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arwenpandora

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Haven't been able to draw or paint or quilt or write poems lately. Hense, I haven't posted any of it for awhile.

My back issue go back to the 90s, that got worse about 3 years ago, I need to use a cane most days.my mental health hasn't been great for a few decades but it has its happy times and scraping skin days and insomniac nights. Lately to add onto all of this is something new.. arthrtis. The pain is so horrific at times, it obiliterates the days I am having happy.  Now the change in weather hasn't friggen helped, and pain management becomes the secondary interruption to doing art. I can't stand for very long before my back is painfully twisting me to the point I can barely bend to sit , the pain in my hands becomes so excruciating that holding a brush , pen, pencil, sewing needle or any book with any weight past a pound. My eyes are also getting worse.

I am trying to not give up on art, I miss drawing portraits so much that sometimes I look at my work and wonder if I did it and how. I read through my poems and they have been my documentary of what I have been feeling. If anyone else here on Deviant art  is going through similar..  can you let me know?

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I live in newfoundland.  I am a Sea Shepherd supporter, and animal rights activist, and environmentalist, conservationist (got a diploma to prove that) and I am a vegan. That being said… given where I live.. I am in a group that is an ever growing minority. We aren't terrorists, we aren't breaking laws nor are we unpatriotic. It Is difficult where I live, to be the way I am and given where I grew up and that I was in the Canadian Army for just over 6 years, needless to say it gets difficult total to make folks hear about what I stand up for. I live in a province that deems Sea Shepherd as eco terrorists.. let us for a moment straighten this out.. eco terrorists are oil companies, fracking companies, factory farms, fish farms, companies that support GMOs, whaling, exploiting oceans and their inhabitants, deforestation, the Palm oil industry, Fur farms (including leather), trophy "hunters", canned "hunters", people who beat another species over the head with any weapon or shot it point blank in the head (very much execution style) or shoot from a boat or a helicopter and kill that target species is an ecoterrorist. Forcing another species to perform tricks in a cement pool or in a circus ring is the result of having taken a few young whales out of their natural habitat and that forcing them to have babies too early in their lives and then taking these babies and shipping them off to other countries or just other places than exploit those species.
Call me a greenie, a hippie liberal, a tree hugger, or other lame words you think are insults.. what I'm not is a terrorist or an eco terrorist. I haven't hurt anyone, I haven't lied about what I believe in, and I may not be on the "front lines" stepping between someone who doesn't care about the life they are about to kill but I do support those who have been and are brave enough to stand on those ice pans being the human shield between another species life and the person who is pointing that weapon at the activist or the weaponless victims. I am what some might endearingly refer to as an armchair activist. I research information and use the internet to talk about animal rights, conservation and all those people who are trying to change laws to protect those species who can't defend themselves either in court or against an armed human.
Alll this being said..
I leave you with these artists artworks.

Sea Shepherd - Extinction by SaintIscariot Sea Shepherd by JessicaSansiquet<da:thumb id="172070138"/> Paul Watson and Sea Shepherds by Winter-Phantom Sea Shepherd in Germany by FreSch85 Pilot Whales by Zafiara Arrogants by Winter-Phantom Our Heros by tallblueangel<da:thumb id="277906571"/><da:thumb id="184260385"/>

                                                  Canadian Seal Slaughter by AkirasArtWorld


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  1. How long have you been on DeviantArt? 

    I have been here since technically april 1 2003

  2. What does your username mean?

    my user name which i Haven't changed since I got here is a combination of two names from two different book characters that I love. Arwen from Lord of the rings and Pandora from anne rice's book Pandora. They both live a long time and have witnessed love and loss. 

  3. Describe yourself in three words.

    introvert, insomniac, activist

  4. Are you left or right handed? 

    mostly right but I have do left

  5. What was your first deviation?


  6. lone tree by arwenpandora

    What is your favourite type of art to create?

    portraits mostly but I do love abstract and sometimes photography.

  7. If you could instantly master a different art style, what would it be?

    scenic or portrait with fountain pen and ink well.

