Chemical Angels, 12" by 16" (unblocked)

Prozac is the angel that saved me.

I took every (and I mean every) antidepressant on the market over the last 22 years. (Yup, I took my first happy pill at 11 years old. I was upset about my mother's third or fourth marriage. I was uncontrollable.) I have taken MAO inhibitors, SSRIs, TCAs, antianxiety meds, atypical antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, etc.

I have tasted all of the crazy pills.

Nothing made me happy. The possibility of ECT therapy was discussed.

Then Dr. Smith made the bold move to put me on the most commonly prescribed antidepressant on the market. Fluoxetine was the last resort. It was also the only one that worked.

Yes, my brother killed my niece in a drunk driving accident. That sucks. I'm unhappy about that. My husband is leaving me with two learning impaired stepkids and my own daughter for a whole year to work in Korea. That sucks. I'm unhappy about that, too.

Prozac lets me pick out little morsels of happiness that happen during the day and actually enjoy them. I find relief in sleep, food tastes good, and I can feel the love I have for my family.

I'm firing on a few more cylinders. I'm functioning. I'm not ecstatic every minute, but I'm alive. I'm coping. The synaptic cleft is shrinking and the brain cells are communicating.

This piece of embroidery pays tribute to my dear Prozac. My axons and dendrites thank you. 100 billion cells are now shaking hands.

Skin Deep

Here is a new embroidery.

I'm not sure what to say about skin. It's the layer where beauty lives and mine is ugly. I have awful skin. I am still breaking out in my thirties. A single mosquito bite will leave a deep red mark--sometimes for up to ten years. My belly ripped into shreds of stretch marks by my second trimester. I have cried buckets over my fragile and sensitive skin.



When it came time for me to do this piece, I was tempted to make it ugly and repulsive. I couldn't do it, though. I wanted this skin to be pretty and flowery. I don't want to focus on negative things any more.

G; H

I'm late with my G post.



G is for Garter Stitch.



My favorite stitch--it's bouncy and energetic. It's soothing to knit. When I started David's Korea blanket, I had grandiose ideas for lace stitches and colorwork. Then I realized that this blanket was more my comfort than his. All of my anxiety about losing my husband for a year goes into this blanket. Garter stitch is my Valium.






H is for Heart.






I remember sitting in a psychiatrist's office once and listening to his discourse about defenses. He was using a Lego blocks metaphor. The image of this heart struck me instantly and painfully. Sometimes I feel like my heart is so full of defenses and walls that it's actually made of stark blocks. Still, I think it's a beautiful image.

Cervical Dysplasia

This is my self-imposed art therapy for cervical dysplasia.





I had a bad pap last year. I don't want to talk about it. It was awful. Here's the embroidery. I wrapped it over canvas stretcher bars.

I have also discovered that I have a natural talent for arbitrarily assigning embroidery stitches to represent bodily functions. My services are free--a gift like this can't be hidden from the world.





I ended up mounted the brain. Maybe I don't need as much Puritanical Practicality as I think I do. Maybe I can make something just because I want to--just to make myself feel good. Maybe I don't have to have a good, sturdy purpose for everything. Maybe I can just enjoy having ideas and seeing them through. Maybe I can finally start taking down the cross-stitched puppies my mother in law has hanging in our house. (Despite the fact that she lives in IL.)

Nervous

Muscular and striated vs. sickly and green. Yin vs. yang.

Chemical signals are bulky and awkward. The synaptic clefts huge and uncrossable.

Are they at odds or at peace? The dendrites seem ragged--frazzled.

I think of my neurons as: somewhat sickly, somewhat special, someone creative, somewhat different. Some are long, sinuous, and muscular. Some are reptilian and decidedly Prozac-colored. Years of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and treatments have shaped these images.

The Outside Looking In--Exploration of Perceptions

I've been thinking a lot lately about my perceptions of my body.

I still plan on doing a lot of knitting, but I'm going to be working a lot of stuff out in my head with embroidery for a while.

I'm thinking beyond "body image" to the mental pictures I carry with me of my own inner workings--bones, organs, chemicals.

After the deaths of my brother and two of his children in the last year (and also the recent death of my brother-in-law) I have really wanted to know what it means to have a body, especially my own. I also want to think about how my perceptions of my body affect its function and how its function affect my perceptions.

I used to work in a medical laboratory. When drawing a woman's blood once, she was greatly concerned about the color of blood in the vial. "Is it that dark because I drink too much?" she asked. I told her that it was venous blood and the dark color was normal. "What color would it be if I were drinking too much?" she asked. I told her it would probably be the same. I couldn't, however, convince her, even after showing her specimens from other people, that her blood looked normal. To her, it looked dark because she drank too much beer.

How do I see my own body systems? I mostly picture them as two-dimensional drawings. I picture brightly colored digestive organs--a bright green gallbladder with a dashed outline indicating that it has been removed. My brain is always a sideways pen and ink drawing. (As seen in my last post.) Chemicals and hormones are always candy colored.

Today's exploration is dedicated to my lungs. Due to panic attacks/allergies/asthma, I always think of my lungs as tiny and funereal blue. The perfect little baby balloons that fill with air are missing. The diaphragm is always a thinly sliced sliver instead of the strong sheet of muscle.

Thinky Thoughts

I've been bitten by the Embroidery Bug. Actually, I think it's more of a needlestick injury, something I'm familiar with...something impossible to forget. (Now I want a complete social history on Embroidery. Where has she been and who has she been doing it with?)

I'm not sure what to do with the brain. I just know I had to stitch it. My poor little head is exploding with ideas. It's, well, convoluted.

Maybe I'll sew it into a drool bib to wear when I'm thinking my deep thoughts. Hmm...I shall see.