Bad Kitty Art Studio Portland/Beaverton, Oregon - oil paintings, sculpture, painted furniture, recycled art, motivational words

BAD! Kitty Quote for the day!

Jambo - (Swahili...Hello, good Jambo - Swahili morning)

Traveling.

Within.

Standing still on the outside.

I am that traveler, I am finding the path...Albeit in places it's gone to seed and I need a machete to hack my way thru...The path is there...Always patiently waiting for me, to get back on track.

I have had a string of so-so days...I guess you could call it Underwhelmed...Instead of overwhelmed...And that never works well for me...It's like a full body shot of novacaine...Numb all over...Except in my head.

I woke up tired and cold...Even though I was in my warm bed...In my safe house with people who love me...I woke up... with my dreams...And knowing why I am having them.

My dreams have been plagued with repressed anger at some people that will remain unnamed at this time.

(see other posts about them)

I have been dreaming of growing wings...And flying away to the next reality.

The one where little kids don't get abused, the one where adults are healthy enough to conduct loving relationships, the one where my little family of five, is not always worrying about money issues...The one where I wasn't the little girl that I have been in this reality, the one where I am not an orphan by my own choosing...The one where I am not daily slaying demons and swimming thru emotional quicksand.

I want to be able to put it all down and walk away from it. I tried that by having them all ...

(the asshat family I was born into and the family of choice that was built then torn down)

get on a plane in my head, I kissed them all and said goodbye...and then the plane was hit by a stray missile and in a tragic fireball of unknowing...and in no pain,

they passed away.

For about two years this system worked for me...I felt free.

Of late...I have been having unwanted memories spring up

...all over the place...Triggers I thought were well taken care of...Not taken care of anymore...You see that's the Bitch *excuse my French* of this reality. I am never going to be able to really put it down and walk away...Even if they were all dead...I would still be the one dealing daily with the same facts/truths about my past...My subconscious is a real pain in the ass that way.

I feel angry that I am the one that will always be dealing with these issues...My family of birth? Nope not them...They will be together, there will dinner with the grandparents, and presents exchanged, and everyone will act like they love each other, while they sit around waiting for someone to die...So they can have what's "theirs".

My Family of Choice? Nope...She will have her family of birth all around her, she won't be alone...

So, if I am the abuse survivor...Then why does it seem that I am the only one paying for their crimes?

I mean my Father beat me, used me in every way a human can be used, and did untold unmentionable things with/to me...But he gets to have a happy/lucky life?

He does not have to wake up, remebering the dreams he had about being...tortured...or abandoned. Why not? He was the one who commited those acts...but see... he went and got himself all cleaned up...clean and sober...which makes it all OK now...because he was a drunk/drug addict at the time...so he's sorry about all that...can't we just put it behind us and start out again?

I tried that. He is still an asshole...even dry, which made it worse.

You can run someone over with a car...and no matter how sorry you are afterward...the person still got hit by a car...you know?

I tried forgiving him and moving on...with him in my life...but you see...after he hit me with his car about a thousand times...I am sorry...just don't cut it anymore.

The facts are still the same...I still have to deal with my fucking brain...and the stuff contained within it. I still have to work to not be depressed, scared and fucking PISSED!

*again...please excuse my potty mouth*... and no I don't kiss my Mother with this mouth...because I don't fucking have one...she left when I was a baby...she had a dream about becoming a movie star...a message from GOD she said, the next morning...she packed a bag and took off for Hollywood...I was nine months old at the time...didn't see her again til I was 16...

That long story made short goes a little like this:

My Father sent me to meet/live with her...he was done with me, I had become a bother...all that acting out I was doing...just because my home life was like some bad horror film, my Birth Mother who up until then he swore he could not ever find...

(even though she DID make it in Hollywood...not big time, but she made a movie with Bobby DeNero & Liza Minelli, she was the only other speaking female role in that movie so she got the credit of co-star with...the big names already mentioned)

He let me sit and watch him find her...took him about 45 minutes of phone calls, but he did it.

16 years...of being unfindable...and in 45 minutes I was talking to my Mother on the phone...she here in Oregon...me in Florida.

A little while later...she sent me a letter, and a pretty glass box...

within three days of getting that letter, I came home from skipping school to find out I was moving...

to Oregon...the One-Way ticket was on the counter waitng for me. The next morning I was flying...away.

