Note: Battles

Losing Battles

It's been a while since I felt hopeful. I've never fit anywhere, including among other artists. Too aware. Too impatient. There are a million ways to help yourself and none of them work when you actually need one. I can't remember the last time I was happy. No artist should have to say that. It will kill them.

I'm not sure who cared. I'm not sure I do anymore.

I spent years trying. New habits, new ways of seeing, things sacrificed for self-protection and things risked anyway. I was brave. I gave a great deal and became very tired. The people who seemed, at certain moments, to have answers — they didn't, or they left, or both. The last year and a half have been the worst.

There is physical illness. There always has been. The mind used to compensate — used to steady me, give the work somewhere to go. The writing and painting felt like direction. Now they feel like evidence of something I almost became.

Abusive adults. Partners who hit or lied or simply couldn't stay. Friends who rewrote what happened until I doubted my own memory. I forgave quickly, not because I'm weak but because I understand people. That understanding cost me. They read it as  a kind of permission.

At some point you start to think you're the problem. The only consistent variable is the one doing the choosing.

I'm tired. I've said it before and meant it before. There were attempts. One landed me in dialysis for eight hours. I made a rule after that. Never again.

The rule is changing.

Not loudly. Just a quiet shift — maybe, but differently this time. No coming back.

I don't have friends. No family. One person, elderly, who functions more as a parent than anything else. A husband once — we fought badly, him physically. He was a magnificent artist. I miss the artistic rapport we had together. I haven't found that since. Wine and paint nights are not the same thing.

And, my partner now, who deserves better. He’s put up with my complexity better than anyone else. He understands. Still, I’m burdensome.

I'm too serious and then too childlike and people find that difficult to hold. I don't fit. Feeling shunned has become familiar.

I tried therapy for five years. I wanted someone to listen, not prescribe. The prescribed pills made life unrecognizable to myself. I stopped them. I won't go back. What helped, eventually, was one clinician with enough experience to say the truth plainly — situational depression, not me, the weight of everything around me. That distinction mattered.

Then came the harassment. The surveillance. Being watched and mocked during the one period I was trying simply to work and be heard. . . I never harmed anyone. I minded my own life. It left damage anyway.

I doubt anyone can help. I doubt I can receive it even if they tried. I don't know if I believe in love anymore — not as something directed at me. I see beauty still, in small things. That hasn't gone. But love between people, reliable and specific — I've lost the thread of it.

People bore me now. Strangers less so, because there's no history, no accumulated weight underneath every exchange. With strangers I can be patient.

I have two people. I think I make them both miserable.

I've risen before. Many times. From worse, maybe, or at least from different. I know the mechanics of rising, the loop.

I'm not sure I want to do it again.

Broken. Gone. And ready.

M.

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