I think all of us have been here. Boredom and complete lack of initiative or energy to do anything. Maybe, more appropriately, complete burnout. Growing up I was easily bored. And in adulthood it's still here. I'm nearly 40 years old (at this writing - I've got 6 months left in my thirties) and somehow I thought this might change once I grew up. But... nope.
Not to mention - as anyone who knows me knows, I'm not that excitable a person. I've been depressed before...it's gone and returned and gone and, again, returned...and this is the closest visual representation of that depression that I could paint at the time of this piece. "The Unbridled Oppression Of Boredom," © 1999-2000. There's so much going on in depression, clinically speaking. You're tired or exhausted most of the time. It's impossible to get out of bed ("And why would anyone want to?" you think) but not really possible to sleep either. People think you're lazy, but you aren't. And when you can feel, the heaviest weight sits on your heart. At the worst, I lost all feeling altogether. Not "not caring" so much as not even being able to care. I desperately wanted a feeling, ANY feeling, even pain, rather than that nothing. Fortunately I was a lot younger then (in 1994-5 when this started), and that horrible absence of emotion has been gone ever since. But in the painting, the ennui, the boredom and pointlessness - it's all there. Why stand up? Why put on clothes? Why eat anything? Why try to escape your gray world? The deprivation is like a strong hunger which cannot be filled.
I painted this within 5 years of that horrific emotionless state, it was a lot fresher in my mind then. Fortunately, my family understood I needed help, and I did get it. Medically and therapeutically. Sometimes depression is not only a state of mind, it's biological and clinical. It's a disease of the brain, with low supplies of certain neurotransmitters and too much of others. Within a few months of treatment I was able to feel. It takes a while. But when you're in that awful, mental, hard concrete cell, there's no future but now.
And there I was. Starving, crying for no reason, bored to near death, no upside to look at. This painting was, for a very long time, my only reality. It will probably happen again. I don't know the future. But if this depiction, this painting, helps anyone relate or begin to understand what this is like - if they've been through it, are in it now, or know someone else they love who is stuck in the middle of this wasteland of the mind, and can think about this without judgement for not "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (I wish it were that simple!) - I've done my job. What happens next - help or no help - is up to you.
Not to mention - as anyone who knows me knows, I'm not that excitable a person. I've been depressed before...it's gone and returned and gone and, again, returned...and this is the closest visual representation of that depression that I could paint at the time of this piece. "The Unbridled Oppression Of Boredom," © 1999-2000. There's so much going on in depression, clinically speaking. You're tired or exhausted most of the time. It's impossible to get out of bed ("And why would anyone want to?" you think) but not really possible to sleep either. People think you're lazy, but you aren't. And when you can feel, the heaviest weight sits on your heart. At the worst, I lost all feeling altogether. Not "not caring" so much as not even being able to care. I desperately wanted a feeling, ANY feeling, even pain, rather than that nothing. Fortunately I was a lot younger then (in 1994-5 when this started), and that horrible absence of emotion has been gone ever since. But in the painting, the ennui, the boredom and pointlessness - it's all there. Why stand up? Why put on clothes? Why eat anything? Why try to escape your gray world? The deprivation is like a strong hunger which cannot be filled.
I painted this within 5 years of that horrific emotionless state, it was a lot fresher in my mind then. Fortunately, my family understood I needed help, and I did get it. Medically and therapeutically. Sometimes depression is not only a state of mind, it's biological and clinical. It's a disease of the brain, with low supplies of certain neurotransmitters and too much of others. Within a few months of treatment I was able to feel. It takes a while. But when you're in that awful, mental, hard concrete cell, there's no future but now.
And there I was. Starving, crying for no reason, bored to near death, no upside to look at. This painting was, for a very long time, my only reality. It will probably happen again. I don't know the future. But if this depiction, this painting, helps anyone relate or begin to understand what this is like - if they've been through it, are in it now, or know someone else they love who is stuck in the middle of this wasteland of the mind, and can think about this without judgement for not "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (I wish it were that simple!) - I've done my job. What happens next - help or no help - is up to you.
