The Loneliest I've Ever Been: Three Minor Paintings

Oh, insomnia. How I loathe you. For as long as I can remember I've always had trouble sleeping. Every time it happens, I always feel like the only one awake in the world, or like the last woman on earth. Until recently, I used to have to get up around 2am or so after lying in bed for hours to paint (since my studio is also my bedroom, for the last 18 years). So it shouldn't be surprising I'd choose to paint my inability to sleep, just to exorcise that demon from inside me. 

Unravel ©2001, acrylic on canvasboard 16"x20"

This one, "Unravel" is the first. It was finished in 2001 but was a memory of a horrible night in 1999. Seen from above (if you were floating by my ceiling) it's me in the bed I still sleep in, crying. I'd just heard "Unravel"by Bjork on my stereo (with headphones, in reality) - the source of the green light. The words were sad but simple, like the music. The hard part for me was the funereal sounding organ at the end. It was heartbreaking. When you're in bed at night with no hope of sleep your brain will imagine the worst things...and the song only made me think of death, and the deaths of those I loved so much, leaving me more alone than I felt even then. So, the title of the painting is named after the song, repeating in my head, over and over.

 

 

Sleeping Pills Don't Work ©2006 acrylic on canvasboard 20"x24"

Six years after painting Unravel, nothing had changed! No surprise to me, really, but looking back on how sleepless I've been since I was in high school (and I'm 40 now), how have I survived? Holy crap. Well, same subject, different view. If you were part of the wall beside my bed (in the same scene from above in "Unravel") this is what you'd see. Me, sitting up in bed, my little mini-stereo on and shining green light in the gloom, my blue windows in the background. "Sleeping Pills Don't Work." The clock on the stereo says 3:35 (am), but the 5 is backward...just to demonstrate how slightly otherworldly and fundamentally wrong everything feels during a night when you can't sleep until sometime shortly after 4 in the morning. It's terrible and lonesome. Almost dreamlike, due to the sleepiness that (paradoxically) won't let you sleep. And neither will sleeping pills.

Summer Insomnia. Typical. ©2007 acrylic on canvasboard 16"x20"

Another year, another insomnia painting. Monochrome this time. "Summer Insomnia. Typical." Same bedroom scene as the previous two paintings, different perspective, head-on. Summer is when my sleeplessness is at its worst. Sometimes it's the heat, or the sun going down too late in the evening. It's probably a self-fulfilling prophecy by now. In the darkness I can only ever see one bluish-black color, since my old mini-stereo is gone now. So, no green light in this one.

These three paintings were not hard work, and it shows (to me). The further down from "Unravel" you get, the less the paintings seem to hold themselves together...from the backwards "5" to the slanted walls of the last painting. By this time, I had no more patience with insomnia and its absolute-aloneness. The paintings themselves were not art for art's sake at this point and more like continued exorcism that just got more frantic and impatient as time went on. I don't have as bad a problem with insomnia as I did before...my doctors have been able to drug me enough so that I've ben sleeping pretty well (sort of) since 2013. Still, that's a long time. A lifetime of restlessness, slowly and finally giving in to sleep.

All Ties Severed Clean

"All Ties Severed Clean" ©2003, 16"x20" acrylic on canvasboard

Well, the title says it all. It's the perfect New Year's celebratory painting for me, cutting all the ties that dragged me down along the dry desert dirt in 2014 from this year onward. I know not everything will allow itself to be cut away (like my sister's death, I'll bear that burden until my OWN death...), but so many drastic and GOOD changes - if things go fairly closely to what's been planned - are on the horizon. December, even though it's the month I was born in, always seems like the small hours of a dark, dark night. New Year's Day is the sunrise after that oppressive dawn. I'm looking forward to this year! I hope it's the same for you all as well. Onward and upward, all ties severed clean.

