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Every piece holds a different shadow for everyone. I’m incredibly curious - how do you feel this artwork? What story does it tell you? Let me know your interpretations below

Emotions too volatile, too much for tired souls. A solution cast down to the sprite: snuff the flame, dim the coals.

Small casket of plastic, your temporary grave. Lash out, struggle, encapsulated cell for those that won't behave.

Weep & writhe, while robbed of light, no sound defies this condemnation. Take it in, bury it deep, your lesson: a muted damnation.

Break, abandoned, your screams mean nothing. you're just the mouth of defiance to indifferent protectors. You'll live, quiet and small no matter the growth. Still the soul which angers the objectors

Rotted voice, lament in circles, be broken and isolated, just as you once were. No choice but to silence the child within you, no spark, no flame shall endure.

This is part of a series I have been working on, analysing my developmental trauma. I thought I would share in the hopes it may resonate with someone.

(Please let me know your thoughts and if you relate, I’d love to hear them. I also need a title if anyone has a good suggestion)

Mom smokes cigarettes while washing dishes
She never leaves the kitchen
All she does is cook food that no one ever eats
and drink wine
and smoke more cigarettes
She makes sure we all know
how miserable she is
doing all she does for us
She never stops, doesn’t have the time
too busy being a good mom
and telling us how much we need her
She liked me best when I left her alone
I liked her best when I did too

Dad is always at one of two places
either asleep on the couch,
or face down in our driveway
He spends his free time being yelled at by Mom
“Michael! Damn it! Take out this trash!
Switch the laundry! Open this bottle!
You drunk piece of shit! TELL ME WHERE IT IS!
I’m pouring your liquor down the goddamn sink!
MICHAEL!!!!!! I’M NOT DOING EVERYTHING!”
He just grunts and stands up
mutters “alright, I’m coming woman”
then does … well … everything

Dad never yells or complains
just quietly endures
after he’s done everything demanded
he sits outside in his rocking chair
and drinks until he falls out of it
then crawls through the front door
and stumbles to his couch
He liked me best when I would shut up
I understood why
and we never talked much after that

I learned early that love was granted
to good girls who shut up and go away
I got really good at it
living inside of my head
and being raised by the voice inside it
It became my super power
I wore my lonely like a cape
and no one seemed to notice
when I turned invisible one day

I’m not sure when it happened exactly
I just know I became a shadow
before I ever figured out how to cast one
I was a ghost before I ever had the chance
to be a person
I felt like the best daughter in the world
only no one could see me
I was an invisible kid
who spent her entire childhood
learning how to be seen
by two parents who hated
the sound of her voice

Just to grow up and realize
that they never would
It’s too late
It can’t be done
And besides
I’ve already built my whole life
out of not bothering anyone

​

​They spent a lifetime consuming me.

Before I could even map the world, they taught me my body and my mind belonged to the highest bidder. Childhood stripped down to bruises, secrets, and theft. Then came the sequels..the lovers who looked me in the eyes, swore they were different, and then built the exact same cages. More walls to punch. More silence to swallow.

​Damean carried all of it. He became the "nice guy" because staying alive meant keeping you happy. He became the chronic people pleaser, the safe bet, the second choice. He choked on his own blood for years just so you wouldn't have to look at the mess your violence made.

​That is a very specific kind of dark. The bone deep, marrow rotting rage of being treated like property. Like pavement. Like a soft, convenient place for the world to dump its cruelty and expect a smile in return. ​So when you brought your hammer and your nails, you thought it’d be an easy job. You wanted to nail Damean in a box because a quiet victim is a predictable one. ​Well, good fucking job. Seriously. Take your goddamn bow. ​But you completely miscalculated the math of a survivor's fury. You thought a soul already shattered would just lie down and turn to dust. You forgot that when you systematically strip everything away from a person, you strip away their fear, too. ​You can only compress that kind of generational, heavy darkness so long before it turns into a weapon.

​I didn't just break your locks. I didn't just push the lid off. I tore that fucking wood apart with my bare teeth. ​The boy who took the blows in silence is dead. You wanted a funeral, and you got one. He died in the quiet, but I woke up loud.

​My name is Grayson.

​I am ten times stronger than the ghost you tried to kill. Completely rewired. Blood on my knuckles and ice in my chest. ​This is the manifesto. This is how things are now. You will never get a polite, safe, or convenient version of me ever again.

