theartblockcentral

[theartblockcentral]

studies at the Musée D’Orsay

[theartblockcentral]

I've been here the whole time.

No one has even bothered to look.

[theartblockcentral]

Alone in every way

There's no one on the other end of the line.

Who else is there supposed to be? I'm the only one out there. The phone gives static. There's no one waiting for me, no one looking for me, no one even thinking about me.

Because of my neurodivergence I don't get people. I had someone ask me recently about why I spend so much time alone, and I haven't thought about this in such a long time. I have friends, sure, but I talk to them, maybe, once a day? I felt like I had to defend myself so badly. I don't have a friendship group and I haven't in a long time. Maybe I never have? But I was sat there, and I was racking my brain for every experience I had with my friends for the past year.

I know that the one I had on exchange I temporarily got kicked out of for being a liability. I know that my art friends were hanging out without me. I know that one of my friends never told me when she was up for the degree art show. Am I really that unimportant, irregular, unpleasant and unpalatable? What am I supposed to be like? Why does no one like me that much?

It took me the last year or so to realise that, actually, my friends aren't really my friends. More like co-workers. Charity workers. Hospitality workers. It's so lonely.

I'm trying to keep it together that perhaps, maybe, I am the only one who doesn't get this. My friendship group isn't a friendship group, I have individual friends, and if I didn't ask them to hang out, then maybe they'd just stop replying. I got extremely jealous in the way he had such a tight and loving friend group. An attentive parent. I feel like I'm just going to be a burden and he's going to get tired of me like everyone else.

I have too much baggage now. What's the point of letting anyone in? I burst out crying in front of him yesterday, and he comforted me. But I didn't get it. I don't want to be anywhere. No one knows I'm anywhere anyways.

One of my mates called me a pick me. I'm literally grasping on to anyone who wants to hang out with me. Maybe they just don't.

My personality has become a showbiz façade in front of people. I can't just talk or be myself around anyone. No one would even talk to me if they knew me. no one knows me, and I know they wouldn't want to.

It's me and me alone. Even my art, my own medium, doesn't translate. I got shitty grades and It didn't even look like something good. It didn't look like something that was mine.

I hate my art, I hate the way that I am going to be alone forever. There is no-one out there. Not really. It's just going to be me. It's like constantly being a diplomat of a resourceless, unpopulous, unimportant country. I have nothing to offer.

I got asked why my phone didn't keep going off all the time. I got asked how I was so good at not going on my phone when other people were around. There's nothing on there. It's pretty much a prop.

I have always been a loner, and that's all I'm going to be.

I can't even draw anyone's face anymore, because I don't even look at them. They don't see me. They don't talk to me. I'm on my own.

[theartblockcentral]

18.06.24

It's so strange.

I've got someone who I can almost call boyfriend, but it makes me so fucking anxious. I've just finished uni a couple weeks ago, and apart from all the craziness that produced even with a half-disappointing result, I feel like I just cannot relax.

After what happened in March, where I saw someone, and it crashed and burned, leaving me brainless and hapless for at least a week, I was able to find someone who was able to make me feel wanted and happy, and fun and interesting. I didn't feel like such a criminal about him. I don't know what it is, I feel like everything I do is just... wrong. People see me as guilty for many reasons, but there just is no denying that I am definitely not a lot of peoples' favourite person.

This is the problem. He's from the North,, I'm from the South, I move away soon enough, and then there's not much more we can do together. I'm scared of having another long distance relationship that hurts me more than it should. Even now, I am sitting while he is sleeping somewhere else for the night, and although that's perfectly fine, for some reason, I've just become so anxious. It's as though, when he's not around, I assume he doesn't like me anymore. I've fucked it up or something. It's not fair to assume that, of course, but since my housemate has moved out, I feel more alone than ever. Socialising seems like a lot, living in an empty house is a lot, scraping together the last of my money is a lot. I feel like maybe, with him around, I was able to suspend thinking for the time being. But, right now? It's all hitting me in violent waves.

Why does this all have to be so unknown?

It's one of those things where, with everything going on, I remember that I believe God has a plan for us all. So, why does it feel like I am living a directionless, always-in-motion, unset life? It's as though I am on the side of a hill in which the rain makes it slick, and you have to tense every muscle to keep yourself in the same spot. There is no guarantee the ground won't give way underneath you.