An Unfinished Life

In 2011, my sister Stephenie was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She was 33 years old at the time, and I - the big sis - was barely 36. It was to become a death sentence. A prolonged one. She passed away quietly just 2 months ago.
The past few years were very tense, yet unravelled and chaotic, most of the time. She had so many surgeries - dangerous ones, at that - and so many emergencies. It was a hard road. Not only for her, but for all of us. As for its effect on me, I felt lost because I had never been so close to something so perilous before with someone I love, who is just like me - the only one with the same 2 parents, the same genetics, the same bloodline. And she was my baby sis, someone I'd fight for quite literally in our youth (if anyone ever threatened her). And she watched out for me too, in ways I'm just beginning to see. We were lifetime best friends. We were as close as sisters can be. But this time I had no control and no way to save her.
I've been in therapy for quite a long time (for other reasons), but my counselor knows I deal with issues and emotions I can't control through art, especially painting. That way, I have some sort of exertion over what's happening. Because painting anything is MY version of the world, for better or worse. She advised me to paint something with Steph in it, so I did.
And this is it. It's unfinished. This is Steph at home watching TV, as it was what she did most of every day if she wasn't at the hospital. Originally there were supposed to be angels hovering above in the glow with their hands on her abdomen, healing the cancer. Her 2 dogs and cat were to be in it too, as well as her IV pole. But when I started it in 2012, I quickly ran out of energy and never finished it. A friend of mine who was a hospice nurse and had a brother dying from cancer as well saw this version and said "It's sad, it's depression." And oddly I had never seen it that way, because to me it was "unfinished." But she had a point. I decided I would photograph the unfinished painting and keep it for what it is.
I don't know if I will ever finish it or not - sometimes I think so, other times not so much. But if I do, this will be the first of a diptych, the other painting will be "A Life Fulfilled." But for now, this is how Steph's life was toward the end...someone too young with so much life inside brought low quietly to an untimely end. I can't believe she's not here. But just because her end on this earth was tragic, she did leave it peacefully and quietly, understanding the nightmare was over and she could finally rest. I think the way she lived her life toward the end, with an odd calmness I'd never seen before, is a testament unto itself. In retrospect, I believe she will have had a gigantic and positive effect on those of us still alive, those who knew her well or not at all. I want to make the next painting about that, if I decide to start one. For now though, since her death is still so close and overwhelming for me to see beyond it, I have this painting, "An Unfinished Life."
Right now, I can just say to her with comfort, "I'll see you again! Later, poopyhead."

In Memoriam
Stephenie Michele Holmberg (née Fitts)
June 29, 1977 - Sept 25, 2014

Forgive Me

"Forgive Me" ©2007 16"x 20" Acrylic on Canvasboard

This one wasn't initially a self-portrait. I don't look like this anymore...and especially not the time that I actually painted it. It was made in the first half of 2007 when my grandmother was in the hospital, and was soon to pass on. It was a very sad 6 months, but for some reason, I felt good too. I'm thinking it was some sort of overcompensation for knowing I was going to lose my last living grandparent soon, I needed something to keep me going. So I had a lot of experimentation with "nice" colors in my paintings, and it was also the most prolific I had ever been in churning out paintings day after day. I think I was trying to counterbalance the sadness.

When I finished this one, I brought it in with me while I visited my therapist (as  I would typically do) thinking "This is a pretty nice-looking painting compared to the other stuff I do, it's got pink in it!" But when I showed it to my therapist, he took a long look at it and then said... "Forgive you for what?"

It kind of shocked me then, but now I can completely see what he saw. My pain, the so-called whitewashing of it (or "pink-washing" if you want to get technical), the beauty in the pretense I was trying to put forward -"I'm totally fine right now. No, REALLY!" while it was completely apparent I was not. Beauty and pain and a lot of guilt for stopping seeing my Grandma in the hospital three months after she'd been in there, and another three months before she died. The sacrificial nature of it (crown of thorns) - I'd been told not to go back to see her, to remember her as she was, BY my therapist, and I think he was right in the end to tell me to stop.  (I had too much difficulty with it and was quite literally shutting down during the hospital visits with my parents - as in, I couldn't even finish walking to the door when we'd leave, I'd have to collapse on the floor and try not to fall asleep/pass out. Every time. I wasn't helping my Grandma, and I was not helping myself or my parents, either).

