Things they don’t teach about life

Some things you learn the hard way, the rest is what you read or listen to.

Here are some observations I’ve made, and quips I’ve collected over the years. They say that life doesn’t begin until you are 18, and if that’s true, then that means I’ve only really been ‘alive’ for 13 years. I’m not a brand-new adult, and I’m also not ‘over the hill’. At 31 I am technically in my prime, which I suspect must mean that while I’ve got some experience, I’m still young and stupid enough to still get into trouble. So, here’s the ‘good’ stuff I’ve gathered in that time.

1) No One Cares

This sounds bleak, but this is a blessing. No one cares about what clothes you buy or if you are ‘outfit repeating’ and this isn’t just because adults own washers and dryers- people are not obsessing over what you do or don’t do. No one cares if you make $55k or $200k. No one cares that your car is 10 years old, that your phone isn’t the latest model, and that you haven’t uploaded new stuff on social media in a while. This isn’t to imply the world is uninterested in you, but we are focused on our own lives.

As a caveat — if they do care, it’s usually because they are what my mom calls a ‘busy body’, which is someone who makes your business their business. If anyone tries to make you feel lesser than, its because they envy something about you. Envy doesn’t have to just be the superficial things either, people can envy others who have more satisfaction and happiness in life.

2) You Aren’t the Only One

Those thoughts you have on your worst days about disappearing and leaving the world were thought by someone else, maybe even at the same time as you. The cheeriest most radiant people have endured pain, loss, and betrayal too. Everyone in your life has something they are dealing with that they aren’t talking about. One woman is frustrated trying to get medical equipment for her handicapped daughter, the man next to her hasn’t slept in a week because of severe insomnia and depression, and next to him is someone silently working through a breathing exercise because their body went into fight or flight thanks to trauma.

It’s true that not everyone will understand, or will even make an effort to, but there are lots of people that can relate to your thoughts and feelings all around you.

You aren’t so different that no one can relate to you. I’m not saying you aren’t unique, you are, but suffering spares no one. This means odds are, someone will resonate with you.

3) Talk to People About the Real Stuff

This ties into the last point. I know other people are going through depression and anxiety and traumatic flashbacks because I talk about what I’m going through, and this invites others to open up too.

The younger crowd is often too cynical, but you aren’t “trauma dumping” just for talking about your life experiences, and we are meant to rely on each other. Humans are social creatures, and before therapy, we had a real sense of community. It’s not that people have more problems in today’s world that only therapy can fix, it’s that we have lost community and struggle to connect, which makes things harder.

The solution to loneliness is to open up about it with others. And if they judge you for it? They weren’t the right person to talk to. You’ll find your people.

I have held strangers in my arms while they cried while working retail telling me about a family member that ended their life. I’ve consoled women wearing sunglasses to cover black eyes. I’ve sat with people that were angry and distressed when they showed up on my porch after being released from the nearby county jail.

I’ve also cried in front of customers and had one buy me a bouquet of roses and write me a heartfelt note. I’ve had internet strangers give me their numbers and encourage me to call them whenever I feel panicked or depressed. I’ve had people drop everything they were doing to stay with me a few days so I don’t do anything to hurt myself.

I know what it’s like to need someone and to be the person someone needs, and part of bridging the gap is talking about the real stuff.

4) Shame is a Pointless Thing That Harms You

No one is a saint. We all do things that we regret or that society looks down on. Within every single person is the capacity for good or evil and all things in between. Doing something that goes against your own ethics, intentionally, is a form self harm, but so is tormenting yourself with guilt about it.

TLC’s My 600 lb Life and A&E’s Hoarders are great windows into the effects of shame on the psyche. Many of the people featured in My 600 lb Life tell stories of being severely abused or neglected or faced with extreme poverty as children — all of those things can create feelings of shame in a person. The person internalizes that shame, and seeks comfort and an escape in eating, until that itself becomes it’s own problem for them. They then begin to self isolate and will sneak food until they become shut-ins and a shell of who they once were. Shame did that to them. For hoarders it works similarly, they consume by shopping and refusing to throw away trash and their homes become unlivable with them isolated inside.

They internalized their pain and punish themselves for it.

You don’t have to do that. Holding yourself accountable never involves shame, in fact, a shame mentality makes it harder for a person to be accountable and honest with themselves and others. Be objective. You did something bad or something was done to you, but it doesn’t define you.

You were sexually assaulted so now you feel shame. You messed up on the job and got a demotion or fired. You didn’t study and got caught cheating on an exam. It happened. It sucks. But that nasty feeling of shame is self abandonment knocking at the proverbial door. Whatever it was, you didn’t “deserve” it, and punishing yourself more-so to combat that shame, no matter the means, will only lead to more of it.

Shame is a parasite of the mind that seeks to erode you of yourself. Tell it to fuck off.

5) You Are the Love of Your Life, and Your Own Best Friend in This Life

We experience everyone differently, and this means there are many different versions of who we are inside the minds of others. No one really knows all of you. They know what they see, what they can perceive and what you show and tell them. Only you knows the inside of your mind and soul, though.

The best thing I ever did for myself was decide to tell myself every day that I love me. I usually whisper it before crawling into bed for the night or in front of the mirror when I’m getting dressed. It’s silly, but that simple “I love you, I’m proud of you.” has done a lot for my self esteem and made me more resilient.

Compliment yourself, give yourself praise. Be your biggest protector and provider of support. If you can build a habit of doing this, of choosing you, you are actively fighting against self-hate and doubt and self-abandonment.

Romantic love is nice, sure. But it can be a fickle thing. The only constant in your life is you. Be someone you love and understand, and you’ll attract people who admire the same.

You can’t loathe yourself into success. You can’t shame yourself into a happy marriage. You can’t judge yourself into supportive friendships. You must choose you, and do so often and aggressively until it becomes your default.

6) Hope is an Act of Rebellion

I once read an article about how people of war-torn impoverished nations would dance with fervor every night while the world burned around them. Clapping, singing, banging on drums and dancing the night away. It’s the most human thing I can think of, actually, to meet fear and despair with joy and movement. Hope is what makes a person dance. Hope is the bet placed on ones own survival and on ones personal strength. To have hope, is to imagine a world in color when everything is black and white. It defies whatever miserable conclusion hard times lead us to believe in.

Your heartbroken and feel useless? Go outside and dance under the moon as badly as you can. Laugh at yourself while you cry it out. Let the cars see you in the street twirling in all your madness. Dare to feel. Dare to defy pain.

The economy sucks. The government is closed. Everything is bleak and lifeless except you. Sing. Dance. Write. Fall in love a million times, and include yourself in that count.

