Author Archives: Natasha Shapiro, ATR-BC, LCAT

I looked at my poem and since watching a bunch more episodes things have gotten more interesting because you keep finding out new things about the towns history but mainly about these 2 brothers who are the characters that hold it all together the way Jamie and Claire hold Outlander together. Of course 2 is kind of a stable number and 3 is about transformation, mystery, choice, change. Elena is the third but the more the show goes on the more I see how the 2 vampire brothers are more complex than her. Hopefully she’ll get deeper. She’s definitely necessary as the 3rd person that causes the other two to surprise you and keep the show together. It’s just a vampire soap opera if it’s not your flavor of story. I didn’t think I’d get do into the show. It’s not a dance HBO brilliant type show with a list actors. It’s definitely not the same quality as or the same league as Outlander but it’s of course not that kind of show. It’s also in the big genre of shows about high school ranging from it to Friday Night Lights.

Anyway I feel like I found out I got it somewhat wrong with the brothers but they do have a 200 ish history. I hope I can get inspired to write another dramatic vampire poem still from the Damon point of view. Just when you think he’s capable of having a heart underneath his seeming lack of moral compass, things happen and he does something terrible but then he has guilt about it and cares about the consequences and loses something. Once the character has a loss, they suck you back in. You find out he’s the one always left out. I was reading about the concept of longing more in terms of artists/writers etc. having a longing that causes creation because it’s a longing that can’t be filled.

In the show there’s another brother character who keeps losing people; they actually die and don’t come back to life or they leave him. Then you have Damon longing for both women and finding out 200 years later the one woman never loved him and only loved his brother, mirrored in the present as well. Of course his trying to get her bs k even as a friend keep things going.

In September I needed to watch Mayday Air Crash investigation. I got to the point of watching at least one before bed. Then I finally got hooked on Outlander but didn’t continually watch it because I decided to read the books.

Anything that gets me back to reading is good. Novels are necessary to life. And other books but literature/fiction was my first love. The story and characters hinge on the language and writing whereas nonfiction doesn’t even when it coincides with it.

Here’s my vampire diaries poem. The brothers are kind of inexorably linked; one can’t exist without the other. The good one – he hides things, is he all good? He only feeds on animals. The bad one, he pines for one love from 200 years ago and kills humans for blood. I was guessing about their back story and living the same woman.

Brother- you think there be an

Ounce of kindness in me all

These 200 years; I thought you

Knew me. My black heart-you made it so

When you took her from me.

I will never forgive, rather turn you

Forever into a raven or – no, a vulture

Would befit you- ever feeding on the dead.

But what joy would there be

In that? Black raven hawk an ending-

A final transformation, a death.

No, more than anything I need you here,

Why would we be so linked in our blood lust,

Drinking from the same cup of our beloved.

I don’t share her with you. I can play with eternity.

We were there when Pandora’s Box opened.

I shall not close you nor squash you like a black beetle.

When I look at the water, your face looks back at me. I drink from the cold stream,

As cold as my pale skin, her pale cheeks.

I wash my bloodied face, freshly red from a forest kill, the water bleeds and slowly dissipates –

And your face won’t depart me, takes to bed in my mind.

So brother, I show no mercy. I will play you like Orpheus’ lyre plucking at love in the dark

Underworld. But up here with the mortals, she

has invited me over her threshold. I have my fangs into you and shake you like prey.

I will never end you. There are so many tormenting you, weak one.

With every young body’s blood, I am putting the sword in the fire, heating the blade.

I’m coming for you and doing what most you suffer:

While you most want me to leave, to ooze your heart over this girl

Who only has a fleeting visage of my Katherine.

Yes brother- I will stay. That’s my power

And no, again I say no. I did have a warm hearth of goodness within.

It’s you who took it.

I started copying a poem I wrote recently after starting to watch Vampire Diaries. That’s the fun of bringing the parent of a 16 year old. She finds shows she’s already watched and rewatches them with me.

