NOT ONE OF MY BETTER DAYS ...

 

.... but I guess you can figure that out from the main word?  The thing that is hard to explain about pain is that it makes you kind of crouch around it, as if you could protect yourself from it by curling up - which in turn can end up with you clenching your teeth,bunching your hands and hunching your shoulders etc., thereby actually making things a whole lot worse.  Don't imagine me rolling about in agony, because I'm not and (thank God) the painkillers do mop up most of it.  But sometimes they don't quite get enough of it, and then it takes an extraordinary amount of energy to deal with it, and can be very VERY tiring.

I forgot to take the very first picture which would have been the page below minus the writing - I'd done a prepared painted background (my favourite activity when there's nothing I feel moved to say, but the arty urge is upon me) so the purple and the arty pictures were already there.  Then one day I just wrote the word pain in big letters, and it went from there. 

For some reason I felt the need to compartmentalise the page into areas - maybe I was trying to get the pain safely into a box where I could contain it?  Perhaps its that pain days draw big black lines through what I can and can't do with my day?  Possibly all of these and more, the subconscious being a funny old thing. Like the houses at the bottom which came to represent how I end up stuck inside and unable to go out.  Or the eye which I think is the all-seeing thing, where even though I'm hiding away wrapped around and inside my pain, someone sees and cares ...

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the decorative bits are somewhat jagged - and if you're interested the white is done with my rather nifty Posca paint pen.  I didn't think this was much good until I tried it on a painted background, whereupon it worked brilliantly and much better that it does on neocolour backgrounds!  Lesson learned, and I promptly bought some more colours.

And here it is finished - it doesn't SAY a lot, but it says enough, and something I needed to get down on paper.  There aren't too many days like this, for which I'm profoundly grateful, but I wanted to record for myself what it feels like when those days come.  I guess it isn't too self-indulgent, and genuinely belongs in my journal with all my other experiences, reflections and recordings, as part of my life.  Even if I do wish it would Go Away.