If logically everything is terrible, then abandon reason, and embrace feeling, because after all, hope isn’t something you think, it’s something you feel, something you embody.

7) Your Problems are as Big or Small as You Make Them

What separates a mountain from a mole hill is perspective. When I was a teenager and got my first speeding ticket I cried and had a breakdown because I didn’t want to get yelled at by my parents and wasn’t sure how I’d afford it working minimum wage. I got my first speeding ticket in nearly a decade recently, and barely bat an eye about it. Part of this is experience, I know the options and solutions available, but part of it is also choosing to let it be a small thing.

How you feel about something dictates the size of the issue, and this applies broadly to life as well. If you feel like everything is hopeless and an obstacle you’ll never overcome, then that’s exactly what it’ll be. It will continue to remain that way unless and until you decide to change your perspective.

8) Not All of Your Friends Are Really Your Friends

Some people will celebrate your successes but pray upon your downfall. Others are always a phone call away if you need to vent about how bad things are, but as life improves or good things happen, they pull away.

Don’t take it personally. Be authentic, keep the same energy with everyone. Whoever is meant to be in your life will be.

9) How People Act or Treat You Is More About Them Than You

There was this bully at a previous role who hated my guts. She talked down to me, talked over me, and once screamed at me. It really got to me until I realized she was this towards everyone, with different levels of severity. Overall though she was just a miserable person. It took me a while to understand that.

Kind people are kind to everyone because that is who they are. People that are snotty or disregard you or act disrespectfully will try to make you believe you are deserving of that treatment, and hey, maybe you did do something to them, but they still have a choice in how they respond. If their response is belittling or mistreating you, it’s because that is who they are, not because of you.

Don’t sweat it, and don’t try to figure people out. When people are kind to you, it should be something you appreciate. When they are unkind, it should be something you shrug off - easier said than done sometimes, but I have faith in you.

10) The Pain Point is Where Growth Begins

Whether it is trauma, insecurity or some skillset you are lacking, that is the starting point for transformation.

If you are terribly shy and hate public speaking, that is your starting point. You can see the problem clearly: you clam up and stutter with buckling knees whenever you have to speak in front of an audience.

When faced with whatever your pain point is, you have the choice to run away and ignore it, suffer through it, or try to get ahead of it.

Running away would be not doing your speech for Communications class and taking the hit to your grade. Suffering through it would be just doing the speech, but not really reflecting on what it is that makes public speaking so hard for you. Getting ahead of this pain point is choosing to work on making public speaking easier. This could be by talking to strangers at the store or coffee shop, carrying a conversation in front of smaller groups where the stakes aren’t as high, and challenging yourself by finding more opportunities to practice public speaking, maybe by taking another class centered around it.

The latter is where you’ll see growth and progress. I chose a silly example for this one, and something a lot of us hate, but this concept applies to anything. When you see your short comings as opportunities for change - anything is possible.

Invisible blue: Short Story Summary

The house in this sketch is a replica of the first home I lived in as a small child. It was a sky-blue doublewide mobile home situated between sprawling cow pastures on the outskirts of town.

My dad planted two trees in the front yard when I and my brother were born. The tree he planted for me still stands and blocks the view of the house from the road. This sketch is purely from memory.

Synopsis

Last year I wrote a short story called Invisible Blue, which is a fictional exploration of me meeting myself as a child, who seems to live all alone cooped up in the little blue house on the side of the highway, and the conversations we share reveal how the adult protagonist developed certain mental health issues and idiosyncrasies.

The story follows 30 year old Anne who suffers vivid hallucinations and insomnia and has rambling frantic thoughts, and 5 year old Annie who is left at home for hours on end without engagement or supervision. Anne is in therapy for C-PTSD and she struggles to accept her mental health diagnoses. One day she gets the compulsion to visit her childhood home, and over the course of a week, she’ll visit the house five times, gradually gaining answers and Annie’s trust. On the last day, an emergency happens at the house and it’s up to Anne to save Annie, and this leads the adult version to confronting the people that left her alone, and making a decision that will impact her relationship with her family and all versions of herself.

Background Info

I penned the story originally to do some inner-child healing and shadow work, and decided that it may benefit others who had childhood experiences similar to mine.

Recently, I decided to convert the story into a short comic to be published on this site and uploaded onto Instagram, and Amazon KDP Publishing. The point would be to establish some writing credit before taking on my bigger project Martyr the Bride.

Behind the Title

The title ‘Invisible Blue’ is a word play on a few things. Firstly, the house was a pretty sky-blue when we lived there, with reddish-brown shingles and white trim. Secondly, I spent a solid chunk of my childhood at home alone in the summer when I was in elementary school, and had no other children to play with and no one to talk to for about 8 hours a day. I was the ‘invisible’ one in the title. The title also refers to a hidden sadness that I’ve always had with me, and the plot explains the source of that sadness. The third meaning is a reference to my eye color, which is a pale blue that often looks translucent in some lighting.

Intentional Writing

I wanted a story that was simple in its construction, that only had two characters (there are mentions of other people, and Anne meets her parents at the end, but the primary story is just the two selves), and that was deep and emotionally impactful. The most important part of a story, the job of a story is to impact and connect with readers - to touch the parts of the soul that make us human. This is a HARD task, and before I try to do that with a complicated narrative, I figured this was easy practice.

When it’s done, I will post it here. I’m hopeful I’ll make something others will resonate with.

MTB - Chase Grayson

Martyr the Bride cast and brand insignia

The characters: Hunter (beanie), Layne (short blonde), Chase (middle) River (scrubs in the back) and Pickett (punk redhead).

Hunter is the band’s bass player and founder. Layne is Chase’s guardian angel and is the deceased older brother of Pickett, whose real name is Laura. Chase is the band’s frontman and is a life-long writer. River is Chase’s lover in the first half of the story, and Pickett is a patient at the Ezra facility, where Chase and River work.

The Inspiration for Chase

I have this mental image in my head that I saw the first time in mid 2022, of this fictionalized version of myself in the passenger seat of some guy’s car, the door is open as pavement rushes beneath and she’s got her head thrown back in the wind while hanging halfway out of the vehicle, cackling and hollering with joy. This ‘me’ had my natural blonde hair color and wore a lacy lingerie teddy in red. She was sexy, wild, and on fire next to the man she was obsessed with.

Chase came to me as this sly-eyed seductress. I saw flowing wavy hair, long thick legs, and clothes that were always in some phase of undress, falling off her frame with ease. She was young, saw herself through the ‘male gaze’ and leaned into this image. There was no plot, no character development, just the image of playfulness, sex appeal, and rebellion. Chase was what I wanted to be back then. She was free.