  8. What was your first favourite?

    The Earl O Water by sihingmarcel


  9. What type of art do you tend to favourite the most?

    drawing of realism or art of animals

  10. Who is your all-time favourite deviant artist?

    have no idea

  11. If you could meet anyone on DeviantArt in person, who would it be?

    too many to mention, just about everyones art I favorited are people I like to meet.

  12. How has a fellow deviant impacted your life?

    She used to be on deviant art a few years back .. Taiia

  13. What are your preferred tools to create art?

    Conte, qtips, cotton balls, sticky erasers, drawing paper and a sharpener

  14. What is the most inspirational place for you to create art?

    where I sand sit and stand undisturbed and not observed or starred at and listen to music on my headset

  15. What is your favourite DeviantArt memory?

    submitting a couple of my realism drawings and people mistaking them for photos..


    www.deviantart.com/tag/deviant…



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Not good enough

4 min read
I know some of you may have felt like this at various points in your lives. most of my life I have been made to feel this way from family and so called friends. I try not to expect much from people.. past experience brutality taught me not to have expectations  in most people around me but they didn't think I was worth their effort or their time.. yet they didn't understand that I ignorantly put them on a pedestal, just giving them respect that never really deserved. 
I have left many family and friends behind because I was put through too much, I walked way permanently from many people I used to call friends because I was their doormat. One would think after 14 year of mental health therapy would have helped me realize to recognize when I have lost self respect and felt like people were not actually wanting to be around me. 
someone told me to stop walking on eggshell and being a doormat for others.. the result would show who was really a friend and family… I loath testing people like that.. it is a philosophy experiment that usually ends badly and with huge disappointments. 
I would name people that have done this to me recently but I am foolishly still trying to have hope that attitudes towards me will change.
It is like looking a  painting that you made mistake on that also had flaws with the canvas to begin with and you stand there staring at it hoping that inspiration will help you see where it might be able to change or if it will be the deciding point to leave it alone.
I guess I am getting to that age where ones health and past hauntings give you that feeling of trying to hold onto the few people that are left in your life, no matter how much their choices, words and actions will and have hurt you. You still want to have them in your life instead of being alone. I thought I was done with the faint feeling of desperation of not wanting to be alone. I need to be alone .. need to respect myself. it isn't easy.
One would think that well if you stay alone you lose any connection to having a social personality..in order to be social you need to have people around who want your company toeing with and not for their own selfish needs and use you or include you just to be polite. This is why I want people in myself that actually want to be around me.. not out of politeness or obligation, but because they want to be there genuinely. 

I think going into this analyses for the past week has inadvertently tested me and one or two others and it failed to give hope but passed in ways I wish it hadn't (I allowed myself to get optimistic and I got metaphorically punched in the gut. One would think after 4 decades I would have recognized the signs of that and stepped away to lesson the pain.. 