Away to what I thought at 16 was going to be great...I was finally going to have that Mom I had always wanted...none of my Father's other wives lasted very long, except Shelba (#2)...that's who I had always thought my Mom was, until I was 12...she is the Mother of my Brother...the prodigal son my Father always wanted.

Man... I loved that baby boy...so much...my brother was the sweetest little baby...and real sick when he was first born... so he needed extra care...which at 7 years old, I was more than willing to give.

When he cried at night, I got up and held him...when he was older and started to realize that when he did something bad...I usually got beat for it...so he would learn better...I told him it was OK...I didn't care anymore...it was just a spanking...I had had worse by then...but watching someone you love being beaten, is just as bad as being hit yourself.

When I left he was 10...he was my first "child" almost....I still wake up sometimes...seeing his little boy face with tears streaming down it...while I rode away from him on the escalator...leaving him alone with our Father & His Mother...leaving him...alone.

I didn't leave him alone...he had his Mom, our Dad...and the whole extended family on both sides. He has cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparants...he even graduated from a real high school...and never slept in the street and ate out of Dumpsters...he never got sent away...to really be alone.

When I finally got to the airport in Portland...my Mother was not there beaming...waiting for our first embrace, tears streaming down her face...joyfull.

She was almost two hours late picking me up...I sat on my suitcase...in the terminal...because I just did not know what to do. I called my Father...he said just wait, or call a taxi to take me to her address...which he gave me...but he had forgotten to give me any money...so he said..."well, I am sure she will be along soon, just wait for her, that woman will be late to her own funeral...just stay where you are."

She arrived...wearing all Pink...her favorite color...my most hated color.

She didn't embrace me with tears...she walked over to me...I did not recognize her face...I had a 10 year old picture to go by...and black and white head shot at that...so when she walked up to me and said my name...I almost puked with fear.

She gave me a quick hug...and then told me she almost did not come at all.

She was not sure if she could handle all of it.

She was scared of me. Funny huh?

So...we finally head for "home" in North Portland...right behind the Alibi on Interstate...where they serve steak and strippers...and when you walk the dog in the morning you had to step over the used rubbers littering the sidewalk.

That was OK...I didn't care...she HAD come and at the time and for a time... that was all that mattered....for the first 6 weeks, we had a great time. Laughing, she smoked pot with me, we ate roasted chicken together, we went around to meet all the family I did not know I had...most of them live here in good old Portland too...still to this day.

Then she went crazy.

She has manic depresion and multiple personality disorder...and she stopped taking her med's. I didn't know.

I was no longer her sweet little girl that had finally "come home to her".

I was 16...she was looking for something in a size 8-12 months range.

I could not manage the time warp back to toddlerhood...so I became everything that was bad about my Father. When I displeased her...I was just like "him", and he was to blame, and I was to be punished.

She said she couldn't handle a teenager, she wasn't cut out for it, and I wouldn't stop calling my little brother...which really pissed her off...

the first Christmas we were to be together...my Father sent me a plane ticket to come home and visit...I wanted to see my Brother...she thought I wanted to hurt her, by not being there with her...I just missed my kid brother.

Before I left, she told me to decide what I wanted to do...and then do it...she told me this life was not easy and that I would have to choose where I wanted to be for Christmas...then pay the consequences for those choices...which ever I chose there would be someone hurt...so I decided it would not be my Brother...so I went to my Father's House.

(I left on Christmas eve and was back 7 days later) she threw me out.

I called my Father from the payphone outside the Alibi...and he told me to find some "other " family member to take care of me...he was done...and no he would not help me...figure it out, girl you are on your own.

So, I called my "other" family...they said they could not face the wrath of Kathy (Bio-mom's name) so they could not help me either...anyway...I was acting like my Father...what did I expect from them?...they hated him...and I am half of him, raised by default by him, abandoned by my Mother...but the most important part of me at the time... was the half that was "him"...not the whole person standing out in front of a strip club, with no jacket in January, no money, no home...in a strange city.

I made it.

I lived.

I spent some time on the street...then I found out about and I went to Job Corps to get off the street, and have some freaking food that no one else had thrown away...a real warm bed to sleep in...I ended up with an education, second to none, a vocation that saved my life and helped me to create a new one, and emancipated from both of my parents...

I thought that ment I was free.

It is now the end of 2005.

I am still working on trying to piece myself together...that's why I am MAD as HELL.

I did not choose to be born. I did not choose my family. I did not ask for too much. I did not get anything...except out alive, not whole...but alive.

Why?

I'll tell you.

It is simple really...

