THE BURNING GIRAFFE

I have been thinking about visual Art a lot lately, as a child & adolescent I loved to draw. One theme I was obsessed with was 'pregnancy' & the female form. I will have to get back to drawing.

The above painting "The burning Giraffe" by surrealist artist Salvador Dali had a huge impact on me as a youngster. The concept of drawers to the subconscious opening from your body, your skin being stripped down to sinew & bone, your face - faceless. Your body buttressed to keep you up straight - to keep you rigid & still; hands feeling, searching for something you just can't see. I love it. Not sure what the burning giraffe means -will have to look that up. Maybe (this is my guess) it is that despite all this psychological pain & suffering that is going on with the female figures in the foreground our eyes are drawn away to the focal point - the "burning giraffe".


Out of all my teachers at high school it was my art teachers that I was closest to. I'll never forget how one of these teachers betrayed the trust between student & teacher & got a 15 year old student pregnant - his own daughter was the same age. This affected me more than I thought it would, I just never thought the teacher would do such a thing - I wonder where he is now?

SUICIDE

You are probably wondering, 21 years of being suicidal on & off – why is she still alive. Well believe it or not it is actually quite difficult to kill yourself & as I have mentioned previously it can require quite a bit of planning & energy – two things that often are not at their optimum during a depressive state. With Bipolar you can get what is called a ‘mixed state’ where a person can be suicidal & agitated with energy to burn – this is why people with Bipolar disorder are at the highest risk of suicide out of all persons with a mental illness.

I am also absolutely petrified of stuffing it up. As a nurse I have taken care of a number of people who have suffered horrendous injuries as a result of a suicide attempt. The first was a paedophile who had gassed himself in his car; he was left in an irreversible vegetative state being feed through a PEG tube. The next was a man who had blown half his face off with a gun – also being feed through a PEG tube & awaiting placement in an aged care facility at the age of 43. Then there was the 22yr old who took an insulin overdose & as a result could only say a single word …over & over & over again. Then there are the burn victims who decide they want to go out in ‘blaze of glory’ or maybe they just hope that no traces will be left from their existence? The contractures; the compression garments; the skin grafts….. I think you get the picture. My husband, who works in the field of trauma & emergency, has also told me some horrific tales of failed suicide attempts. I’m fortunate that I do tend to deliberate over things, and by the time I’ve thought things through often the thoughts have passed – a little like how Bukowski puts it in his poem ‘off & on’ (the following post).

As is often quoted: ‘suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem’, but ‘suicide scars’ are daily reminders of a suicidal mind.