I’m not sure when or how I came up with her name. But I’ve always loved sporty boyish names for girls, that’s part of why I go by Kai. I like the masculine energy of the name. Her full name in the story is Chasity Grayson, but friends and lovers call her ‘Chase’ since it rolls off the tongue. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. She’s a woman longing for something, chasing after something - if you will.

“Steady As We Burn, It was all for love” - Tech Noir, Carpenter Brut Remix

From Wikipedia: Limerence is the mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. This state is characterized by intrusive thoughts and idealization of the loved one (also called "crystallization"), typically with a desire for reciprocation to form a relationship. This is accompanied by feelings of ecstasy or despair, depending on whether one's feelings seem to be reciprocated or not. Research on the biology of romantic love indicates that the early stage of intense romantic love (also called passionate love) resembles addiction, but academics do not currently agree on how love addictions are defined.

Chase is someone that always wanted to be accepted. She gave up her favorite music because her family deemed it ‘too secular’ and not ‘honoring God’, stashing away her poetry and not singing much in front of others. She marries a young man from her small town that everyone deems as a good God fearing man, named Arthur (or Art), and it becomes clear that the two are incompatible. Art is serious and isolates himself in his passions and studies leaving Chase lonely for days and weeks on end. She longs to have children but the couple are never intimate.

Then, she meets a man who she finds attractive, who lights her up, pays attention to her and she gets hooked on the attention. River is to Chase what opiates are to someone looking to get high. She is so enamored with the idea of him and of them being together that she overlooks how cruel and cold he is to her. River plays hot and cold and keeps Chase on a swivel.

All the sudden, the seemingly well-adjusted woman is reduced back to the lonely little girl that wanted her family’s attention, love and approval, and she wants it from River. He isn’t able to give it to her, though.

“Don’t Plant Seeds in Fields That Are Barren.” - W.T.M (River)

This is something the real River (not his name) said to me in April of 2022 when he tried to push me away. In the story, River says it to Chase.

She, like me, was trapped in a love-sick trance, in a state of mind called limerence.

Let me tell you something - it has been over three years since ‘River’ broke my heart, and I have absolutely never been the same. Those eight long months of limerence were like being in psychosis. I was not okay back then, there is nothing as powerful as that type of yearning, and in my opinion, nothing more dangerous than it. Limerence for this emotionally unavailable player had me writing suicide notes, cutting my wrists, drinking and driving, and keeping the weirdest hours so that I could always be at his beck and call. I look back at this time period and feel awe for the power this connection had over me. I was trying to subsidize a father’s love, a husband’s care through a man that saw me as just another ‘friend with benefits’ on his roster. To me, he was everything. To him, I was entertainment.

I had planned to die in December of 2022. By that point, ‘River’ was chasing someone else and I found out the hard way and couldn’t take it. My ex-husband and I divorced, and he forbade me from doing so. I remember him telling me to give life three years before I commit to wanting to die. I agreed. Why three years? Because ‘Art’ loved arbitrary numbers, he explained it was a great way to add something grounding to any decisions. My best friend stayed with me for a week and the real-life ‘Hunter’ stayed close by my side during this dark time. I no longer talk to ‘Hunter’ (or ‘River’, for that matter) but I will always be grateful for him being there with me through the worst nights.

Since I was forced to go on living, I wanted it to be worth it. If I must be alive, so be it, but I’m going to make it count for something.

“Let no suffering be in vain.” I heard these words in my head a lot, and I knew I was going to write about this mess - not from the perspective of objective truth, but from my emotional truth. It felt like hell. It felt like hypnosis and hysteria.

In the story, Chase has a history of disturbing hallucinations that worsen the more she falls into limerence and into drink. She develops habits similar to her absentee father, and her madness leads to her seeing angels like Layne and Nightshade. She starts conversing with entities that no one else can see, and it’s here that she both unravels and finds herself.

Chase is based off parts of my personality, to be specific, she is comprised of who I was as a young teen and my rising ascendant sign, which is Cancer. Chase is emotional, sensitive, nurturing and dreams of a simple life with a husband and children. She’s shown that she’s willing to sacrifice her dreams of being a musician for her desire to be loved and to be a mother. (As a side note, the rest of my personality is split between Pickett and Nightshade. Pickett is made up of my anger/ unhealed trauma and my moon sign, Leo. She’s proud, bold, and not afraid to be the center of attention. She craves fame and stardom. Nightshade is my sun sign, Sagittarius. She’s the ‘devil on your shoulder’ - as in, she’s the philosophical one that gets Chase to explore her beliefs and her desires. Nightshade and Chase engage in spirited conversations about God, the Church, womanhood, marriage, sex, and the book of Genesis in the Bible. Nightshade’s name is a play off the belladonna flower, and is a nod to the myth of Lilith.)

End of the Chase

Chase’s main arc and character development centers around a spiritual pivot from dogmatic religion to embracing who she really is. To pull from the short story that this is all based on: “She knew exactly what sort of feral creature she was, and she was unafraid of this.” She develops confidence and self respect, and does the thing she’s afraid of: letting go of people who are against her and facing her fear of loneliness and abandonment. She achieves this by refusing to abandon herself any further. This is a ‘coming of age story’, but not about teenagers, that’s been done a million times. This is about the lives of many, many women who leave old lives behind and strike out on their own, putting their faith (and fates) into their own hands.

Kailey, Unabridged

There is technically a page dedicated about myself on this site already, however, it’s a quick overview and not a full picture (and if you couldn’t tell, I like full pictures with LOTS of detail). The following is more complete introduction as to the mess that I am.

‘Just a Small Town Girl Living in a Lonely World’ - Don’t Stop Believing - Journey

While there are no midnight trains for people to ride in my little hick town of Huntsville, Texas, there is a lot of history here — both in general and for me personally. I am cousins to former governor of Texas, Dolph Briscoe, who was a rancher in the Lone Star State in the 1940s-1950s, he played a major role in building out the Farm to Market road system that connects rural farmers to nearby towns and markets. Nearly 80 years later, I live off one of those Farm to Market roads in a quiet area that lends to relaxation and creativity.

My mom was really into genealogy when I was in middle school, and she was able to trace parts of our family all the way back to the 1400’s in England. I also have a fair amount of Irish, German, Choctaw, and Korean (if you can believe it). She took me to ancient white churches in the rural parts of Missouri where we used paper and crayons to etch over tombstones to read the names and dates. I loved hanging out in cemeteries, and now 20 odd years later I still do. I feel at peace, and feel a sort of reverence when I sit beside the grave markers of strangers.

