Driving the Point Home

A question was posed in my Psychopharmacology class that I felt merited some consideration on my part.  

We were talking about why someone might fail to take their medication, or continue to say they're having significant problems when they aren’t.  
The question was “What is the gain from remaining sick?”  
This can obviously be answered in many ways, depending on the circumstance.

I began to think about this in terms of my own life and my own struggles with my fears and with a failure to drive. 

 If I don't try, I can't fail, right? 

This logic never worked in any other area of my life, so I'm not sure why I thought it would with driving, other than the fact that I did mostly have other ways around. 

Let's face it. 

I don't leave my home very often, and would generally prefer to be some kind of happy recluse, but I understand that this isn't a reasonable possibility. 

I also feel guilty now that I don't live by a bus line and occasionally need to carpool or outright ask people for rides, as I can't currently afford to take cabs everywhere while in the unpaid internship... 

Externship... 

Whateverthefuckship. 

In any case, I've been attempting and mostly failing to prioritize my health, and instead I've been obsessing over something that is generally not seen as a big deal. 

More than that, it is generally seen as a wonderful thing. 

For me personally, passing the test means that I now don't have to retake the permit test, which would have been embarrassing. 

I don't have to have the strange looks when I have a non-driver ID instead. 

I don't have to have anyone questioning how I function in life, just because they are too unimaginative to think of living without a car in my situation. 

I wanted to be proud of myself too, but I'm having trouble with that. 

I think the issue is that I really had no desire to do it at all, so rather than feeling accomplished, I just feel like I gave in. 

I did this thing that I had no desire to do, just because someone else told me to do it. 

Christ. 

How much of my life has been like that? 

 

Still, having passed is great, if only for the wait for the next one to now be gone forever. 

The pressure each time was slowly killing me. 

It became everything. 

It took over every aspect of my life with the sheer power of not-want. 

I just don't want to think about it anymore. 

Passing means I don't have to worry about the test, but now I have the car I can't afford, the insurance, the upkeep, the responsibility, and the assumption that I will drive. 

Now, it has become an issue if I do have the audacity to ask for help. 

After all, I can drive. 

Everyone involved seems to think passing the test has immediately cured me of my not-want. 

It did not, just as doing any other terrible thing forever doesn't automatically make people Stockholm-syndrome themselves into loving the thing. 

Now, I just have more questions, more pressure, and I fear that I'll wind up on the side of the road sobbing and hysterical, missing my appointments that were otherwise never an issue to get to on time. 

I guess any lingering depression winds up more apparent when it's on me, rather than being able to say, "Well, better get going so my ride doesn't get upset."  

 

I feel like I'm constantly letting everyone down either way, or that there is something significant wrong with me, beyond all the things that have actually made my life harder. 

It's frustrating to note that the things I actually want to work on and struggle with are somehow not good enough to those around me. 

I fully realize that I am not those people, but some solidarity would be nice. 

I have found myself falling from pushing on and through and up, to just wanting to be left alone to rot. 

Of course, my Knight in Pinstripes and my very good friends ARE supportive and would never let me do that to myself, as much as I may try. 

Still, this is upsetting because I understand that it has all been hinged on this idea of having a car and driving and freedom in this lonely, expensive, wasteful death machine. 

Again, Rob is all for carpooling and is steady in his belief that I should not have to drive if I do not want to. 

He generally believes I shouldn't do ANYTHING that I don't want to do, but again, that means I would do... pretty much nothing. 

Ever.  

Sometimes, I pretend that I want to drive. 

Sometimes, I pretend that I am already someone who drives. 

It is a fun fantasy, but ultimately leaves me feeling empty, realizing I am lying to myself because I feel like I am worth less than I would be as a driver. 

I feel like while I've been told I am not, I must certainly be a burden, and something to be ashamed of. 

Otherwise, why would any of this have come up at all? I wind up wallowing in everything else I've been trying to fix, just to have this barrier of, “No, look. I'm too sick. I can't drive because I'm too sick.” 

I've been self sabotaging and ruining so much of my health, both physical and mental, in an effort to convince those around me that I am sick enough to not do this one thing that I have never done before anyway. 

 

All that having been said, I did face my fears. 

And now, I have it, whether I ever use it or not. 

These are things I CAN be proud of, because they were important to my growth as a person. 

That is the most important part.

And... I actually do like the car.  Well, when it starts up, anyway.  

I call it The Grey Ghost, and I understand that my aversion to driving is not the car's fault. 

...My tendency to personify objects a bit probably doesn't help the guilt though. 

Just sayin'.

The Hubcap Massacre

Yesterday was a scary driving day. 

I still didn't do any of the things I assumed I was going to do by now…

Like hit a bird,

or get smashed by a deer,



or destroy a mailbox,



and I haven't even knocked a side-view mirror off yet! 
 

YAY!

However, it IS Winter,
and the roads look like a giant infant took a hammer to them.
 

My father had trouble with a few potholes recently, so you'd think I would have seen this coming.

NOPE. 

