#therapy and art

[ilovedagain]

A short story about Damian Wayne and what colors mean to him.

"Maybe we should speak in a simpler way," the therapist said to the artist. After thirty minutes of stony silence, she was still trying to get the artist to say a word. "Talk to me about colors. What does blue mean to you?"

The artist's first thought was Richard. A man in black and blue who flew through the navy night sky, untethered by gravity. Skin mottled the same black and blue underneath his clothes. He tried to hide from everyone, burying his hurt deep. As if, perhaps, if he couldn't see it, others wouldn't see it too. He would guard his emotions, guard others—the fool—but he wouldn't guard himself.

"Guardian," the artist finally said about blue. He could talk about colors. He re-crossed his arms for the third time, aware of how obvious his discomfort was but unable to help it.

He knew how to face judgment, harden his heart and list his failings to superiors. But the therapist was nonjudgmental, asking him about colors, and he never learned how to guard against someone without ulterior motives.

"What about yellow?"

The artist swallowed. Yellow was the color of the cape he tried to steal from a boy who needed it as much as him. It was a flash of brightness in an unforgiving world where he had to fight dirty and vicious to earn his place. At least, that was the world before everything changed. Before the world softened around the edges and suddenly he was the dark, unforgiving one.

"Regret."

The therapist hummed. A soft, melodic sound beneath the crashing waves in his ears. Maybe she could hear how loud his heartbeat was because she didn't push him to elaborate. "Pink?"

The artist almost smiled. Pink was the tongue of his cat, stuck out in her sleep.

"Cute."

Unlike him, the therapist didn't hold back her smile.

"Black?"

That was an easy one. The color of mystery. The color of the void in his life; the empty space beside his mother. That void captured his younger self's mind, always wondering what the void was like. What it would make of him. The hard part was saying aloud, to the therapist, what it meant to him.

"Father," he said, and immediately regretted his honesty.

She nodded, not making a big deal of it.

"Red?"

The artist exhaled deeply. He thought of many things. The red of his eye-veins when he was stressed. The red blotches of blood blooming like roses on a white bandage wrapped and wrapped around a head wound, vaguely bouquet-like. The red-chested robins he found in his father's gardens and fed seeds as he sketched their innocence.

The red helmet of a man, who was really a boy, desperate and different from his family. Living despite all the odds saying he should be long dead by now.

"Life," the artist said. He let his arms drop, suddenly drained like a nurse had drawn a liter of his blood.

"Green?"

The artist froze. He stared at the therapist, wondering about her angle. Did she know where he came from—his hometown and its lifeblood? Was this the goal of her little game of colors, how she would finally glean his thoughts about his childhood home?

When he was a young boy, in a kingdom of sand and gold, green was everywhere. The green fields in a greenhouse of extinct plants. In the green eyes of his mother and grandfather, the very same eyes as his own. And in the green pools that restored life, a miracle he beheld almost daily.

He would stand before those miracle waters, anxiously waiting for his loved ones to emerge, contemplating mirages and how it must be a lie to restore life after death. And yet, his pets had survived a plague, his mother had survived a stab wound, and his grandfather had survived cancer. He was a child who believed he was lucky.

"We're finished here." He stood and left, fifteen minutes before the end of the session, disregarding the therapist's soft-spoken plea to wait.

Richard greeted him in the waiting room with a smile that vanished when he saw his face. He sprang to his feet, abandoning the magazine unceremoniously on the chair, and matched Damian's brisk pace out of the building.

"What happened?" Richard took a shaky breath when Damian ignored him in favor of speed-walking to the parking lot. Richard placed a hand on his shoulder as they reached the car. He bent his head to meet his eyes, but Damian stubbornly turned his head away. His eyes were so, so blue. "Dami, what happened?"

Damian knew, and he knew Dr. Dinah knew, that refusing to discuss that color spoke volumes, more than anything he had said during the session.

"Home," Damian whispered, feeling like a child crying on his first day of kindergarten. "Please, I just want to go home."

They didn't converse during the car ride home, though Richard stole glances at him, his unspoken words palpable in the silence. Damian fled to his room and spent dinner there. He was too restless to sleep and too exhausted to study. Tugged between the urge to fight and to freeze.

Like how all roads lead to Rome, he ended up painting. He set up an easel taller than himself and began mixing colors until he had every shade of green. He thought about home. His old home, the one in an unforgiving world where death was both constant and impossible, where pain was as abundant as gold, but at least the world made sense. The strong survived, and the strongest conquered. They even conquered death.

The scene he painted was a view inside a tower. Stone walls stretched up into infinite flights of stairs, with assassins lined up in rows on each level. The pool at the bottom cast a thick, green hue over the darkness. But the pool was an afterthought; the focus was on the walls of the tower.

He knew those walls well. They were made of bulging rocks that lay unevenly. When they were bathed in a green haze, Damian couldn't help but think they resembled cancer cells under a microscope. And that was precisely how he painted them: a tower with walls like tumor cells, splotches of assassins in the darkness, and the gaping green pool at the bottom.

Poison. Green is poison.

[the-eccentric-eclectic]

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

[holographings]

someone on twitter said Imagine what s2 jayce would give to talk to s1 viktor just one more time. and someone had a time travel alternate dimension fic ready to go. and i read it. and now my face is being eaten by 3750 feral dogs i think

[imstillalexcomic]

When I started my transition and began to come out to a few more folks than the tiny few that knew about me, there was something I kept saying as a part of my spiel…

“This is what I am, not who I am.”

I think I believed it fully at the time.

But then the interaction in the comic above occurred this past summer and completely changed my mind.  Sure, being trans is something that I just am, but it’s also something that can be part of who I am as well. 

Seeing that kid completely light up the way they did sparked in me a desire that I really didn’t think I’d ever have.  Suddenly, that kid made me want to be visible.

Like the comic says, I wasn’t ready to be publicly out so I felt safer lying about myself at the time, but I truly hope that the next time I’m up there they have the opportunity to see me…

…a transgender person who’s included and having fun, just like we all should be.

[jamjoob]

She's gonna figure out this whole Zaun thing. For her.

[otlwoozi]

recent alnst sketch pages

[b1ackberry]

[efsungeradam]

therapy

[doodlingant]

This old man deserves some therapy imo 😭

[kitkinnie]

on colors and being different and not being enough for yourself

(please reblog instead of liking)

[fadesense]

something something tarquin sees ashur's face for the first time

[mangomantises]

like it's the first time

i actually can't get over this show no matter how hard i try

[bklily]

They started talking a lot more often 💜

[imstillalexcomic]

Hoping everyone had a lovely holiday season!

I was really, really surprised my uncle-in-law’s card affected me that much.  Since I was presenting male my whole life, it didn’t occur to me how impactful just being gendered correctly can be.

It was really cool, and I hope anyone reading this gets to have heartwarming moments like that.