Solitary

It's been a while since I've been here.  I've been in a sort of self-imposed solitary confinement.  I guess old habits die hard as they say.  The good thing is I have taken to drawing again.  Just drawing, and drawing.  Enough feeling down, and feeling sorry for myself.  Enough lamenting my issues, and my lack of real life friends.  Enough!  This depression will not win.  

I joined Suzi Blu's Le Petite Academy about a year ago when  I was super depressed and doing nothing but sleeping and surfing the internet.  I happened upon this girl Suzi Blu who made videos for Youtube (Suzi blutube) and fell in love.  Loved her, loved what she was doing, loved her message and what she stood for.  Here was someone really living.  Someone being true to herself and creating her own little world where everyone was welcome.   She changed my life, really.  She gave me the courage to paint again.  To learn something new.  To enjoy what I was doing.  To live.  I painted.  I wrote.  And then....

...I'm not sure what really.   Sometimes I get the feeling that none of it matters.  None of it.  And I isolate.  I stopped painting.  I stopped going to my 12 step meetings.   I stopped wanting to do anything.  Then I found myself  'hiding' from people I know who actually care about me.  Even on the internet.  

So, it's a funny thing but I started raising chickens, and two ducks.  They make me laugh.  They make me smile, everyday.    They get me out of bed and into the sunshine every morning with their peeping for food. 

 When we first got them they were all tiny and in one container.   We noticed then that the smallest chick 'Brownie' (the brown one)  would stick to the ducks like glue.  She would sleep with them, try to climb  under their teeny wings.  It was sweet, and a little sad.  But alas the ducks grew too big for the even larger dog crate we now had them in, and they were entirely too messy, so we had to move them out.   They are old enough and it has been warm enough that we can keep them outside now, but only the ducks. They sit at the door and peep, or kind of squawk very loudly until they fall asleep.  They sleep pressed up against the sliding glass door where they can see the chicks.  

 First thing in the morning when they hear me moving around inside they again begin to squawk very loudly until I put the chicks out with them.  All day long they follow the chicks.  Wherever the chicks are the ducks are, and vice-a-versa.  It's kinda sweet.  So last night we left the screen door open a bit in the evening after we'd brought the chicks in.  The chicks are next to my studio so at some point I needed something and as I passed the chicks the ducks startled me.  There they were, they had come in and were sleeping alongside the chick cage.   It was so sweet, I was sad when my husband shoo'd the ducks out again for the evening.   I think there is something I can learn from these chicks and ducks.  

I have attempted to come out of solitary- it's not easy.  There are many obstacles to face.  I have taken to watching Suzi Blutubes again.  They make me smile, they inspire me, they give me hope.  And hope is not something I come by easily.