Family Tree - Ethel Cain

Dad worked as a prison guard and mom worked in receiving at a large store chain when I was born, (side note — I share a birthday with the late Ozzy Osbourne) and later, dad would start a career with the railroad and mom went to work for the local school district. As I’ve written about in two previous posts, my father is an alcoholic, and has at times been unpredictable and abusive. My mom is reactive and would either incite fights, or work him up. It was a chaotic environment for me, which is how I think I originally got into drawing when I was little. It was a quiet, meditative practice and a nice distraction from their chaos.

I would sit inside my room quietly dreaming up story lines and realities that were more exciting or interesting than reality. Psychologists call it maladaptive daydreaming, I just called it imagination. I had this one story line that I dreamt up when I was 12 that I called ‘The Princess of the Sky’ that I worked on off and on from middle school into college, constantly re-working the story line to be something original and not plagiarizing whatever anime I was into at the time. The story was about a high school athlete named Iris Larkspur who had short mint-green side swept spiky hair who participated in a sport called Aero Surfing or Sky Surfing. The plot was based in dystopian version of Texas, about 40 years from present day, and water is a scarce resource that the town folks hoarded and fought over. Every year, a competition is held that awards in a large sum of money, and Iris is hellbent on making the varsity squad as a freshman High Flyer (think, trick shots at high altitudes that involve sprints and drops from the sky) to win the money to use for water for the town. As the plot continued, it was revealed that the military was sponsoring the sport across the nation because sky surfers have the agility on their boards that is useful in some types of combat, and Iris gets offers from top brass pretending to be talent scouts for professional sky flyers. The backdrop of war and dystopia grows as Iris grows into womanhood. That wasn’t always the plot, it’s changed a lot over the years, (and for now the idea is shelved while I develop Martyr the Bride).

Shortly after we moved into a new home, my parents took me to the pound to adopt a puppy that we named Angel! She was feisty and had the bark of a much larger dog. She lived to be 17 and died when I was in college.

At school, I was painfully shy unless I knew you. My primary method for making friends was to sit quietly alone and draw and eventually people would get curious about me and come up and watch and start talking to me. I loved and hated the attention at the same time. I was so used to feeling invisible at home that the attention I craved felt uncomfortable. By middle school and junior high I started to come out of my shell, and by high school I had blossomed a fair bit. I was still practically mute if I didn’t know someone, or in large groups, but got better at making friends and bridging that gap.

On the Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks

I loved school, though I wasn’t an academic. I liked the social elements of school — clubs and sports and social events. I’ve been part of the anime, photography and Technology Student Association club, and played water polo and competitive swimming in high school.

I had group of about 10 close friends that I’d hang out with regularly. I was sort of a social chameleon and collected a variety folks in my posse. My childhood best friend was a brainiac type that did drill team, dance, and was heavily involved as an honor student and in her church. She was my rock for many years. There was another girl that was the embodiment of everything I wanted to be. She was the coolest. She smoked pot listened to punk music and dreamed of driving a hearse and wearing pink dreads but her mom wouldn’t allow it. Then there is Zander— my best friend of over 20 years now.

I’m With Stupid - Static X

You ever meet someone and clique so well that you both lose brain cells when you hang out? That is me and Zander. He was always the nerdy, goofy, shy type. He was into technology and had a video camera that we used to film me doing really stupid ad libs with titles like “Gangstalicious Kai” where I did a ‘Pimp My Ride’ inspired bit about a chrome light weight car body. It was a shopping cart we found in his front yard. We were 12. We watched these skits a few years ago and were laughing our asses off. I guess all those years watching Comedy Central helped me develop impeccable comedic timing before I could even get a driver’s permit. I’ll post the videos some day.

My best friend Alex and I in our senior year of high school at a conference for the Technology Student Association.

Kids at school were quick to let me know I was weird, uncool, ugly and fat. So, I became funny. Trauma is good for personality development, I guess. I figured out how to get a group of people to laugh and to this day it’s one of my favorite things to do. I love to slip in the most unhinged, out of pocket remarks with dead pan delivery.

I am both the least and most serious person you’ve ever met. My idea of fun ranges from watching 2 hour youtube interviews on property tax fraud schemes across the country to jousting in shopping carts with pool noodles, with not much nuance in-between.

I went to only one homecoming dance in high school, and it was because my friend Morgan asked me to. She let me borrow the dress I’m wearing (and the car I’m sitting on).

Dropping Out of School - Brad Sucks

High school started off strong - sports, friends, advanced courses, clubs, and just a general sense of optimism. By senior year though, things had taken a darker turn. I entered a deep depression in the fall of my senior year after getting cheated on and dumped by a guy I really liked. I hardly ever attended my first period Statistics class, and had many days where I’d skip school altogether and spend my days writing at my local bookstore’s cafe. I also watched an unhealthy amount of Keeping Up with the Kardashians for some inexplicable reason during this period of my life. I was truant so often that I was issued a citation by the school, and since I was 18 that meant I could technically handle it without parent involvement. I went to court and the old man behind the glass took a look at me and could tell I wasn’t what you think of when someone says the phrase ‘delinquent’. I think he took pity on me. He said “do me a favor, promise me you’ll attend school the rest of the year and not miss any more days, and I’ll sign this off and waive the fee.” I promised and kept my word, and was able to attend prom and graduation.

I started college majoring in Animation and Art but I hated it. I’ve never liked the way 3D/CGI animation looked, to me, it looks plasticky and gummy. The newer stuff looks better, but it’s not nearly as beautiful as classic, hand-drawn or cell style 2D animation and it doesn’t hold up as well, but there were no classes and no real market on 2D animation, and I didn’t like the art program at my university, so I surprised everyone in the family and my friends when I switched my major to Business and Marketing. Hell, I surprised myself too.

In Drawing 1, our professor assigned us different greek statues to draw in charcoal, this is the David (I think?).

I slogged through college- it was a difficult time for me. My parents were going through a divorce, my dad got fired from his job at the railroad and went to prison. I was in an abusive relationship with a guy I met at junior college and worked 30 hours a week while taking 12-16 hours a semester and commuting an hour each day between university and home. I didn’t do anything special while in university, it was a struggle to attend class due to health issues brought on by chronic stress and trauma. If I thought my childhood was unstable, my young adulthood was straight up destructive and destabilized.

In college things really blew up. My father hurt his back and was prescribed pain meds that he quickly became addicted to. This combined with his drinking caused him to get fired after showing up drunk. The family was panicked. Mom couldn’t pay all the bills. He was doing crazy stuff like threatening to burn the house down, deflating the tires in mom’s car, barricading the door to the house and not letting anyone in.