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I have been told over the past few decades to pull myself up by my bootstraps (a way for those who don't understand what I have been through to cope with hearing what I have told them). Well over the years I have pulled my preverbal bootstraps up to a point I have done nothing but choke on them. I have been told to "let it go" "get over it", to "move on", or "it's  in the past" or the classic "there are people in this world who have it worse than you". 
at some point in all of our lives we have experienced abuse at the hands or verbal of someone that sticks in our minds. Just when we thought we have felt with the memory or it and thought it was put behind us.. it rears its ugly head again and we sometimes have to start from scratch in dealing with it.
I grew up with abuse and violence, I remember most of it and sad to say my brain still doesn't allow me to remember 100% of all of my childhood so I can face it all. I shove it all away in my brain.. I thought I was fine until 1995 when something happened to me. it tripped my first nervous breakdown and my first time I was ever put on a suicide watch. I didn't even know I was until I woke up the next day and the padre and doctor told me. I hadn't tried to do anything. the previous day I had talked to the padre because just couldn't handle any of it anymore. I talked to him for four hours. by the end of our talk I was dehydrated and exhausted. He talked to my boss and got me the afternoon off to recuperate. I laid down on my camp cot and shortly after he left, I thought I fell asleep. Turns out my body gave out and medics had to bring me back. 
About four days later I got home and I had to finally admit to myself I needed help but I was terrified of where to start. childhood or what happened before I came home. 
I started my first therapy session talking about someone I was related to.. it was my first time talking about them to a stranger and my brain was already on over load, so I just blurted out what my memory allowed. 4 sessions later I could feel myself unravelling even more. This is what I called my emotional levee. I had a good one until 1995, it was a tall wall of mental bricks and cement and granite to help keep my outer self looking somewhat sane. OR at least I thought I did. it didn't crumble and give way in the sessions, I lost my emotional levee when I had talked to that padre. 
So for the next four years I went into counselling just to try and keep my small bit of sanity I had left intact. during those four year someone I knew had brought me to the hospital for another suicide watch. At the time I felt a bit betrayed but I can only at the time that person was trying to do what they thought was right. 
I struggled to educate myself through university courses and getting a college certification in graphic design, I was barely emotionally treading water. So shortly after the 21st century came, I went into therapy again. I was also trying something new at the same time. A long term relationship… it was still in the beginning stages when I started with my new shrink. It was like taking an extreme roller coaster ride both underwater in the pacific ocean and then coming up for air that has been going on 14 years. There have been times I nearly dove off that ride not caring that I would sink to my death or how deeply I was sinking.

since then I have pushed many people out of my life when I finally acknowledged that I needed to take care of myself and try and get through my 40 foot waves of ocean storms. Many didn't like it, especially when I went into my complete honest mode..there are a couple I haven't because I am not mentally ready to take them on yet. 
Dealing with flashbacks is apart of my PTSD, some of them have given me a similar horror trip like Billy Pilgrim in slaughterhouse five. When I came back to current time I was disorientated and felt like my blood vessels wanted to burst my skin apart. 
some of the trauma I went through I have told to maybe three professionals and maybe three friends.

I have claustrophobia for a reason, I was locked in a crawl space against my will. I have a fear of deep dark water because I was pushed underwater to a point I thought I was going to drown. I still have panic attacks in lakes or streams when I can't see the bottom of it. And I still don't like anyone touching my shoulders. I was dragged down stairs by my ankles ( to this day I have sight panic attack when someone touches my ankles), hit with a belt on the back (my back it sensitive to touch to this day), forced to watch someone lose their rage during their eager throw a combustible aerosol can into a lit wood stove which he can exploded in the stove but the stove managed to stay intact ( it was the person rage that I was more afraid of, the can wasn't). I have had a gun (to never know to this day if it was loaded or not..not that that should be the difference or not) put to my head ( oddly this didn't get remember until after the 90's). And then there was the emotional abuse and another kind of abuse. I was also stalked and I was almost abducted.. there was more emotional abuse after that.. I know I maybe a bit cryptic on who and when but I still dealing with the fact it all happened mostly by one person. This happened in the 70's and 80's. 
The 90's was a stage of emotional growth and awakening and more trauma that only in the past couple of years I have been more or less ready to deal with. almost two years ago I started therapy to deal with what happened almost 20 years ago (I can't believe it has been that long ago). 

My emotional levee, no matter how many times I tried to rebuild it to keep from being hurt by others it doesn't have the strength to stay in place anymore. 
So I feel every emotion, I can't not. writing this whole thing was a big twist in my gut.

this doesn't cover everything horrible that has happened to me. sometimes I write it my poetry and sometimes I try to draw it (not in portrait form). 
Here's the kick, after all of this, all of those times I applied for U.N. tours, I knew that if I had the chance to go.. I knew I could handle it and keep myself together while on tour. Knowing what a couple of friends have been through I knew I could handle being there for them. just having someone to listen to them, helps in small ways. It helped me at times.


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Featured

When medical issues affect one's ability to do art by arwenpandora, journal

Sea Shepherd and animal rights and conservation by arwenpandora, journal

DeviantArtist Questionnaire by arwenpandora, journal

Not good enough by arwenpandora, journal

Abuse, trauma, and PTSD by arwenpandora, journal