I was suppossed to be here...now.

To be an artist? To be a life coach? To be a Mom, a mate, a friend, a lover, writer, or gardner?

Nope.

I am suppossed to be here, because I have work to do.

Work in the form of Healing Art now...it used to be Healing Gardens and Homes that I created...

(retired landscape designer for those not in the "loop")

...I am here to create and heal.

That is it.

I create, I heal, I love. That is what I am supposed to be doing. Chain Breaking, saving my bloodline...making it pure again.

My children will hopefully grow up to be good men, and good Fathers. And they will have grandparents...

(just try to keep me away from my future grandbabies...I'll eat you for lunch...I can't wait to have grandbabies...I'll be a great Grandma someday.)

an extended family that loves them back, and WANTS them.

I am here to be a CHAIN BREAKER.

"I am the Walrus Ko-ku-ku-choo."

My reason for being...

destruction of the old way...creation of the new way.

My work keeps leading me around this circle...like an old pony at the fair. Each painting/creation brings me closer to myself...the good and the bad.

I am working hard on my new life...have been for 18 years now...and I still have a long way to go...good...I am not ready for it to all be made clear...that comes when I stand before the ultimate maker...untill then I will keep traveling within myself and painting the view I see from in here...and the lessons I am learning...they are my texture...the feelings I am learning to undrestand...that is my color pallet, my recycled sculptures/assembalges...they are person I am evolving into.

I wonder what it will like on the other side of all this pain I am going thru right now. I wonder who I will be then...

I still have my...

WONDER.

I still have my sense of adventure and I am about as Bold as they come these days.

I make my own SAUCE now...and it's a magical brew.

I am not the only one paying for their crimes.

They lost me...that's a pretty big loss. They may have each other still, they may have their families of birth, they may have lots of "things", but what they will never again have...is me.

I am the treasure uncovered, I am the person who heals...I am a Maker.

They lost that. Poor Dears...trapped in their realities...without a torch to light their way. I am that blazing torch...they are blind...and lost...I am not.

I know who I am...I am Heather Marie Brown-Truman, age 36, mother of three boys, full time artist and intuitive, life mate to a wonderful good man, and a good friend to those who make it inside the castle walls.

I am the MAKER of me...and that's a good thing, as Martha would say.

It's good to be me...with all my fucked up past, and the best

intentions for my future...it's still good to be me.

Why?

Can't you see why? Look at my work... see the view from in here... I make the ugly pretty again, I create beauty, understanding, healing, visual dialouge...I create...therefore I am.

I live to paint and I paint to live...

that's Why.

Love...that's why. I was born with a well of love so deep and wide, I have not found the bottom or reached the shore...yet, I hope I never do.

I am going to continue on this path, becasue I simply can't think of any thing else in the world that I want to do...I am an artist and an intuitive...and I love being ALIVE!

Even though right now...these moments have been a string of suck-fests...I still am, underneath it all, still wanting to grow, live, seek, discover and destroy.

So...now that I have been writting this post for more than two hours...and I didn't know what the hell I was gonna talk about today...I feel better just getting some of it on the outside of my head...instead of running around in there...like Freddie Crueger on steriods.

I am here, alive...and becoming whole...simply because I wish it to be so. Being stubborn has it's good points.

I am going to post pictures of the Chritmas Ornaments that me and the kids made together this weekend...and the ones I made for sale...they turned out really fun and I love them.

I love making ornaments, I go crazy every year doing it, but I love it...it makes me remeber little parts of my past that were good...making ornaments with my Aunt Nell, making ornaments with the kids at school, when a little dab of glue...or a googley eye and some glitter could fix anything, putting up the tree with my Step-Mom and Brother...putting up the tree with my kids and mate...seeing the light come on in strangers faces when they find just the "right" thing for someone else...or themselves.

That's what this time of year means to me...or at least that's what I want it to mean...I was doing fine, I was happy with the upcoming holidays...then...BAM! Sideswiped by my own subconcience...and it made me mad....as hell.

People with PTSD don't just get over it...do we?

"when you run from that posion it just drags you around, no matter the tools or the wepons we use...there is only one thing that will free us...I was born to be telling this story, I will always be telling this story"...~Shawn Colvin lyric

We learn to live with it...we just keep swimming.

Today I swim Upstream.

Thinking...and swimming and creating toady... With Love,

Heather

PS Please excuse my terrible editing this morning...I call it typonese...I didn't have time to fix it all up pretty for you...I ran out of time.