All of the chaos at home caused my body to wig out. I grew up chronically stressed and by college, it was boiling over and my body couldn’t take it. I had severe migraines where I’d see stars and lose my vision in class, and once had a classmate drive me home. The pain was debilitating. I also had menstrual periods where I would bleed nonstop for a month or longer at a time. Understandably, I became severely anemic from this. I worked retail and had no health insurance and couldn’t get help or afford a few hundred bucks for appointments and ultrasounds. I had days where I literally shoved wash cloths in my underwear on top of sanitary pads, because it was THAT damn heavy! Finally, a doctor put me on regular birth control pills, which i used for several months until they realized the pills caused my blood pressure to skyrocket to dangerous levels. I had a doctor check my vitals as part of a routine appointment for a refill on my birth control, and she said ‘I cannot legally let you leave until we get that blood pressure under control’. So, I was on two different meds to treat it, and taken off the birth control. The bleeding issue lessened in severity with the blood pressure medicine but didn’t really stop until years later when I no longer lived in chronic stress at home.

My body was constantly exhausted, so while my friends are out partying and having adventures, I was coming home from my opening shift at the coffee shop to collapse into bed and sleep through constant pain. It was hell. I tell people all the time that I’m younger at 31 than I was at 21.

Sometimes I do really awful, goofy pen sketches. This was intended to be weird and funny when I drew it in college, but over the years it kinda paints a picture for how I felt in my 20s.

To this day 10 years later, I still never received a diagnosis for whatever that was. Was it Endometriosis? PCOS? Or just unexplainable Menorrhagia (heavy bleeding)?

I graduated with my bachelor’s in Business and Marketing from Sam Houston State University in December of 2017, by the skin of my teeth. There was so much going on between graduating high school in 2012 and then univeristy, it was unreal. I got fired from a job I liked, struggled with chronic insomnia, major anxiety and depression from untreated C-PTSD, and all of that and the other stuff previously mentioned made it hard to complete assignments. People said I was lazy, lacked discipline. That wasn’t it. I was quite literally fighting for my life and no one believed me or tried to understand. Friends called me flaky because I was chronically burnt out and would cancel plans.

I got married in October of 2018, and in 2019 I developed Bilateral Papilledema (swelling on the optic nerve behind both eyes). I was working in a cafe taking orders, when I started to lose peripheral vision. I went to my optometrist who was very alarmed and referred me to a neurologist in Houston. Everyone was convinced I was going to die or go blind. The doctor at Houston Methodist hospital basically said it would go away if I lost weight.

ANYWAY! All of that shit is the reason why I’m all for healthcare reform.

In 2021 life started to look up for the first time in years. I started Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and my therapist diagnosed me with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression. I started weight loss with the Noom program, too, and lost 80 lbs, which has contributed to no more bleeding or brain swelling or chronic migraines. Yay!

Breaking Up Slowly - Lana Del Rey, Nikki Lane

2022 shook my foundation. You’ll read about it in Martyr the Bride, well, a fictionalized version of it anyway. To sum it up, I got divorced and started my life over. The opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens also applies to my life in 2022: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Tech Noir - Carpenter Brut Remix

The years 2023 and 2024 and this year have been a bit of a blur. I’ve changed day jobs a few times, made a lot of friends, and changed a lot as a person. I went from being conservative and a faithful Baptist to being a pagan leftist— from thinking that feminism was part of the destruction of the western world (thanks to online content from the Alt-right before it even had a name) to realizing that my story ‘Martyr the Bride’ was a deeply feminist piece that was critical of patriarchy and the church. That led to a lot of questioning about everything! I’ll sum up the whiplash by saying this- I was MAGA in 2016 and voted for Harris in 2024. This is why I’m adamant that people can change their minds and their hearts, by the way.

Alexa, play ‘Peace Somehow’ by Avi Kaplan

Life has always been difficult for me, but I am the happiest I’ve ever been. At 31, I am a homeowner with the cutest ragdoll cat ever named Skyler. I have a full-time job that keeps me fairly busy, and a range of friends and peers I can call on any time for support or laughs. I love the freedom, but am hopeful I’ll find a partner when I’m ready again. I’ve made significant progress in healing my trauma and am finally confident enough to pursue my art business- so, full steam ahead!

I’m still affected by trauma, but as time goes on, the severity of my C-PTSD symptoms lesson. I spend a lot of time learning about relational dynamics and psychology in general to try to find healing methods and I like to think it’s paying off.

My goals are to launch the LLC at the start of 2026, and to sell art online and out of local shops. I am writing and storyboarding my graphic novel, and creating content and art as often as I can!

I believe that with humor, grace, and a knack for getting shit-faced time to time, you can weather anything life throws your way. Things will inevitably have their seasons of sorrow or loss, but life is for the living, and you’re still here, you’ve made it this far, so just keep on going. Your problems are as big or as small as you make them in your mind. If the world feels like its closing in, you need to change perspective and shift your focus. It’s not easy when you are in the thick of it, a lot of what makes a person resilient is in their decision and determination to do so.

Wow! You must have been bored as hell to have read all of this nonsense, but for that I am grateful. Thank you.

Thoughts on C-PTSD

In the modern day, there are many people who read or hear about a concept or mental disorder and decide after a fair amount of Google-fu that they have whatever disorder they saw on the internet.

I am not that person. I am diagnosed by a professional Psychologist as having Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder — C-PTSD.

I will talk about my experience with it in a moment, but first I want to clarify what C-PTSD is.

C-PTSD is NOT the same thing as PTSD.

PTSD is from one traumatic event or period in ones life, such as a veteran returning home from war. In the old days after WWI, it was called Shell-shock, and it described the mental state and the behavior of the returning soldiers who struggled to adapt to civilian life. Returning soldiers would have violent nightmares, or flashbacks to horrific events randomly throughout the day, they might isolate from normal activities and be ‘on edge’ or angry and have emotional outbursts that seem ill-fitting for the situation. When people say PTSD or even C-PTSD, this is normally people’s understanding of what it is. PTSD isn’t just for soldiers or war, the people that witnessed the fall of the World Trade Center towers could, and many did, experience PTSD from the trauma of witnessing that event. The key difference is that PTSD is usually related to one event or one period of time where they witnessed or experienced something traumatizing. C-PTSD on the other hand, is more nuanced. It’s all in that first word C for ‘Complex’— which indicates multiple traumatic or highly emotionally stressful events. Things like a child getting repeatedly screamed at for very minor infractions for the course of their entire childhood will have them acting emotionally withdrawn and highly anxious or reactive as an adult, when they encounter conflict.

This is my story as someone formally diagnosed with C-PTSD.

In an earlier blog post about addiction, I talked about my father’s alcoholism, and that is where many of the roots of my trauma take hold, but it isn’t that clear cut.