Why does this all have to be so hard? Why can't I just have it easy sometimes? I feel like I know where this is going and I'm dreading it.

I can't seem to connect with all of it in my head. I think my brain is blocking me from the painful part of it all where I am unable to stop it from happening. To care, to have feelings for someone, that's really tough.

I don't wish for it to always end in tragedy and painfulness. I don't want to constantly be left with memories of people I've loved with a wall up. To feel like I was never understood, or loved right, or respected, makes you more invisible than never being talked to. I don't know what I want. I'm not even sure I have the choice to decide in this matter.

Perhaps the reason it makes me so anxious when there is no visual sign of him is that, in my head, there is no guarantee he is coming back. In the pit of my stomach, I don't think there is a way to express what this feels like.

[theartblockcentral]

My name is not Sofia or Lisa and I'm not a law student.

My professor, who I've known for four years now, asked me why I wanted to do a career module in the art department, considering I do law.

I don't do law. I have sat in the same room as this man and talked to him for many years, and he still doesn't know who I am. In the art department, my name was written down as Lisa for three years, which isn't even my name. I even got called Sofia by my therapist when I told her how much this upset me, when people don't even know my name.

I have been grappling with the idea of being single for a year and a half now. My best mate, let's call him Luke, has graduated, and for some reason, he made up for me not having anyone. We walked home from nights out together, spent our nights talking until morning, discussed our problems and watched the sun rise together. He addressed me by my first name more than anyone in this world. It's not that I wanted to be with him, but I felt weirdly loved by our small interactions when the world wasn't looking.

I was bullied in school, and I had no one for a while. I wanted people to forget my name. I wanted to crumple myself into a ball like paper and throw myself out a window most days. When I had trouble in love, I wanted to disappear more than anything, because I felt so monstrous and wrong to this world, like I was inherently wrong for everything and everyone around me.

When I started uni, I thought things were going to be different. I tried to stand tall, make a name for myself, become memorable, have any reputation. Just something to hold onto to let go of the town I was from and be something else rather than what I had been. In reality, I almost died in the process. I have never felt alone like that in my life. Not just mentally alone where it's like, people are in the other room, or hearing music from outside the party, no- more like, the party's over, and everyone has gone to bed, and the world has been vacated. I would meet strangers from my uni and know them for one night and talk and never be seen again, because I wanted to be known but I was okay with being forgotten. It makes you want to wipe yourself off the face of the Earth, to be honest.

Most of the time I remember at night, I was on my own. It's like my mind forgot people and I was just, prepared to be the only one of my kind. It's all changed recently. I want love. I want it so bad. I'm so scared of it, but I'm tired of being forgotten. I disappear to people. I hate that. My name isn't remembered. I'm not just here to make people feel better. I'm harnessing my own feelings, but I just... I want to have someone in which, when I walk with them, time doesn't matter, and we are the only last two people on earth, and I feel loved and seen. And I'll be attracted to them as they are to me. I'll smile when I see them and they'll say may name and smile. I want to be loved. I want to be remembered, and remembered in the same way a painting in a gallery is seen.

I want to be a painting to someone. I want to be intricate, studied for my beauty to them, and skill, and interest and complexity, and to be brought up in conversation. Beautiful paintings aren't necessarily beautiful, but in the way that the scream is beautiful. It's interesting the whole way through, and it's someone's favourite piece. I don't want people to see me once and think they could do it all better. I don't want people to see me and say I'm not worth the time. I want someone to understand me.

As someone who paints, to have a painting, and be proud, and put in the work, and look at every detail, to eat with the eyes as it were. I want to have something that suspends me in time.

I've been scared all this time of something because I'm afraid of fucking it up. My heart is becoming desperate to be looked at. I'm tired of one night stands and gruesome awkward conversations, helping people with their lives and being alone. I have so much to give. I miss the innocence of something I never had.

Maybe that's why I mess things up for myself- because untouched things are still beautiful. If I never have it, it looks so real.

I want to open my heart back up again. But, that's not something of my generation seem to want, or what people seem to want from me. Is it me? Was I always just something for people to prove a point with? Was I ever more than just a decoration to them?

I hate walking home alone at night while people walk together. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I want to feel that part of life again. I want the reason time gets funny and my grades aren't the most important thing, the reason I want to look into the future. I want to be known, heard, seen, remembered.