The show gets better as it goes on. In the beginning it’s kind of flat but it gets richer. I’ve never watched a show that compelled me to write a poem from a character’s point of view. She liked the poem a lot.

I haven’t written anything since then, maybe 2 weeks ago. Then she gave me her copy of My Dark Vanessa and urged me to read it so we could discuss the questions at the end of the book. 40 pages in I had to restart it to focus more on the writing. I finally finished it tonight. Took about 5 days maybe? My sense of time is messed up.

The book is really well written. There’s no point when it feels like a fucked up love story as there is no real love going on. It’s good the author stuck with writing from Vanessa’s point of view. Some people told her to write it from his point of view because her voice is unrepeatable. How would reading it from the pedophile’s point of view be relatable? It’s sick to read the book and then read about the feedback. What kind of first readers were these?

Who wants another Lolita? There’s Lolita all over the book but it’s a book in a book. It’s a fantasy they share but isn’t real. It’s the old guy teacher giving the smart student books to read as he “grooms” her, slowly leading her all eager into his lair, like the witch with the candy house. The evil old women are witches that want to devour kids like food and the evil old men want to crack their little bodies open/rape their minds forever while raping their bodies.

It’s great to read it from her point of view. Her loneliness and need to be special are so relatable and sad and scary that this beast basically lures her into the cage; she goes in there so excited to feel the good feelings. It’s tragic of course.

People reading it must not believe things could happen this way, that this early breaking of a person could last for so many years but I’ve seen it in people I’ve worked with. Men too, taken advantage of the same way. The sexual part is different in some ways but it’s the same thing. It takes a long time to finally call it rape with the therapist there to translate it. I’ve seen people recover and others get sicker even when they’ve worked through it.

How relatable does she have to be? What does that have to do with anything. What makes the book more than another modern realistic “Lolita” tale is all the specifics of the character and what she does after. Not just predictable stuff like needing to feel powerful after she’s “of age” finding old men to seduce to a certain point and then drop them before it gets physical. The weirder areas of the mind where she looks at 15 year old girls and sees them through his eyes, the moment she says something mean about the other girl who has the opposite story but they’re linked by him. Her friend is shocked at her comments but they come from her 15 year old mind, jealous that he’s done the same things to her.

Anyway it’s an absorbing novel about the rape of a girl told through her still raped mind. She doesn’t want to see herself as a victim. It’s like when people manage to get out of a cult that usually involves power and sexual violation of a different kind.

I just finished it so it’s hard not to be obsessing about it but I think the questions at the end only touch on the “literature” aspect of it. They didn’t use to have author’s notes or questions at the end of books. The questions at the end if most present day books focus on the story and the character of the narrator. People get to the unreliable narrator but don’t go further.

How is this a book about books and writing and about what links the books with the pediphilic seduction of a high school English teacher? His house isn’t made of candy. The poetry he plucks and puts in her eager hand are the poison he uses, as well as his reading of her own writing she holds onto with embarrassment of a high school girl writer. It’s an intimate thing.

I’ve written about losing a key to my teenage self, my writer’s notebook with my teacher’s encouraging comments in it. It’s the one thing I’ve lost stupidly that I most want back. I remember noticing my teacher’s notes. She was female and safe; maybe if she’d been a man, even one who had no issues whatsoever with teenage girls, the comments could have looked strange, maybe only from my point of view. It’s intimate to look at the relationship I had with my English teacher in this notebook. She’s very careful with her comments. The slightest wrong step and I would have clamped the notebook shut and not written the weird stuff I wrote, from descriptions to poems to short stories that were too short and fragments. I was so sensitive it would be easy to shut that writing off.

It’s good I chose painting. I remember being a junior and seeing that choice- do I want to be a writer or artist? The art won over. I had no idea I had ADHD but I knew writing was harder for me, having to use words well and make sense and edit versus painting being fun and all the materials and process perfect for my adhd mind.