I was never sexually assaulted as a child, and for many years I believed that since that never happened to me, that my pain wasn’t real. As a teenager, I worked as a lifeguard at my local YMCA, and part of our training was awareness on the 4 types of abuse: physical, sexual, mental/emotional, and neglect. I knew that my father was abusive, but because I was never touched inappropriately, and he stopped beating on me when I was about 10, I was convinced that what I endured wasn’t “that bad”, since the worst of it wasn’t ongoing, and this lead to a lot of back and forth internally for years. Was I really abused? Can I really call it trauma? Short answer: yes.

My mother was someone who enjoyed the fight. When he would go low, she would take it straight to hell. She’s a good foot shorter than he is, but it never stopped her from getting in his face. Dad’s alcoholism and his time spent working on violent prisons as a guard in the 80’s and 90’s, as well as his own unresolved trauma made him incredibly reactive. Mom would egg him on until they were both screaming, throwing random stuff and hurling the most jaw-dropping insults at each other, and meanwhile, I’m locked behind my bedroom door with my ear pressed against it, heart racing, waiting for the worst to happen.

Was it every night? No. Was it even every week? no. It was sporadic and unpredictable. Anything could set my father off. If you said ‘hello’ in a tone he didn’t like he would get aggressive.

I’ve had him chase me down a drive way screaming “get back here you little bitch!”

I’ve seen him throw cellphones into mirrors, throw TVs, throw chairs into windows and watch the glass shatter everywhere. I’ve been in the backseat while he swerves all over the road driving intoxicated. I’ve seen and heard him attack my mom and brother, even going so far as to plant knives in my brother’s dresser so he can draw them out for a knife fight.

C-PTSD looks different for different people, and it all comes down to how much they’ve processed it (if at all), as well as the severity and their own interpretation of it. For me, C-PTSD put me deeply in touch with anger, with rage, but more than that, it is something that affects me now, even years later.

My C-PTSD looks like this: chronic insomnia for over 10 years, needing OTC sleep supplements to induce sleep, frequent nightmares and waking up screaming or crying. When things were still fresh, I had auditory hallucinations. I would hear men screaming or would hear someone yelling my name, while being completely awake and sober. They sounded so real that when it first began I would panic and search around the house because I was convinced someone was there, even if I knew I was alone. Occasionally, I’d have visual hallucinations that would be of human-shaped shadow figures. I was incredibly anxious everywhere I went in public, always needing to sit in restaurants with my back to a wall or facing an exit, always looking for applicable exits or routes to drive off if I felt unsafe. I also flinch a lot, especially if a man raises his voice or moves too suddenly towards me.

Over the years, my C-PTSD symptoms have lessened in frequency and intensity. CBT (talk therapy) has been moderately helpful, EMDR has been helpful although reliving those events is quite hard on me, learning about it and reading books like ‘The Body Keeps Score’ by Bessel Van Der Kolk, and ‘Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving’ by Pete Walker has also had positive impacts on me.

C-PTSD changes a person for forever, but recovery and living a happy life is absolutely possible! One of my favorite sentiments is the idea that it’s not your fault what happened to you, but it IS your responsibility to heal and to learn about it and process it. I’m very outspoken about what happened to me in childhood and my young adulthood because I recognize that the shame is not mine to carry (that phrase is a mantra I repeat often), and it’s been a vehicle to connecting with other people on a deeper level— which is beautiful, humbling, and inspiring. Talking to others has taught me that everyone HAS trauma in their past or will experience it at some point, but not everyone develops C-PTSD/PTSD from trauma, as Van Der Kolk writes about in his book. Still, everyone has a story, and the more you talk about yours, the more you are letting go of that emotional weight, and the more you open the floor for other people to see the real you, and it often makes them feel safe opening up about what they’ve been through — and this is what it’s all about. When I say ‘invest in people - they’re always worth it’, I mean this: be real, be raw, be vulnerable, be willing to grow from whatever happened, and allow others to see you, and you’ll see yourself in them. This is part of cultivating real social cohesion and community. I know that some folks think it’s cringey, and call it ‘trauma dumping’ but to me, that carries an unnecessary condescending tone.

In conclusion- life is meant to be lived out loud. Trauma doesn’t define you or predict how your story develops. You are not whatever happened to you, it doesn’t define you. It is not your burden or cross to bury, but it can be something you learn from, it can be part of your story that helps you love other people effectively. I still love my alcoholic father despite the abandonment and the torment, and not in a ‘Christian love’ way, but with compassion all the same.

Thank you for reading. <3

Poem: The Great Fall

When I first stood on my feet after the Great Fall
All around me snaked the rubble beneath
The tears came naturally, once they came at all
And lost was I, to the honor and horror of grief.

Pieces of dreams lay like shattered glass
I kick them over with something resembling rage
As my chest heaves, facing the past
Feelings of helplessness so familiar yet strange.

It all washes over me.

At first, I bit down hard to stop the cold sting
But Love held me close in those initial days
Singing softly until I remembered how to dream
And decide that I too, can be brave.

I learned something.

I loved someone.

I lost something.

I let it all wash over me--

This Great Fall,

Of desires and dreams,

The grateful death,

Of memory and me.

There are some things

I cannot save

But even still

I can be brave.

At the Intersection of Art & Heartbreak

There is no pain quite like a relationship suddenly ending with you left to pick up the confusion and the pieces. This thing that you put hours of energy and effort into, that you hoped and prayed would work out, that you felt safe and seen within ending is absolutely soul crushing.

“How do I move on?”

Well, not quickly, not easily, and not all at once. No clean break is every truly mess free. It takes a concerted effort to decide it’s time and that it’s okay to let go. Once you do, the question isn’t really one that’s asked, but it’s felt deep within you. “Now what?”

Now it’s time for less pain and more you.

Do you ever think about music? I mean really think about the music you love— think about the most beautiful song you’ve ever heard, and try to sense the pain that went into its creation. Imagine gorgeous vocals and lingering guitars and the artist’s tears that stain the scribbled set of stanzas they wrote for lyrics. They were left with the emotional rubble of something, and they enchanted that pain with the courage of feeling their feelings.

It’s easy to stuff pain down, to distract, to rebound, to use any easy vice to get by. Many artists even romanticize this self-destructiveness in their art and music (guilty), but to actually feel the cold shakiness of betrayal and loss is hard. It’ll have you asking an endless amount of ‘whys’- why me? Why’d they do that? Why did it have to happen?

Art and music start off as abstract means of understanding why something happened, but gain a life of their own.

Throw yourself into your creative spirit. Write, draw, paint, sing - even if its bad, especially if its bad! It’s not about money, it’s not about praise or fame, it’s about YOU.

