A Voice In My Head...
For the first time in my life, I’m at a point where I am able to write about my past without feeling ashamed of who I am. Many people struggle with mental illness, and throughout my journey, I found the reason that the topic is so touchy is because every case is so different. In hopes of helping someone who might not want to accept their current situation and the pleas loved ones and friends send their way, or to the people who have trouble coping with past issues due to shame and embarrassment, I am writing this for you, especially.
Two years out of college, an opportunity presented itself for my girlfriend of 6 years, and she decided to take it. A retail management position for a big name retailer had offered her a position in New York City at its 5th avenue location, and she jumped at the opportunity. At that point in time, I was a struggling painter, and unsure of my place in the world. I did know that I wanted to make it work with my girlfriend, so I went to meet her a month after she had settled in to start a life in New York.
Quickly, I realized that her schedule was full, and mine was not. My days consisted of getting lost, as I always find that I can learn the city the best by foot. If I wasn’t at the museum, or in the air conditioned apartment avoiding the 95% humidity outside, I was counting down the remainder of my money as it neared closer and closer to zero.
Each time my girlfriend returned from work, she would soon ask, “How is the job hunt going?”, to which I would reply, “Not bad!”
This was a complete lie, and she was on to me. I began to feel sorry for myself, and arguments became a nightly occurrence because we seemed to be on different career paths. I knew I loved to paint, but I also wasn’t prepared for such a shock when it came to the change in pace of the city I was in. We decided that our relationship could no longer continue, and I packed my bags to leave the following morning back to Portland.
When you lose someone important to you, whether through death or break-up, it can be a traumatic event, even if you don’t believe it to be. In my stubborn naivety, I told myself that I was strong enough to move on without talking about it to anyone. Everyone deals with loss differently, but I internalized this and put my pain into my painting.
As paintings began to flow, I painted some of my strongest early works. My network of social media friends began to support my craft, and before I knew it, opportunities began to arise. The house I had grown up with my family in Oregon City, OR had become vacant, as the mortgage was no longer manageable by my single mother, and she moved out with a boyfriend to wait for the bank to regain ownership. The recession hit us hard financially, but I took advantage of the no rent situation, and moved in.
My old room quickly became my art studio. Painting began to sell as quickly as they were completed, and my dependency on drugs and alcohol seemed to fuel my creativity even more. With no cares of authority or respect for the space, I painted freely. Paint covered the carpet, and spray paint covered the walls. Cigarette burns began dotting the floors.
It wasn’t until one night while painting, that I heard my neighbors whispering. I failed to put together the fact that my music was up full blast through my headphones, and my neighbors lived an 1/8th of a mile away, but for some reason I heard them through closed windows late at night.
“He is a loser. LOSER!”, he whispered.
“Never has a chance of making it as an artist!”, he continued.
These voices fueled me. I smoked more, and painted harder. Slept less, and drank later. Paintings seemed to sell so fast, that my account soon hit $10,000. Times seemed to be drowning out my loneliness, and I was too numb to realize that slowing down and really thinking about my next step as an artist had presented itself. Instead, I pushed the envelope and ignored the voices.
I had been working part time for my father’s landscape company for the past several months, and summer time allowed me to enjoy the outdoors, while making some extra money for art supplies and a lifestyle of drinking and drugs. One evening while painting in my studio, I received a message from a college friend, inviting me to Hong Kong to visit him and his wife-to-be. A few weeks passed, and without telling my dad, I booked a ticket. I arrived to work one morning, and without thought, told my dad that the following day I was leaving on a trip to Hong Kong and that I would end up in Europe, where I would meet another college acquaintance, and hopefully make connections for my art career.
“You decided to make this decision without telling me? I have a bad feeling about this. Are you sure you want to go?”, he asked.
The next morning he dropped me off at PDX International Airport, and I hugged him crying as I left the car. If I had only listened to the sadness I felt in that very moment, life would have ended up completely different, but life doesn’t work that way. No if, ands, or buts. It happened or it didn’t, The decisions I made changed my life, and it happened in Hong Kong.
The trip was great, I had a blast, and to keep things short, I had met a British artist who intrigued me so much, that I decided to return several months later to visit my friends a second time. This time in a different apartment, in a different part of town. I was excited to visit them yet again, and to reunite with this girl who caught my eye. Before I left, I had started to notice the voices growing louder and louder, but again, I silenced my gut feelings and booked my ticket. I was to leave in two weeks.
One afternoon while mowing the lawn outside of my vacant family home, I heard through my headphones that same voice.
“You will never make it as an artist. YOU ARE NOTHING! LOSER”, it defiantly told me.
If it’s one thing I remember about the voice I often heard, it was a steady, low, defiant one. It never stuttered, it was monotone, and it repeated itself over and over until I was interrupted by something that required my attention. Living on my own made this difficult because most of my time was in solitude, where no one could interrupt me long enough to change my thought process. Instead, I began having a dialogue in my own head. Silently talking to this voice, that for some reason, loved speaking down to me. The tone was always negative, and I couldn’t figure out why. I told myself that I would never believe it. No matter how much it spoke, I couldn’t let it affect me. I was stronger than it, or so I thought.
In the week leading up to my departure to Hong Kong for my second time, I Facetime’d with my crush, and painted. My dad had given up on my sub-par work performance at my position in the company and my failing to take seriously the opportunity right in front of me. This gave me one entire week to create before leaving, so that’s what I did.
Smoking, drinking, and singing aloud, the voice was ever present. It seemed to speak louder while in my upstairs bedroom, so I made my way downstairs to the formal dining room. Fearing that the voice was that of an actual person, I had cordoned off the room from view through the front back and side windows, by drawing the blinds, and covering the two windows without blinds, with blankets. In my head I was an artist “living the dream”, but in reality, I was squatting a house facing foreclosure as a rookie artist with a drug problem. Unable to admit the internal voice truly existed, the week flew by, and I departed for a second time.