I still can’t see my book being something. I haven’t written it. Parts of it are somewhere in the blog. It took Kate Elizabeth Russell 17 years to write that book. I abandoned my graphic novel after 17 years, most of them spent avoiding it and leaving it in a Manila envelope.

It’s Thursday and time to take out the garbage. This is what I’m working on:

I should not read over posts I’ve written on here. It’s a corner, a tiny spot in a huge gigantic painting, that you don’t notice is one little dabble that makes up some dots closely hugging each other in a corner nobody sees even up close or notices. Like on this podcast episode an artist told me about, by an artist about artists’ blocks. At one point in the only episode I listened to she says if nobody knows your art you get to have the freedom to make whatever you want because you’re not thinking of a big audience. Wow, the “collateral beauty” of being a “starving artist” all your art life except for a few blips.

How does anyone with adhd get through podcasts. They have too many episodes and seasons and are organized confusingly. It’s a really weird art form I can’t find the flesh of; they seem very cool when I hear a topic but I listen to one and can’t keep going.

And I admire people who work in them and what they have to do to make them. They’re are too many kinds.

So I can say anything here because I’m free. In the same day I hear one kid in Gaza gets killed every 10 minutes, all this other stuff happens. The usual day of the privileged American. Having ADHD is real. I have a client who is applying for disability and they do exactly to him what causes him to have symptoms that make him eligible for disability. It’s like he says, they torture you so long they expect you to give up.

I told a person I’ve worked with about 11 years we’d have a free session next week to figure out how/if he can keep working with me. He’s had the only insurance that reimburses me and today it ended. Of course this is the worst time for him financially to have to stop therapy with me but I don’t have a single client whose financial situation has recently improved markedly.

Capitalism is worse than ever. Everyone is fucking broke. The rich people are paying a lot of money for therapists for their kids. I’m great at working with kids alone but it’s a version of family therapy; the pressure gives me extreme anxiety so I made a rule in like 2015 to stop working with any kids after the dad of an adorable 4 year old having great sessions with me called me at 10 pm one night and yelled at and berated me.

So I only work with adults; now I specialize in long term therapy. I have only one post pandemic client; the rest knew me before it.

I’m up late; I just saw a bad Netflix film. I can’t sleep. I’m reading a few books, including, How Does it Feel to be a Problem? Being Young and Arabic in America. I’ve been leaning towards fiction but I got sick of time travel in the 1750s/60s. I thought I couldn’t read an intense serious book completely related to this current genocide war but it’s a reminder of how this has been happening on so many smaller and different kinds of fronts; nothing you can agree on even when the provocation began can you say is unprovoked. I keep coming back to the little children, dead, injured and never going to see their parents again. All iterations and what happens to people in a cancer hospital that gets bombed. Does congress care about that? Of course not.

I made some drawings today pretty decent, but I left and forgot to take photos Here’s one from 10/10:

Happy Halloween. I was the Cat in the Hat on LSD!

It is lovely to have sweet people in my life. People who are naturally kind and lovely, loving in a pure way. I remember a moment when my niece was ice skating with my kid, noticing her personage and how purely wonderful she was as she was interacting with her cousin, 6 years younger. Her natural yellow curly long hair somehow looks for a moment like she’s an angel. Of course she was teaching her hockey as she was on the hockey and lacrosse, she’s not an angel it was just for a second that you feel when in a state of connectednes in a moment that then dissipates It reminds me of the kind of feeling I get after watching Ground Hog Day. This abundance of love and care that after the movie I fantasize about people getting to that state of pure mindfulness, seeing the scene unfold to me.

My kid is reading an old book of mine, Classical Mythology, and was talking about the characters and the myth story of how the reference to a nightingale to get across the extreme feeling of mourning without end for a loved one; the myth it comes from involving a sister’s husband rapes the sister, and cuts out her tongue to stop her from talking. She makes a tapestry telling her sister in images what happened. The sister to punish her husband kills her own son and feeds him to her evil husband. I think it’s at that point they all turn into birds, the mute sister a swallow, the husband a hawk and the wife and mother a nightingale, always mourning her son in a constant pain. This nightingale story is referenced as a metaphor for terrible mourning, as extreme as a mother would mourn this son she killed. To mourn the one you loved that is dead at your own hand, especially a child, it makes sense the myth involves her forever crying for him and herself for causing his dead. A kind of circle of loss between the two.