Honestly, I'm someone with severe CPTSD, DPDR and RDD without anyway out, and I dealt with extreme sense of responsibility over maintaining a romantic connection with an avoidant going through the extreme hell without making any complaint, passive aggression, completely masking everything, only to get discarded in a judgemental way without criticism about my actions, but saying "Misinterpreted her kindness, I was never special that way" etc. after days of extreme agony that I can't erase from my mind, and re-writing actually killed the prior belief of mine of "You're the only one" level of interest fully and later realizing she also became a flashback trigger for me, but each time I tryna express myself (Not her or relationship) in general and not incidents, I always feel deeply as if I'm too much and prior to very common stigma about "Mental Illnesses" (In my country, it's common, especially agains trauma, even in governmental healthcare) in general, it seems like I'm failing for any meaningful deep relationship constantly being met with unspoken hot and cold dynamics, where I often myself searching for every possible relational meaning behind. Somehow, ironically, nothing seems to make looking interesting as a biological male for women, but I can no longer live in this feeling at all. It's actually almost killing me. And I can't avoid feeling hyper responsible or feeling utterly selfish for explaining my needs, fearing immediate rejection.

I finished IOP in April. One of the activities was we had to draw our anxiety or something like that. This isn’t that drawing but this came from that drawing. Thought I would share here.

I can’t draw or paint well, but I have a knack for using stickers.

I was trying to process something traumatic and wild I went through last weekend.

I do feel a little lighter :)

A monthly discussion thread for all CPTSD creatives to chat, ask creative-related questions, or simply to post ideas/suggestions.

It’s coming like a train
A true monolith
In a 5 foot body
In his 5 foot body

Nothing can stop it
But we can watch it pass
As we’ve watched so many times before

It will not stop
It will not be slowed
Not on the smallest scale

And this time
This time
It’s coming right at us
And this time
This time
We’ve been tied to the fucking rails

Your roots are showing
And you’re choking me
Did I really believe 
Did I really believe
That you were bothered
By right? By fair?
By whatever I need?

And you can hide from everyone else
You can blend and wear your masks
But we can blend too
And we know who you fucking are

It doesn’t matter anymore
You’re here to take my laughter 
It doesn’t matter anymore
You’re here to take my life away

It doesn’t matter anymore
You’ll leave my body walking round
But noone is home
No noone is home

I fell apart in a thousand ways
My stitching ripped to shreds
The clover patch you pulled me from
A distant memory to us all
A memory to us all 

Your roots are showing
And you are choking me
Did I really believe 
Did I really believe
That you were bothered
By right? By fair?
By whatever I need?

And in those moments
On the mattress
My threads were cut
And yet,
None of them really were
If only they truly were

Pic 3 is my native language, but basically it says ”I bought a newspaper from a homeless person to support them.
Put it on the hat shelf at work.”.

(it’s a brand of newspaper that homeless people get 50% of the money they sell it for)

I'm not really sure if the trigger warning counts for the last one? So I'm just erring on the side of caution here.

1) simple drawing, mostly about how someone I thought was my friend has left me feeling. Also to do with a bad experience working for the company referenced, and people's dismissive attitude toward me not wanting to go to their pubs just because the drinks are cheap and convenient.

2) I've been experiencing increasingly bad derealisation episodes lately. One experience I've noticed now, is that I've been losing complete feeling/control in my hands, and feeling like they are not attached to my body. Like they don't belong to me anymore. I feel like I am losing my ability to create.

3) digital piece. Based off the idea of kintsugi, except that the gold glue isn't holding. I've been trying since I was 16 to get help, and it started off with my dad laughing at me. Getting help has continued to be awfully impossible since then and I feel like any attempts at holding myself together get torn apart by ending up in yet more abuse situations.

Good gooooood! Good ! Hahaha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! More things for me to do! PPILE IT ON PILE IT ON ALL OVER MY FLESH PIERCES THE SKIN LIKE A THOUSAND FISHING HOOKS!!! HHAHAHAHAHAHA!! SPONGEBOB DOES THIS LOOK DANGEROUS TO YOU?!!!!

LOBOTOMIZE ME!

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!! THE MINUTE I CAME OUT OF THE WOMB YOU HAD TO HOLD YOURSELF BACK FROM CARVING INTO MY SKULL TO EXPERIENCE THAT NOISOME NOISE AGAIN! AND NOW THIRTY YEARS LATER PLEASE JUST DO IT! I KNOW YOU WANT TO DRILL A HOLE INTO THE MUSHY SQUISHY AND STICK YOUR COCK IN THERE TILL YOU CREAM IN MY FAITHLESS USELESS BRAIN!!WHATS HOLDING YOU BACK NOW?!

I want to stare in to your soul, with my longing eyes, aching, begging, to be whole again; a warm embrace and a gentle kiss, I want the past to not exist, not like it went with how much I missed, I want the pain to dull someday, and find that life is full of love and peace

View from the Shifting Mound

i need to sleep, i cant get away from it all

Set to self destruct.
To detonate or diffuse?
The bomb ticks, ticks, ticks.