Starting Over

Artist Statement

I went to the emergency room in a manic episode to get help. After a couple hours I checked myself out. Part of it was fear they would commit me long term. Part of it was my NPD kicking in. I was scared people would find out about me and my mask would be broken.

I stopped the olanzapine without telling anyone. Stopping it led to a manic episode with grandiose thoughts and manic spending that sent me to the hospital. The hospital referred me to an outpatient program, and that new psychiatrist prescribed two different medications. Both bottles in this piece are stopped medications, not my current prescriptions.

This piece is built on art canvas that I painted, layered with the ripped hospital gown I wore that night, sprayed and painted in bruised purple-black. The bupropion bottle spilling white tablets and the olanzapine bottle spilling peach tablets, the two spills meeting and crashing in the center. Peach burying white.

It is fear and shame made physical. Wanting help and running from it at the same time because I did not want anyone to see past the mask, then having to start over anyway.

Part of the medication series. See also Stable Enough to Bloom, Take Me, Just Fucking Sleep, and My Mind Was Never Mine To Control.