Mom, after the fact, said she saw it… but we're going to ignore how that would have been nice to mention BEFORE I hit it.  Mom. 

*ahem*

So, I whacked a giant hole in the ground and while it sounded scary, most of the road had sounded scary, so I didn't think much of it. 

There were also so many potholes, some of which stretched across the whole area, so it was difficult to avoid them. 

Usually I'm the only one making horrible noises while I drive, but this time Mom chimed in.
 

You know that noise Lucile Ball makes on I Love Lucy? 
It was like that.  

Every.  Time. 

Still, not nearly as bad as the noises my father makes as soon as I get behind the wheel at all.  

Seriously, I could be parked and he'll still hit the imaginary brake on his side.

Anyway, I didn't know anything was horribly wrong until I went into a "lane" over on the side, thinking a car in front of me was in a turning lane, rather than, you know, parked.

Then another car came up next to me in the correct lane. 

I figured I was trapped and Mom and I would have to eat parts of the car to survive until we were rescued from my stupidity.

The man in the other car honked, which I assumed was an angry honk. 

It was not. 
I rolled down the window and he mentioned that our hubcap (read: Mom's hubcap that I slammed off of her poor car) was by the town hall, in a snow bank. 

Thank you, Stranger-Man. 

I had this weird swell of embarrassment from having been driving around with only three hubcaps. 

I pictured getting laughed at by more fashionable drivers.

Because Mom mentioned that I need to be careful with the next potholes so as not to damage the tire, my severe lack of car-knowledge showed.  

I was under the assumption that the hubcap was usually bolted on, keeping the tire in place. 
 

I imagined the tire now flying off without it's metal seat belt, and me going to some kind of car-jail for committing tire manslaughter. 

Anyway, Mom found the hubcap after wandering around a bit. 
 



This brings up a few questions. 

Did it fly off of the car into the snowbank? 

Did the kindly neighbors take the time to get out of their car to pick it off of the road and leave it where we could find it? 

Did they follow us that whole way to tell us, or was it by chance that they happened to see a car missing a hubcap later on and fill in the blanks? 

Either way, Mom and I weren't entirely positive we could put it back on right then and there, so she just plopped it in the car. 

I was still a little shaken by "OH MY FUCK I BROKE YOUR CAR I'M SO SORRY" so I asked her to do the driving until our next errand was done. 

I've been calling that my first accident just because I want that part of my life to be over with and it didn't involve anyone else being damaged.

Let me think this. 

Shhh...

Fleyes

I've been drawing these things and I'm not gonna post them all here because SURPRISES but... 

FLEYES because I'm clever. 

I love them.

I can't stop drawing them doing silly things...

Fifteen of them in black and white will be used to countdown to the first Oh Hell, Donna! being posted.  

I'll let you know when that starts.  

...For now...

Lookit fleyes playing the snow! 

*ahem*

They’ll all wind up on mugs and such in http://society6.com/RowynGolde and possibly in a RedBubble store for stickers. 
We’ll see.  
I’ve got to shop around for that.

If you can think of a good place to have stickers made, let me know.  
I'd also love to make some kind of charm out of these guys eventually.  

Donna Updates!

In response to school starting again in a week, I've panicked and begun desperately trying to finish things I didn't do this lifetime Summer.  

Below are some preview images to Oh Hell, Donna! issue #1.  They are just snippets and all the inappropriate bits have been cropped out.  This is really only because I've been using the preview images on other sites as well.  

 These are all taken COMPLETELY out of context, so have fun with that. 

 Girl problems, am I right???

And a bonus!  These coming up are from the second issue.  ...I'm nowhere near drawing the second issue out, and the first issue is obviously not even shaded and is missing a couple backgrounds... BUT they are coming along! 
 

 Out of context is the best context.  

EXPRESSIONS ARE FUN TO DRAW


Yay!

I've Been Doin' Stuff! ... Really!

As you've seen before, my Knight and I view ourselves and each other in ways that probably don't make much sense outside of our very skewed context.  

For example, he is my love potato:

And I am his little pizza roll: 

And, as you've seen by now on this blog, I just don't see the world in a completely sane way in general.  

...

I need to do more artwork to let this... whatever it is out.  I've been in school for too long and I'm getting restless.  The last semi-decent art things I've done were a painting for my housemate:

And a thing for my mom's nursery school class: 

...And some assorted commissions here and there.  Portraits for a friend's podcast were fun to do:

That podcast is the Shuadcast, by the way.  It'll be up at youtube.com/Shuadcast
For now, check it out here: Shuadcast!

So, I've been doing stuff.  

But I need more!  *makes greedy hands*  So I've got some painting ideas in the works, and once all this school related insanity is done, I'll be working on comics.  

www.deddrie.com is getting an overhaul, for example.  

Donna might actually go somewhere.  
The pages right now mostly look like this:

But should look like this: 

To give a better idea, this is what the page looks like with the background kinda in, but the foreground not yet colored:

Lastly, I'll be working on one fourth of a comic for someone else. Here is a preview of the kind of stuff that'll entail: 

Woo!