In the end, I actually gave this picture to my therapist (who was also a very good friend and I'd been seeing him in therapy for 13 years by then) free of charge. He deserved it, he had done me a lot of good. He was graciously thankful. Then, barely two years later in June 2009, my therapist died, himself, at the young age of 54 to an illness he'd had for as long as I'd known him. It was devastating. Several months later, his wife (whom I also miss very much) sent me back two paintings - and this was one of them. I never thought I'd see it again, and hoped she would keep it as a reminder of him and how good of a doctor he was and so careful but honest with me, too. So much so that you could even argue that he was a family friend. He cared so much about his patients. But it was sent back to me in November that year, with a note she wrote about how well he thought of me and my "struggle" to take back my life. That he had loved the two paintings I'd given him, but he was no longer here. To let the painters be a reminder to me of how much he had cared for me. Things had come full circle.

Now when I look at this painting, and the "Forgive me..." title...the pain, the roses and the woman my therapist knew was actually me (before I did!) and his very sincere question, "Forgive you for what?" and remember that with the very few people I knew back then, I had done nothing to be forgiven for. Not even for stopping seeing my Grandma in the last 3 months of her life (which was spent in a semi-conscious/fully medicated netherworld, where she was unreachable by the living) and knowing that she would have wanted me to remember her as she was when she was well. I also know my therapist would want the same of me. So this painting is of the pain and the beauty of knowing and loving the two people I had known in good times and bad, and in their last time on earth. Now I know what my therapist was trying to say, that there was nothing I needed to be forgiven for.

Just Get It Over With

"Just Get It Over With" ©2008

This is actually a self-portrait in the non-metaphorical sense, because I was using a photo of myself for this one. Waiting, boredom, more waiting, more boredom...this is a universal problem. As for me I despise it, but I'll wait if I have to if it's for something important. But many times it's not. You could be in line at Disneyland (except you'd be sweating profusely in the hot sun), or you could be in a doctor's office for a checkup or on the freeway in gridlock. You could be in Sociology class, waiting for your (terrifying) turn to give your speech on small businesses in front of 40 other students. And you HATE public speaking! Hurry up and wait. Whatever it is, all you can do while waiting is think "will someone hurry up and JUST GET IT OVER WITH?!" 

Eventually, you'll get there. It just sometimes takes a while. Until you do, though - this painting may also be you.

Watching Life Passing Me By

I painted this sometime around 2001/02.  I had been stricken with an illness - mental illness - severe enough to keep me from enjoying life or even other people (although part of that is just because I'm very introverted, which compounded the problem). Severe clinical depression - among other things - just kept bitch-slapping me left and right, up and down. I love my home, especially my bedroom-studio combo, but it became just another form of solitary confinement and imprisonment. I had done nothing wrong! Hence the angel in distress. I had so much to deal with inside my head AND outside (the suicide of my aunt, my grandmother's aneurism that nearly killed her, dropping out of college AGAIN, and a multitude of other things) that I was paralyzed and found myself in my own private, lonely hell. I'm still here, actually. It's not always hell, but for the most part this is my "safe place" and when I leave it I become very paranoid and self-conscious, so it's easier not to leave. 

I've been here too long, beyond my self-imposed sentence. When I came here, I was 23 years old. This year I'll turn 40.

I've been here since 1997. I've seen life pass me by from faraway, longing to leave my prison to join it, but still feeling trapped at the same time. The worst part of all of it is that I'm the one holding the key and I could escape any time, but haven't.  Fortunately, my life began changing for the better in when my best-friend-turned-boyfriend from an art site online (we met in 2007) proposed to me in December 2010. We've been working toward a wedding plan since then, and we've had to postpone it a few times, but next year we hope to marry and settle in a new home, far from here. I'm about to be set free, to be with someone I love more than anything. And the strange part - I don't even think of it as a "prison break" so to speak...just a new phase of life. 

This time of self-imprisonment will be over soon enough, and I have so much more to look forward to. I won't even realize I've left! I have so much life to live. 

I won't remember this as a prison. I'll most likely remember it fondly, where my creativity had time to germinate and come to fruition. All this time, it's just been a holding cell, nothing more. Life will probably be harder (for someone like me), but it is so much more worth the trouble. I can't imagine anything better. I have so much hope. The "angel in distress"/prisoner of no crime doesn't have to watch life from afar anymore. I am a part of it, finally.

The Oppression Of Unbridled Boredom

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.