“Make the worst thing you possibly can.” Sounds….stupid, but it is the best artistic advice I’ve ever heard, and it is borrowed from the sentiments written by Sol LeWitt in a letter to Eva Hesse. Below is the full quote which I heard as a teenager on a Lev Yilmaz episode of ‘Tales of Mere Existence’— a series that resonated deeply with teenage me.

Here’s the link to watch Lev’s video: https://youtu.be/hqZAxLqJkzA?si=804t4-82kwE4NT65

“Perhaps you’ve decided that you want to make great artwork, perhaps you’re having a hard time getting started making great artwork as you’re afraid that you’re artwork won’t actually turn out that great. You start looking for a great idea, because you want your great art to mean great things to great people. Before you know it you may be thinking that you shouldn’t make artwork, unless it can decide on a purpose and a way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end. You find yourself not making anything at all, and what’s more— you hate every minute of it. Well DON’T. Forget all that. Learn to say ‘Fuck you!’ to the world once in a while, you have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, rumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-tricking, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, allyway-sneaking, lot-waiting, small-stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmerching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO. Do something. Do anything. Do drawings- clean, clear, but crazy like machines: larger, bolder real nonsense. That sounds wonderful— real nonsense. More nonsensical. More crazy. More machines.More tits. More twats. More tallywackers - whatever. Make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your weird humor. You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about ‘cool’, make you’re own 'uncool’. Make your own world. If you fear, make it work for you. Draw and paint your fear and anxiety, stop worrying about big deep things, you must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, and empty. Then you’ll be able to do. Do something. Do anything! Don’t worry about trying to do good work, do some bad work, the worst you can think of and see what happens, but mainly relax and let everything go to hell. You are not responsible for the world, you are only responsible for your work. So do it. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any idea or flavor. It can be anything that you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you to stop working, then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, chances are it’s so deeply engrained in you, it would be easier to just do. Do something. Do anything.” - Sol LeWitt, narrated by Lev Yilmaz

With that said- the best way to process your heavy heart is by just doing something, anything.

And once you start? Just keep going. Then go even further. Keep going with doing and making, and eventually the pain will be behind you, and in it’s place will be this drive to keep creating. I believe in you, and it sounds like LeWitt probably would too.

Let’s talk about Addiction

Friday, October 10 2025 10:05am

My relationship with people struggling with addiction

I was one of the weird kids that never experimented with drinking or smoking, but not because I wasn’t curious or was too well-behaved, but because I already had an intimate relationship with the effects of addiction and alcoholism thanks to people in my life. I took a sip of my dad’s Bud Light when I was 16 because a friend dared me to, and immediately spat it out calling it “carbonated piss”. It still is, beer is awful.

For example, my mom took me out on my 21st and I had exactly one margarita - and trust me, it was plenty.

My mom has always been a cigarette smoker, and has smoked since she was 16, and my dad has always struggled with alcoholism.

As a kid, I’d sit with mom on the back patio as she puffed on a few smokes where she’d motion to the cigarette in hand and look at me and say “don’t ever do this. Don’t be like me.” She would tell me stories of her smoking pot in high school, and about kids she knew that suffered brain damage or death from harder substances or alcohol related car accidents. It was chilling to listen to. “I mean you have to think, they had their whole lives ahead of them. Now they’ll never get married or have kids. It was taken from them.” As a middle schooler it really sat with me, and is the main reason I never got into that sort of trouble.

Alcohol made my father mean and scary.

My relationship with my dad has always been very strained and difficult. I’ve never talked to him about the cause of his drinking problem (partly because he often denied he had a problem, and partly because I just hated talking to him.) Mom tells me that he was 16 when an older sister gave him a beer for the first time. She also told me that he was treated badly by his 9 older siblings, and has hinted at the possibility that maybe he was sexually abused as a child. Though I grew up with my father in the house, we were never and are not close. As much as I am an open book with other people in my life, I could never talk about something this real with him.

Childhood Memories

I knew that if I got off the bus and saw his truck in the drive way, there was a high chance I’d get screamed at and berated until I was in tears over something that was benign. I’d feel dread and would hope he’d be asleep or at least wouldn’t see me so I could slip into the safety of my room. If I could hear the TV from outside the house - I knew I’d have to put my head down and avoid eye contact and walk swiftly past him. He never let me make it all the way to my room before he’d call out in a low, serious and intimidating tone.

“Kailey..”

I’d bristle, and respond defensively out of instinct “what?” and he hated that. “Don’t WHAT me! Sit down we need to have a talk.” You could smell the sour stench of old light beer on him, and he’d often bring up stuff like dishes I left in my room, the fact that I left a light on before I left for school, or that I incurred costs on the home phone or cellphone bill. These are all very normal things that parents talk to their kids about, but he would work himself up into a raging, screaming frenzy until his pupils were dilated and he was in my face about whatever cardinal sin I had committed that week until I was trembling and crying. Then I’d hear “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” and the classic “I’ll give you something to cry about.” He hadn’t hit us since we were small, but he would throw phones so hard at the wall they broke apart or left a dent. He’d shake phone bills in my face, angry over slight increases, because I took a call before the minutes were free (writing that aged me lol.) He traumatized me severely, and is the reason I struggle with things like perfectionism, depression, and have anxious attachment and a history of codependency. He did the same thing to my brother. He fought with mom the most, though. She was always the main target.

I’ve seen him passed out in the cab of his truck at Olive Garden with us when I was around 11, and panicked thinking he was dead. I’ve been in the car with him while he drove drunk. Things didn’t escalate until after I graduated high school, though.

It all came to a tipping point while I was in college.

He hurt his back on the job at the railroad, and was prescribed highly-addictive pain meds which caused a pill addiction on top of his drinking problem. This made him lose it. I came home to all of my purses thrown in the ditch by our home, my brother’s after market stereo was halfway out of truck, because he tried to pry it out. He was insanely jealous of my brother and I. He hated that we had more than he did as a child. He drove my mom’s car to the field behind the house and let out the air of all 4 tires so she couldn’t leave. It all came to a head when his rage led him to knock her out and she hit her head on concrete in our garage. She almost died. He panicked and tried to shake her awake, and she thankfully came to, but I was close to losing my mom. He got fired for being drunk on the job, and did some unhinged shit and went to prison for a year and some change.

I’ll never forget the eerie calmness within the house while sitting in disbelief with my equally shocked mom and brother, after the police came and took him.

Years later, I reached out. He lied about being sober, and it was the final blow to the relationship. I now keep a very low-contact relationship with him.

I spoke with a man I met at sunrise on the beach who was older, and was a recovering alcoholic who gave me a hard truth. “If he’s still blaming your mom or you guys for stuff, then he isn’t working towards recovery. That’s one of the most important things you learn in AA - accountability.”

