Because what I'm doing sure as fuck isn't working.

Internalizing.

    I've been told often enough that I complain about life/the world/whatever, which at least to me, implies that I blame the world for sucking. I'd find this hilarious if it didn't piss me off so much. I keep hearing that depressives have an "external locus of control;" that is, they feel like their lives/selves are controlled by external forces. I can't be the only depressive who feels like this is wrong.
    I don't believe that the power to control my life is in external forces. I believe that the power is in my hands... however (from my depressive thinking), they are too weak to actually wield it. Moreover, every failure hits as proof of inherent worthlessness. For example, if I procrastinated on a major assignment yet again, my thinking hasn't been "oh, I need to figure out a system so I get better about how I do large assignments," it's "I'm such a horrible person, I fail at everything, *commence self-loathing word vomit.*"

    I don't externalize, I internalize. I take things too personally and too deeply.

    What got me thinking about this initially was it being pointed out to me that I legitimately have situational matters that would drag me down. I work a job that I have to work at to stay half-way positive, I don't have much in the way of emotional support (or even just human interaction), I'm broke enough that I can't do what I want to do, including having to keep scaling back the scale of my travels this semester off, I'm out of shape, I lack a lot of the skills I wanna have... these are all largely things I have control over changing, but at the same time, this is where I am here and now. And aspects of it suck.
   
     Point being: I see myself get down, and calling it failure to get past depression, and feeling like I'm a hopeless person because I'll never actually break out of it. But there are forces that I haven't stopped yet (though I potentially could, in theory) that keep trying to pull me down. So of course I'm not going to suddenly become a ray of sunshine. And yes, I need to keep working on things like neutralizing self-loathing thoughts... but  I also need to keep things in perspective. I need to keep certain flaws and negative situations as more surface issues instead of reflecting major character flaws, and start working on them.

    Flaws like the fact that I really need to work on how I organize these posts. .... It's meant to be stream of consciousness! That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! Until I get better and I can point back and laugh at myself.

The fear of not being good enough

    I have a couple bits of fabric waiting to be turned into a hip scarf. One in particular, my main piece, is a bit of bright red that flows absolutely beautifully. It's light enough that I'll definitely want to add coins or something to weigh it down, so it doesn't end up just bunched around my waist while dancing, but still. Beautiful.
    And I'm afraid I'll ruin it. Especially because it was on clearance and I took the rest of it, so I likely couldn't replace it. So it's just been sitting there, with me claiming to still be planning when in reality I'm just scared to actually start cutting. I have almost no experience with sewing.

    I started reading a book called Art and Fear. One of the things that it mentioned was a class where the professor at random split his ceramics class in two: one half would be graded on quantity only, while the other only had to do one piece but it would be graded on quality. The group that was focused on creating a large body of work actually came out with better pieces than the group that was worried about creating one perfect piece.

    It's far too easy to let a need to be perfect ruin all chance to actually do any good. Especially as a beginner, when many attempts - or too far-reaching attempts - will inevitably turn out badly. That's just part of the process. I guess this is all fairly obvious, but I think sometimes it's an important thing to be reminded of.  Not doing something because you're afraid it might turn out worse than you'd like doesn't make sense. It doesn't help you in the long run. You don't get better by not doing anything, and the materials are more worthless in the bottom of a drawer, never to be used, than as a failed project.

     So I'm looking at the sewing machine I've yet to use. Perhaps I will hold off a little on my scarf, because it feels like a little too far-reaching a project right now. But I think, if I say that, I need to get to work on a tea cozy or a cushion or something... something to break in my machine where I care a little bit less about things like slightly skewed seams. But I have to do something.

      This is yet another place where I need to stop letting my fear take control.

    It's a bad evening. It's been a bad few days. I drag myself out of bed, I make tea, I go walk in the sun... and I'm happy for a moment. Crash. Make myself get back up, maybe do a tiny bit of cleaning. Crash. Make myself dance. Crash. Constantly. It's an improvement over just spending all day watching television shows in bed, but it is nonetheless extremely frustrating.

   I don't know how to turn this around. How to actually get myself to a point where I can be secure and productive. I suppose that all I know is that I have to keep at it. I need to look at what's going on, and try to change accordingly, but I can't give up. I keep failing, but am I at least failing better? Perhaps.

    I'm just tired. It takes less energy to just be stable than to crash, recover, crash, recover, crash, recover. Even if being stable means being miserable. It's worth the energy if those are my choices, but... fuck, I only have so much energy. What if I burn out before I get to actually happy-stable?

    I don't know. Um. I'm trying to come up with some positive note I can put in. I'd like to think that I'm being resilient. I'm acting like a fighter more. Something. I don't know. It's late. This may be one that gets deleted, and if not, we will hopefully soon return to your regularly scheduled cheesy positivity.

     I had a somewhat thought-provoking conversation with the psychiatrist a few days ago, and I felt like going off on some of that. I had to go in because I'd hit the 6 week mark taking sertraline. I went in thinking that either everything was good, it was doing it's job, or it was doing nothing but everything was good anyway and I didn't particularly care to test which it is. Because honestly. I've had my issues, I certainly have stuff I need to address, but to me the past month or so I've been in a healthy patch. Or, at least, a not-ill patch, which isn't really the same thing. I'd crossed over from suffering of acute depression to trying to deal with other things and habits that might tend to invite it back and hold me back in general.

     Well, not as she saw it. She saw my "this is about as good as it gets" as only a partial response. I guess I can't argue the point, I am still tired, I still don't really *want* to do things (is there a word for that? I enjoy things I just don't have will to do them). I'm certainly not free of wanting to stay in bed and a level of self-hate. But this is my happy. If truly this is only partial remission, that implies that I've truly been suffering from depression for years on end with differing severity. This is the kind of state I was in during those periods I had thought of as a break from depression....

     This also implies that if I ever when I truly break free of depression, it will be decidedly different from all those other times. 

     So there's that possible shift in how I frame my experience. She also waved off the possibility that I was getting better from depression for reasons other than the medication because it was too soon. She said that the course of depression was often five years without treatment. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but to me this implies that long-term depression does in fact abate. It wouldn't take a miracle. Five years is a long time, but a) I've already passed that and b) it isn't a life sentence. And I guess I'm moving in the direction of hope, that just hit me weirdly. If treatment speeds things up, great. I'm certainly not about to ditch it. But to me there's somehow hope in the idea that I don't need it to be better someday. Or maybe it's just me. 

    I also found it interesting that she talked about herbal medication as if it's a blanket statement. And I guess I know I'm supposed to talk to her, but of course western medicine would put itself as the authority. That seems wrong here. The interaction between western/modern/whatever medicines and folk/herbal remedies seems like something that herbalists would have more reason to know than doctors. Besides which, the difference between medicine and flavorant/food is often only context, which adds another layer of weirdness. It makes more sense to me to mention to the herbalist that I'm also taking a certain pill than to ask the psychiatrist about relatively unknown herbs. At least that's how I see it. I'm not going to make any claim that I'm right and you should listen to me. In fact, that might be a bad thing. The only claim I'd make is that the thoughts I present here are my honest thoughts.