Pain and Persistance

I have had some degree of fibromyalgia and a severe case of both depression and social anxiety for 16 years brought on after a brain condition triggered by my acne medication. Up till recently I thought the pain and aches were just my weakness, just me being wussy. It was an odd thing to go from a healthy mildly overweight but active teenager to a suicidal obese space cadet overnight. I managed to survive for the most part and went to college, had to take of a semester to attend counseling to help get over sexual abuse as a child, but then I went back to a university rather than a college and was accepted into their illustration program. It was so hard and I missed a lot but managed to nearly make it through before I crashed and had to drop out because I had developed sleep apnea and could not drive to school anymore.

I spent several years taking care of people and ignoring myself, it was an old habit. I took care of my friends 2 kids for a year, took care of my beloved grandparents until my grandmother died and my grandfather was put in a home, spent a year searching for a job I could do and beating myself up for my weaknesses. Ended up working for a year at a motel in the graveyard position and that was just bad. It was easy enough work but the hours and the exposure to deadbeats cooking meth in their motel rooms took it's toll. In Sept of 2006 I crashed hard. I spent over a month in bed. By this time I was out of my families house (though I love them dearly they are high stress and my sisters tend to devalue everyone Else's pain and tell you that you there is no help and you will just have to deal with it and work harder.) So I was living with a friend who was incapable of helping anyone else. No boyfriend, poor family who had no time for me, broken friend to live with, no job, no hopes.

I started my business in desperation. I needed something I could do from home and something that would help restore my spirit. It worked, sort of. My dear Aunt has been supporting me financially since then and I have had some very limited successes. June 2007 I went with my youngest sister and best friend to a festival thing in Ohio (I live in Utah) It was a risk, especially since it was just me and a 15yr old crossing the country in a rented car. It was a fun drive and a miserable event and when I got home I crashed hard again. and 5 months later my roommate abandoned me to full rent, but I turned her room into my sewing room.

I have just, early this year, gotten back to some kind of normal level but it has become painfully obvious to me and others that even with work I will never get back to the energy level I was at before the motel job fiasco. Worse I have developed conditions over the years that aggravate the fibromyalgia. I have to watch everyday what I do, how I sit and stand, what I eat, when and how I sleep... that alone is exhausting. To top it off, my father and brother both of whom are Nurses do not believe it is a real condition.

Dark as it all seems, my mother is a wonderful person who never fails to renew some of my spirit. My boyfriend (dating 1 1/2 years) treats me with respect and love and encourages me. And even though it often seems very much like my art and crafts are entirely shunned and unwanted, I get to do what I like, at least for now. So what if I have to spend a week here fighting depression and a week there fighting debilitating pain, it reminds me I am alive and gives me fuel for my art. And I am not the only artist with such trials. If others can do it so can I.

I thank you so much for the courage to tell your tale. I apologize for the absurd length of it. Thank you.
-Bobbie

To begin with...

Well this has been a long time in coming, no matter how much I have fought against it. I, Bobbie Berendson, have joined the blogger community. (listens to the cries of horror and the pandemonium in the streets.) I have no idea just how to do this, so I will just spit it all out and see what happens.

I am an artist in the truest sense of the word. Everything in my life is touched by my creativity, I can't help it, it is just what I have always done. It has been a release for so many things in my life that I have had no control over: sexual abuse, family illnesses, my own illnesses and stumbling blocks, my genes, the list goes on. I credit my mother with much of my attitude, I usually face things with a smile and a considerable amount of faith. However, the issues in my life, especially my childhood, left me a lonely introvert.

I started drawing seriously in 7th grade. I also started writing around then too, I wanted to be a writer and though that didn't pan out I still have a wealth of tales to tell in my head. Art was more practical for me since I could aim for a scholarship in art to help me get into college. I had a lot of help and a wealth of wonderful teachers, from high school to UVSC to BYU. Unfortunately It turned out that I just wasn't a good enough artist at the time I finished my illustration program at BYU to get a job. It doesn't help that my talents fit better in the age of pulp magazines than they do in our modern world.

Due to the fact that no matter how much I looked and applied I could not get a job that I could do with my physical limitations as well as the fact that this silly art thing left me frustrated and strongly compelled to keep creating things; I dared open my own little internet shop in the spring of 2006. Metallic Visions was born.

Now days 2D art has become more of a hobby to me and I spend more time making my own kind of unique jewelry, masks, and sculpture than anything else. I like what I do, no I love it, I love creating things and this current venture of mine uses so many of my skills, which is a nice thing when you are a jack of all trades with not one mastered. I hate trying to sell them, it also doesn't help that I am clinically depressed and suffering from social anxiety bordering on agoraphobia. But I have learned in my life that the only person you can count on 100% is yourself and if I want people to see what I can do I will have to show them, even if I am terrified and it burns me out. Thus the creation, in part, of the blog.

So often I wish that I could be like so many other people and be satisfied with a regular job and a regular hobby. That is not for some of us, some of us are artists and come what may we must create. It is our duty, our curse, our gift, and our salvation, and at the end of the day I am grateful for it.

Now I just wish I could make a living with it.... heheheh