My brother had a slight drinking problem in college, but after DWI and probation he’s made me proud by keeping clean.

Lessons and hard truths about addiction from the daughter of an addict

1.) Their addiction makes them manipulative, and they delude themselves with the same lies they tell you.
2.) There are a variety of factors that lead to someone developing an addiction, and addiction can be a variety of things, including non-substances, such as impulse spending, gambling, emotional eating, and sex or serial dating.
3.) The longer the active addiction, the stronger the denial and delusion.
4.) Not all addicts are jobless ‘bums’ or criminals. Through most of my childhood he had a well paying job and we lived in a nice, HOA-managed, suburban neighborhood. There is no stereotype for how addicts look or act. Addiction is as unique as their personality.
5.) As a child in this, you have a choice. You can either follow in their footsteps to deal with the pain they caused you with their addiction, or you can cut ties and go on a different path of growth and healing.
6.) This is from AA - “You are only as sick as your secrets.”
7.) Recovery is possible for EVERYONE. You just have to want it badly enough.
8.) Shame is the enemy of change and growth. I wholeheartedly don’t believe in shame as a concept, only accountability.
9.) You cannot want a person to recover more than they are willing to. You loving them and encouraging them, is not enough if they do not WANT to change.
10.) ALL addicts deserve compassion, even when they are violent or wild. There is a person who is hurting in there, even if you can never reach them, you must always remember change is possible for them if and when they are ready.

I’ll never stop having compassion for my father, I also will not forgive him for the permanent damage to myself and our family. I can separate my pain from my ability to care, and that is something I try to articulate because I believe it’s important. I’ll never give up on him, though change is unlikely. This is because of my personal mantra: Invest in people - they are always worth it.

Thank you for reading. If you are struggling, know you are not alone. People want to see you thrive. <3

Tools of The Trade: Art Supplies

When I was around 7 or 8, my mom gave me a box full of dot matrix printer paper to draw on. That Paper is flimsy and doesn’t hold ink or marker too well, but for years, it was what I drew on, with No. 2 pencils, ballpoint Bic pens, and the original 10-color set of Crayola markers.

There is this idea that you need to spend a lot of money to make great art or to be an artist - and it is blatantly false.

It is not the tools that make the art or composition, it is how you use them. I’ve used a variety of India ink or gel ink pens in my work over the years, and in a world of Faber-Castell, Tom Bow, and Micron pens - I choose the unassuming Sharpie S Gel pen.

My beloved pen - The Sharpie S Gel

I love these pens so much that I am going to get the outline of one tattooed on my drawing arm. Yes I’m serious. I first used a Sharpie S Gel in 2022 working in the Personnel office at a prison that my supervisor lent me and I fell in love with it immediately.

These pens have a rich matte black finish with and are strinkingly bold. They don’t skip or dry out quickly and are cheap as far as art supplies go.

Good Ole Copy Paper

As mentioned, I used to draw on old school printer paper, as I got older, I’d sneak large chunks of modern copy paper from the family computer room to draw on. Mom would get pissed off at me for it, but I kept doing it, because it was thicker than the dot matrix paper and didn’t have those annoying blue lines that wide-ruled paper has. Obviously, it’s not designed for art. And as I’ve invested more in my craft, I’ve shifted to Bristol paper for most of my work.

But occassionally I will sneak copy paper from the office to draw on. I highly recommend it. A box of 5000 sheet of copy paper averages about $40-60, or about $0.01 per sheet, where as Strathmore 100 page Sketchbooks go for $10 and average about $0.10 per sheet.

Throw Some Color in the Mix

Honestly? To hell with Copic markers and anything fancy. They don’t have good milage and are expensive. There are many cheap alcohol marker packs online (a lot of them are on Amazon, which I try to avoid.) that will last you a long time (I bought a 48 pack of markers on Amazon in 2021 and it’s 2025 and I just now need to replace most of them. I can’t provide a brand name it’s one of those weird-ass ‘Btchuluudosisoma’ brand names.)

Bottom line: Start off Cheap, Build Your Supplies as You Gain Experience

I strongly believe art should be accessible to everyone. Don’t be intimidated by all the fancy supplies. Most of your favorite artists have their cheap tried-and-true favorites, because it is you that makes the art, not the supplies. Of course, higher quality materials age better over time, and don’t fade as quickly, but often times when I talk about art with people they use cost a reason why they don’t make anything.

“It’s such an expensive hobby.” Then don’t let it be one. Forgo Prismacolor and master shading and saturated color with Crayola until you are ready to switch. The brands you grew up with, that made up your school supply list, are the brands that will grow with you on your journey - so don’t listen to what everyone says about the right supplies.

There is no wrong way to make art.

Art should have a soundtrack

Music has always been what guides my pen.

I have been drawing since someone first handed me a crayon. When I was about 10 I became obsessed with bands like Nickleback (don’t judge - I still love some of their older grunge-inspired stuff) and Green Day. My mom was really into rock music. Our formal dining room in the house was where she had her drum set, and her large stereo system with 4ft tall speakers that made our double-paned windows rattle in their frame. Mom didn’t like me listening to pop or whatever was on the radio, so she made me and my brother lots of mixed CDs with acts like AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Aerosmith, Boston, Bon Jovi and the Eagles.

I would listen to the same CD over and over again, and get fixated on a song and then listen to that same track for the entirety that I worked on a drawing. I had those shitty knock-off Walkman headphones that came with whatever Wal-Mart portable CD player I had at the time, and I’d fall into a trance while drawing and coloring and would hit the back button whenever the disc tried to go on to the next song.

As a child, my explanation for this was I wanted to stay in the mood that that song put me in. The thought is that the tone of the art would shift too much if I changed songs or music genres. This lead to me listening to entire albums start to finish, and building an intimate relationship with the music I liked.

Albums like The Black Parade, Sing the Sorrow, The Long Road and All the Right Reasons were memorized.

I still hold the belief that whatever drawing or painting you are working on should have a companion song, or album, that compliments it visually or energetically - slow and sad songs go with dark colors and smooth lines, and powerful rock anthems go with high-contrast and striking compositions.

Often times when I am in a creative rut, I will let myself go into a musical trance, visualizing cinematics and scenes and trying to bring some of it to life on paper or canvas.

In fact, Martyr the Bride falls into this practice. The storyboarding happens while i stay on the same song or album, and I’ll notate what it is somewhere on the page in small print.

So, if you want to draw or paint, even if you are a beginner or have no experience, don’t think! Just listen to something that resonates with you and let those vibes guide your pen or brush!