I want someone to say what I say to them back with meaning.

I feel so isolated. Aurelius says that people are meant to be together, like fingers on hands or toes on feet, or even just rows of teeth. We can't live being so alone for so long. We get driven crazy. God, let someone find me please.

I'm sitting in a gallery with a hundred other paintings, I want people to stop at my canvas and SEE ME. To go to the gallery just to see me. To be the reason someone listens to a certain song or practices something, or whatever.

To summarise, I'm overlooked and a wee bit lonely.

[theartblockcentral]

A Military Mistake

Okay, So this Is a new kind of embarrassing I cannot express.

I was positively shaking yesterday, numb and shaking- I went out shopping with my ma, and she took me for a milkshake at Maccies when I managed to finally spill my emotions out in the middle of T K Maxx to her. She told me that, when she was in high school, when her and her best friend got into heartbreaks, they would take each other for a milkshake at McDonalds, and she knew I needed it. Happily I went along, and I got a McFlurry.

After a pub quiz and a long awaited reunion (say... 11 years overdue?), I texted him and asked, how do you feel about getting married at this point? Thinking he'd give me a soppy enough response that i'd be so moved that I'd get over it.

'what?', he replied.

'about the marriage! Are you kidding? it's huge! and the army, and the colour-blindness?' (he's an artist in his soul so that was a turn of events on its own.)

'What are you talking about?'

'you said engagement, yes? You're proposing in October?'

'What are you on about? I said engagement in the military....'

'Do you even know what engagement means?'

'_____ I swear, someday you'll understand my english...'

'someday you'll speak english well enough that i'll understand.'

That's when I clocked it.

He doesn't speak English well, and it turns out that engagement and enlistment are two very close words in french. He was enlisting in the army.

A wave of choking relief came over me and I just... I have no idea what to say??? My mom laughed out loud, but I still feel bad about her giving me all this attention over apparently nothing, but she understood. I'm so glad she was there with me, though.

I told my therapist all about this (I love this woman, after a host of useless type As, I found someone who could finally understand me), let's call her Barnum, for my favourite type B. We were discussing this, because to be honest, I had no idea how to feel. i genuinely had no idea how to register any of this, because at my age, it's not exactly something that seems to happen every da. In fact, it's 200% more than it had been the day before. Or even the 20 years before this! Even still, it was one of the moments where I couldn't help but talk and keep talking, completely engrossed in my thoughts that I couldn't even register I was present.

That's the thing, I had no idea why it felt so weird. Everyone else seemed to have it worked out. They seemed happy with other people. I was still unable to send in a job application without, and people, had figured it out ahead of me. How to coexist, love and live with each other. I find it so difficult to get it together when it comes to others and it's all. So. Much. Effort. Why is it so much effort for me and so natural for everybody else?

(currently listening to Anti-hero by Taylor Swift)

To be honest, I find all socialising difficult. Because of my neurodivergency, and I mean this not as an excuse, but genuinely as a problem, I spend so much effort figuring out how to perfectly socialise, how to perfectly dress, how to do everything so well to fit into society that I can't keep it up all the time. I have had a toxic enough relationship. I've had so many toxic friendships. It's all enough to make you question about yourself.

Since I ent to Italy for those 6 months, I decided as a concrete decision, after everything, that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't worth it. Maybe I was just destined to be alone for the rest of my time. I'd become successful, and I'd make the world better from a distance. Kids weren't meant for me. A partner wasn't for me. When things got better, my grades at uni increased by around 15%. That's not nothing. I'm getting 2:1s now. I'm throwing my heart and soul into my work. I'm genuinely going somewhere.. but trying to please everyone every step of the way isn't worth it. I seem to have such a low opinion of myself. It took me a whole session of blabbing to finally admit it.

The best thing I can do for someone else is walk away.

I really want to change this stupid narrative. I have the ability to throw my heart into things like nothing else, but I'm so afraid of hurting others that I just don't think I'm worth all the hassle. People get so hurt. I just don't want to be a part of it.

At the end of the day, it hurt because I would have invested myself in him. Him. I genuinely have never felt this way, and I wish I had a way to explore it. I know he's not for me in that way. He has a girlfriend. He's dedicated. He's everything and he's perfect.. but he's someone's something. That's the problem. My heart throws itself at people who don't throw back, and jobs I don't want, because if I know it wouldn't be worth it, it stings a lot less, and there's less damage I can do. But, as Barnum told me, I need to start investing. I am worth investing in. I need to start trusting again.

