Two Types of Inspiration

May 31, 2016August 18, 20181 Comment

yellow tulips

In artistic creation there are two types of inspiration, one which blooms from the conscience and one which blooms from the subconscious.

The first is when you get inspired by an emotional experience then try to immortalize the imprint of that experience through art. The second is when you, under the influence of a thoughtless drive, create something without fully understanding why then take step back and analyze where in your psyche that inspiration was rooted. Working backwards to find out why it is so aesthetically fulfilling to paint blood stain tears underneath your eyes or scribble decaying trees in illustrations.

– Valerie Parente (5-31-16)

Susceptible to Growth

May 24, 2016August 18, 20183 Comments

I’m not scared of relationships, I’m scared of making a shift from friends to more than friends.
I’m not scared of going out to eat, I’m scared of breaking my streak of home cooked meals.
I’m not scared of moving on, I’m scared of re-establishing myself on new ground.

When trying to dissect exactly what it is about change that is so scary I’ve come to a couple of conclusions (all idiosyncratic to my own personality and emotional history- so, as usual, I cannot speak on behalf everyone suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder); but if I had to pinpoint the sole problem I have with change that I think would most resonate with other OCD sufferers then it would be how in a ritualistic mind change can imitate an intrinsic kind of susceptibility.
To physically change my placement or what I surround myself with, to literally and figuratively put myself out there in an unfamiliar situation with unfamiliar factors is to open myself to a universe of possibilities I have no practice in handling. I cannot guarantee I know how my personality will handle new and different experiences and to somebody who is constantly trying to decode the intermingling of their identity with their mental illness this is nothing short of terrifying.

Equating susceptibility on an identity level is developmentally crippling. Any kind of milestone, an experience or event that should be cherished, could easily be seen with a negative connotation (hence the examples of misconception that I’m simply afraid of being in a relationship, eating at a restaurant, or moving out into a new environment). This kind of mindset is not fulfilling and that’s not fair.

In my OCD fight I’m going to consciously equate change with a more positive connotation- one of growth and blooming. One where getting to the next level, transitioning, and graduating into new milestones will be viewed like pouring water on a blooming identity, to further discover what kind of beautiful flower it will be rather than suppressing it to a bud or a stem without its floral crown.

nourishing a blooming identity

Change will nourish you, not hurt you. And unfamiliarity forces you to become more familiar with your identity by shedding light on how you handle certain experiences. Growth helps you become a more complete you. Making your identity susceptible to growth should be seen as making yourself available to a new level of beauty that only life experience can elicit.

Change welcomes susceptibility, but susceptibility welcomes growth.

– Valerie Parente (5-24-16)

Personal Business

May 16, 2016August 18, 2018Leave a comment

To have a career creating art must be very rewarding, but also very exhausting. As a professional artist there is no separation between your work life and your personal life, because your business draws from your personal business. Still, I can’t imagine a career avenue more perfect.

– Valerie Parente (5-16-16)

Aesthetic & Psychological Tree

May 14, 2016May 14, 20163 Comments

“The beauty in bare tree branches is how they resemble the skeletal roots in which they grow from.” – Valerie Parente (5-14-16)

Obsessive compulsive disorder has taken captive my once free hands in a misguided attempt to protect them. And as I have said before [see Raw Proof] my hands suffer from severe dryness because of frequent and thorough hand washing compulsions. So when I paint a creepy black tree on my hand it is an act of rebellion, not simply because it is a beautifully dark depiction, but because it is my way of liberating the primary physical area that OCD has manipulated. By painting something that is aesthetically pleasing to me on the area which most symbolizes my obsessive compulsive disorder, I have taken that area back and reclaimed it as my own.

OCD can crack and damage my hands all it wants, but at the end of the day my hands belong to me, Valerie, not this mental disorder. And if I want to paint a skeletal tree on my hand because it makes me feel strong in the midst of a crippling mental disorder then you bet I am going to paint a tree.

