A Good Weekend

I have a few things I want to post about today. Firstly this weekend was a long weekend in Australia due to ANZAC day. ANZAC day (25th April) is in memory of the Australian and New Zealand soliders who fought in World War 1 at Gollapalli. Since today was a public holiday it allowed Mum to visit more easily - which she did.

No matter what I have said or say later - I love my Mum, she is a wonderful woman who is very giving of herself and she has always tried to do the best by me. She and I may often fight and not see eye to eye on alot things but no matter what I know she is there for me and would do whatever she could to help me. For 6 years (I was between ages 6 and 12years old)  she and I lived just two of us in a small flat in Sydney, so we were very close and still are in many ways. This is important for me to say because I dont always speak positivly of her as we have had many problems but I dont want anyone to think that my mother is a bad person because she is a great woman who I admire and love.

When I first told Mum about what happened she didnt react well, she didnt want to believe it but she did slowly accept it. However she ahs always found it hard to talk about it or think about it. I think a major part of this is because she feels guilty - that she didnt protect me - particularly since the main perp was her father. She had no idea it happened until I told her much later, after it had stopped for a few years. It was not her fault but she still feels alot of guilt.

Because she had such a bad reaction to start with it took me a long time to tell her about having DID. When I first did she reacted much better than I expected however she still didnt want to talk about it. There were a few incidents where she came accross my alts and they tell me that her reaction was to turn around and walk the other way - she wouldnt talk to them or acknowledge them. She only wanted to know if I would ever "get better". I found this hard but I respected her wants and needs to avoid it. My Mum has her own issues with depression and I didnt want to pressure her.

This weekend it was just her and me and we had alot of fun, we did alot jobs that needed doing, we went shopping (neither of us are big shoppers but we like to window shop a bit), had a movie night, went out to dinner - we also played round with photography but more on that later. The big thing was she wanted to know more about DID, she wants information both about me and my alts and general information about DID. She also interacted with two of my younger alts and she didnt freak out, she was calm and great. For me this is such a big thing and it means so much. I think we still need to take things slowly but I was able to be honest abnd open with Mum for the first time in a long time.

So back to the photography - I have always love photography but I am hopeless at it - doesnt stop me playing though but I rarely share my photos and dont really consider them art. Anyway, last year my mum and step dad bought a digital SLR. At my request my Mum brought with her for this trip. I am in a new house and I am working at making it more like a home, but a student on a disability pension doesnt really make enough for interor design in their homes. However I am slowly making it a beautiful, relaxing environment where my alts and I feel safe and I am proud to bring my friends in my home. However my walls are fairly bare - art is expensive! So to add a little colour in the lounge room and a little art work I am going to take closeup photos (also known as Macro photography) of nature to have printed on canvases. This costs about AU$30 for a 12x12" canvas - much cheaper than a artwork that costs hundreds and sometime thousands of dollars. So this weekend Mum and I played with the SLR, taking photos of  leaves and flowers around town. It was alot fun and I plan on putting some of this photos up on DeviantArt - though it was taking ages when I tried earlier so we will see.

Today I went to Ironfest with a friend which was fabulous! I loved it. Ironfest has the feel of a renaissance fair, but its basicly an Arts Fair. There is real jousting, great art and blacksmiths and its alot of fun. There are two artist who show and sell their work there. One is Jane Stapleford - she is an amazing artist who mostly does watercolours, either animals or fantasy based pictures or a mix of the two. They are amazingly detailed and I fell in love with it when I saw it last year and this year I bought a small print. She had a series this year that really reminded me of some of my younger alts - Sasha in particular. It was a print of one of these pictures I bought. I have been trying to find some of her artwork online but most of it is her animal paintings, there is one picture here but its not part of the series that I really want to show you.The other does fairies and I bought a necklace which is actually one of his fairies in a very small frame - its beautiful. Unfortunately I forgot his name but I am trying to find out and will edit this when I do. I tried to take a photo of the necklace but it didnt work. Mum took her SLR home so I am back to my crappy one.

Generally speaking I am still completely overwhelmed with everything and I am even more tired after this weekend however I can still smile and prehaps its not so completely impossible like I was feeling Friday. We shall see. This week is a crazy week and I think I am going to wear myself thin and get stressed again. I also feel bad, guilty and generally stressed that among everything this weekend I havent done any uni work.

Finally - I have updated the Links page so please check it out - there are alot of useful links there - or I hope they are useful for you - I find them good. If you have any other links you think I should add or prehaps you would like me to add your own site please feel free to email me - my email is on my profile.