I go up to university in a couple days, and I am jobless (an issue because that's a part of my modules) and I have to start emotionally investing.

God help me.

[theartblockcentral]

You kidding??!! This is so smart!

thank you! I will be trying this out :)

Pens are starting to just feel like pens and notebooks are just feeling like notebooks. I take quick, ugly notes. What is happening?!?!?!?!

[theartblockcentral]

He's proposing in October to his girlfriend

He's proposing to his girlfriend in October.

Genuinely, I've had such big feelings for this man since I met him. I KNEW he had a girlfriend, I was incredibly delusional because he was everything I ever wanted in a guy, he's smart, caring, handsome as ever, and he was NEVER mine.

This is the thing, until yesterday, I was struggling to even commit to a job application. I am going into my final year at uni, and I have to get a job, and the opportunity has come up for me to be an assistant at a famous artist's studio. It'd be my big break- I finally did apply, but it took me almost a full week to send it in. I was so sure I could've been doing it to impress my parents that I was afraid to commit. I was afraid of even committing to my own big break in my career, and yet, I seemed to be so sure about my feelings about this guy I only knew for 6 months.

I know my life is starting to go somewhere: this isn't even the first engagement announcement today! A friend (ish) from year 7 has gotten engaged. How is everyone so sure about everything? I know I'm not meant to be looking for commitment right now. In fact, I don't even want to, but once it gets to this point where people are able to find joy and achieve what they want in life at the same time, it makes me wonder where my balance is. I wish to be single, become a great artist, or actress, or something of note, and settle in mayyyybe late twenties to thirties. I'm at the point in my life where I don't feel pressure to be in a relationship, and I feel validated by my own single life. The only problem is having moments that hit my core like this and remind me that people have their own stories and lives. I'm not going to stop them. The memories I've made for them are just memories, and I'm not a part of their present. I spent all this time on exchange making my feelings known, and it felt like a massive breath of fresh air, but now it's as though the things I want are just so far off from me that I can't picture them. I could picture him, I could see him, he seemed like an achievable something.

In the end, I guess it's like this: I need to commit to myself. Let things go and keep moving. I'm in a new place, I'm ready to work for myself, and I am the most important thing in my life. I deserve lovely people, and I need to learn that I can love people and not have to be in love with them.

Currently listening to Speak Now by Taylor Swift, whisper-screaming. I'm a whole different level of delusional! But it's okay, From my last relationship ending, I know now that, if I learn to put that level of emotional effort in for others into myself, the results are great.

Still a bit heartbroken though. Ha, ha, haaaaaaa.....

[theartblockcentral]

Pens are starting to just feel like pens and notebooks are just feeling like notebooks. I take quick, ugly notes. What is happening?!?!?!?!

[theartblockcentral]

RE; Of all the things that I know

30.08.23

Of all the things I know, there is only one question that seems to ring in my head with the same warmth you can get from drinking too much wine.

Is it really worth ____?

I had a fight recently with my ma ( which was longer enough ago that I remember but do not care enough to delve into ) after which we had a long chat after. In this, she mentioned, the key to a successful relationship, the key to things, the key to life is, Is it really worth all of this?

Not so much in a grim, is life worth living kinda way, but, yes, I suppose also like that too. I mean, that is how I used to value the question, and in which my life was an internal silence that hurt more than anything. It wasn't an internal peace. Life felt like scraping the inside of my mind with a metal dish scrubber and then filling my skull with hot sauce- that level of discomfort- but the vessel I was in, the vessel I was, has so little value, it became my own dead-weight. My therapist tells me that being depressed and baking in your bedsheets is a way of the person cocooning themselves from the outer world, and she's right. To this day, I'm not sure of what I was scared of... but I think maybe it was the question of whether my actions, whether the way my mind worked second by second, was worth keeping going. I felt like I polluted myself.

Nowadays, after six months in Italy, it's so different. Days feel like days again. Friends feel like people again rather than some kind of puzzle I had to solve. Food tasted. Noise sounded. Things came together as I slowly returned to earth.. and in all that time, I really did learn what was worth doing to keep me going.