– Valerie Parente (5-14-16)

Relevance

May 11, 2016August 18, 2018Leave a comment

Finding your identity is not a process of elimination. You do not look at everything outside of yourself and say “not me” then look at what is left and label it “me”. You and everything in the universe are relevant to each other. And you will never truly discover who you are by isolation. You will discover who you are by recognizing yourself as a part of the whole that is the world. we are all relative

– Valerie Parente (5-11-16)

Raw Proof

May 9, 2016August 18, 20181 Comment

Obsessive compulsive disorder is a mental disorder, we all know that. But we don’t always treat it like a disorder. A lot of people treat it like it is some handy character trait people have when they organize their folders alphabetically or keep their house nice and tidy. I can’t stress enough how misconstrued that perception is. But as I said, OCD is a mental disorder, and it is hard to perceive something that goes on inside somebody else’s mind. Mental disorders aren’t exactly known for being diseases obvious to human perception. People do not easily see how OCD can be dangerous. People do not easily see how OCD can be painful. People do not easily see how OCD does more harm than good.

So what do people easily see? Their hands. I remember reading some article online about how you see your own hands more than you see anything else in the course of your day and I have no problem believing that to be true. And this idea of the common sight of your own hand reinforces the eerily symbolic relevance behind a concrete outcome of one of the most commonly known OCD compulsions, hand washing. Raw Proof

The ugly results of frequent and vigorous hand washing was the closest thing to a physical side effect of my obsessive compulsive disorder. The arid patches and deep cuts coating my knuckles, palms, and fingers were literally and figuratively raw proof of the OCD. Through a persistent urge to sterilize the skin on my hands, an urge that I still can’t shake to this day, the mental illness going on inside of me had manifested itself on the outside as well. And although I manage it better now, in the thick of my battle with OCD my hands would bleed and burn at the slightest tightening of a grip or bend of a finger. Each bloody fissure carving its way through the sandpaper flesh on my hands was raw proof that OCD is not just some cute quirky habitual personality trait, but actually a very painful and harmful disorder.

– Valerie Parente (5-9-16)

The Miracle of Language

May 6, 2016August 18, 2018Leave a comment

dark I correct people’s grammar. I criticize poorly worded sentences in commercials. I cringe at ridiculous lyrics sung on the radio. I proofread my text messages before sending them. But I think the reason language is important to me is because so often I have a jumble of irrational snippets of information and lacerated thoughts senselessly flying around my head. So to be able to pull that structureless jumble outside of my own head and construct it into coherent sentences is a big deal for me. To be able to put into words what doesn’t quite make sense to me is nothing short of a miracle.

– Valerie Parente (5-6-16)

Trust

May 2, 2016May 2, 2016Leave a comment

Uprooted

Trust is a big issue in people with obsessive compulsive disorder. They have difficulty trusting that the environment is not this inherently dangerous place out to get them. That’s why they design often ridiculous compulsions to ward off what they perceive as constant impending harm. And if, by some miracle, a person with OCD is compelled to oppose their specifically designed safety ritual they once again face this trust issue, because to resist a compulsion is to let go of an insurmountable aching for control and trust that the world will not punish them for giving into the natural order of things– a natural order that they must trust is predominantly benevolent.

– Valerie Parente (5-2-16)

Damsel in Distress

April 28, 2016May 16, 2016Leave a comment

“Damsel In Distress” by Valerie Parente

Growing up I admired the damsel in distress in every movie I watched. The scenes that got me most excited? When an emotionally invested prince caught a glimpse of his princess in trouble. Not the spectacular moment right before when he swooped in on a stallion or right after when he saved the princess by slaying a dragon, but that exact moment in between. That fleeting succession of frames where the prince’s poignant eyes fixed on the princess writhing in her conflict and you could see him processing the sight. That, to me, was the pinnacle of romantic. The simple act of boy witnessing girl. And, in hindsight, I think that warped level of infatuation that I had as a child alluded just how prevalent daydreaming would be to my emotional being. Because that moment when the prince watched his true love suffer wasn’t some concrete action of heroic proportions with no substance further than what it offered visually. That moment was an intimate connection where one character mentally absorbed the dire state that another character was in, and it gave me as a wide-eyed viewer an empathetic opportunity to freely imagine what prince charming and his straining heartstrings might be feeling regarding his beloved. And that practice of fantasizing his emotions through the infinite flux of my own imagination provided nothing but ecstasy for the emotional daydreamer in me.

– Valerie Parente (4-28-16)