As many of you know, I have a habit of getting into my art, doing great art, then slowing down and finally stopping for an extended period of time. This usually happens at least once a year.

What many of you may not know, however, is that prior to the slowdown I start thinking about my childhood and experiencing horrific flashbacks to the psychological and physical abuses I went through as a child. I essentially re-live them. Even though I have never been diagnosed with PTSD, I do suffer several of the disorder's symptoms. These flashbacks are part of the driving force that stops my art dead in its tracks every so often.

Well, I've gone through a series of such flashbacks this morning, unfortunately. Now I have to deal with the exhaustion that is a direct result of these issues, and as a further result, I fear that I can't do any art for awhile. I will try to keep going, but if this is anything like the previous incarnations of this problem, I may end up becoming unable to draw for an extended period of time again.

I hate doing this, because I despise being on SSDI and not having work of my own to do. The money from SSDI is a good thing to have, but I'm from a generation where being on government money for psychological issues is something to be ashamed of, and that shame compounds the problems I've been having with the flashbacks... and interestingly enough, my narcissistic human mother is the one who signed me up, behind my back and without my consent, for SSDI when I was in my late teens. Yet later on she decided that it was shameful for me to be on that income, acting as if I was somehow at fault when she was the one who put me on the income in the first place. Ah, well, logic works about as well on a malignant narcissist as it does on a bigot. But that doesn't change the fact that I have a lot of emotional baggage that I have to deal with, mainly because of these stupid flashbacks that always hit me like a truckload of cement any time I start to become successful at any creative endeavor.

So I most likely will be unable to draw before too much longer. I normally don't tell anyone, but I figure that if I write it out and post it online, maybe... just maybe... I might have a bit more control over my art situation than I have had in the past. Also, watchers might better understand why I go long periods without making any new art.