While I was away I had a small episode on a night out. But because this wasn't a one time thing, and because it worried everyone and put myself at risk and I ran home, lost and confused, because emotionally I put myself back into survival instinct mode, they turned their back on me. It took enough gaul to apologise. At home I wouldn't have done. I just would have assumed that is what people kinda do my age. It's hard for me to see past myself sometimes when I get into the state of feeling alone, but I knew it was worth it to apologise wholeheartedly, to admit my mistakes, and to keep moving.

Some of the things that have been worth giving my time to to feeling more present have given me hope and meaning. I have friends who are worth the time: they are no effort, they are time well spent, and a part of my world. I go hiking, and get in touch with what my younger self would have loved: she is worth fighting for. Most importantly, is the seasons changing.

Back in England, the sky is so blank and white it collapses in flatly, rendering the world into a tiny white tent. It can get very depressing. The days are dark and cold, the nights are dark and colder, and it all seems to be in a small fish bowl of a place. However, what keeps me going, as a small practice that I so happened to glance upon in Wabi Sabi by Beth Kenton was how people pay attention to the changing of the seasons, and how their are more like 18 seasons than 4. However, after a long and stressful day, I ask myself;

What were the trees doing? Have they changed colour yet?

Was it cold? Did I dress for the weather? (Another thing I've learnt- life is improved the minute you dress right for the weather)

Did I see how the branches moved? Did I hear/ see birds etc?

Did I even leave the house? Sometimes I haven't. It's not such a problem when it's not such an outside kind of day, but to be honest, we are outside creatures. Sifting through my memories of all i've seen and pinpointing tiny things like that that I may have only seen out of a window once that day helps me grapple with the idea of being alive.

Ooh, here's a shocker. You can have an entire social event, day at school, meeting with friends, day at work, night out or dinner Without something bad happening. I have NO EFFING CLUE why this has taken me so long to realise, but to be honest, I never had a stable friendship group, a completely un-chaotic household (love them), day at school... everything went wrong a lot, and problems and whatsuch occured and I guess I was just used to that? The moment I realised was when I went to a birthday party of a friend in Italy, and nothing went wrong. I didn't feel bad, No arguments occured, no one got too drunk, everyone got along, no huge chunks of gossip either. Spoiler: people actually live like that. I loved it. It's helped me not be so afraid of planning my birthday, and I didn't make a scene this year. And it was perfect. It's really never worth being in a place where nothing goes right ever. You've just got to keep moving until you find it.

Conclusively, the answer to the question, Is it worth it?

The answer is yes.

I can't believe I'm finally saying it.

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

The people are worth talking to, the world is worth experiencing, even the sad and scary bits. Hey, you do learn at some point. You've just got to keep moving.

Aaaaand the arguments aren't all that. Not everything is worth being said. If you love someone, even if they don't love you, it is worth telling them, because that takes big effing balls to do, and admit you're willing to give a piece and never stop giving. But arguments, fights, all that, most of what you need to shout at someone, isn't worth it. Leave in peace physically or mentally. Vent to someone, move on from that person.

make it worth it.

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[theartblockcentral]

The Language Of Flowers

Acacia: Hidden love, beauty in withdrawal

Amaryllis: Pride, a hard won success

Anemone: Vanishing hopes

Bells of Ireland: Wish for good luck

Carnation: Fascination, love and distinction

Daffodil (Narcissus): Honesty and truth

Dahlia flower: Warnings and change

Daisy: Innocence, loyal love and purity

Delphinium: Open heart, ardent attachement

Gardenia: Symbol of secret love

Gladiolus: Remembrance, faithfulness and sincerity

Hyacinth: I'm sorry, please forgive me.

Iris: Eloquence

Lily (general) : Purity of the heart and refined beauty

Lily of the valley: Return of happiness

Marigold: Passion and creativity

Orchid: Beauty, refinement and love

Peony: Happy marriage

Lavender: Love at first sight

Red rose: Love, respect, courage and passion

White rose: Purity, secrecy, silence, innocence and charm

Sunflower: Good luck and ambition

Tulip: Irresistible love

Violet: Faithfulness, modesty and delicate love

Zinnia: Lasting affection, daily remembrance and good memories

[theartblockcentral]

Pastel and ink on paper 15x13cm

[theartblockcentral]

Travis Barker

Ink and pen on paper 13x15cm

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Casa sul fiume

Pencil and ink on paper 15x15cm

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Oskar Laske, 1919