And why does the girl with no tongue become a swallow? We wondered. I imagine her forever sad for what her sister did when she told her the stories through images of the rape. Feeling guilty for acts that resulted from her simply communicating what happened so her sister would leave the husband. She isn’t responsible for anything but gets punished for empowering herself and having a voice.

The innocent sister is the one who must find a new way to speak through images, creating art narrating her story. She’s had a terrible trauma that she is able to tell about which you’d think would free her, as being silenced by rape is horrific beyond words, but not beyond images. I image her to be in a process of healing and releasing her secret frees herself. She is warning her sister that her husband is not who she perceives him as, but a monster. One choice would have been to leave at once with her son all 3 escaping and leaving the husband alone. Then he could constantly be eating himself and is it because he feels appropriate guilt of his actions and will be tortured thus; he eats himself until he disappears inside himself and still can’t get away from his deed, Or way imprisoned as has no guilt and wants to punish his wife but cannot. Or he finds them and kills his wife and his son kills him. That story would have no happy ending but the powerless gain freedom and power.

Looked up nightingale symbol and it ends with a poet calls this nightingale symbol of sadness simpleminded and the nightingale actually laughs.

Wow so much in one little myth. In one the two sisters do the deed together but it is better the was she told me. The girl who is raped by her brought in law, the action and the silencing, symbolic of the part of the rape where the vicious not allowed to speak of it. Then there’s the spinning of fabric with the story in images. That part is how powerful art therapy can be with trauma; I see the girl as finding her voice despite the deep

Wounds of what has happened that she can never forget.

This all has nothing to do with the special feelings Groundhog Day evokes. Of course the always sweet and somewhat gullible Rita who is the focus of his inspiration does change in terms of her seeing him as a thoughtless self centered person and he proves her wrong but she accepts his evolution and changes in character until he is “worthy of her”.

In this story the character gets beaten by fate to the point of boredom with himself and slowly sees how not just unique and interesting other people are but also wanting to truly know them and connect with them.

My forgetfulness can make me feel I’m that person who forgot to follow up on something important with a loved one. I also felt proud I put my priorities with a friend discussing her more serious life events than my recent one.

I have a client who really is nonjudgmental and curious. She’s so able to be calm and listen and try to look at things from others’ perspectives. That’s what we need.

Not enraged people like me. I can’t seem to accept reality in anyway and I’d rather have her attitude. She’s got real freedom.

Is just Eh. I’ll have to draw my own before I get in trouble for uploading this.

I’m watching the Bills game. My hyper vigilance and intrusive thoughts battery have decreased. At the beginning while watching different news and reading news, couldn’t stop thinking of the war all waking moments. It was relentless. I’m used to having at least 2 strains of thought in my head at work listening to the client, hearing thoughts in the head and moving them along unless there’s a verbal intervention going on. I had relieving therapy talking about it the whole session – sounds weird but therapy is freeing and sometimes used to just talk about what you’ve been obsessing and finally able to release what’s been relentlessly torturing you.

It feels like it’s been a week since 10/7. Not 19 days.

Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera bureau chief reporter lost his family, killed by Israeli bombing:

His Wife, Amna, 44 years old, , 16 year old son Mahmoud, 7 year old daughter, Sham, baby grandchild Adam.

They’re saying other family members missing. I think it’s important to say their names and ages. People don’t realize the seemingly obvious tactic of giving the Israeli dead and hostages, names, ages, photos, while Palestinians dead and injured are numbers. Humans care and remember innocent people killed had names and faces; they could be your partner, sibling, kid. Even Dahdouh’s family members were referred to as “family members”. I wanted to write the names of those killed. I think his daughter Bisan is still alive. I couldn’t find names and ages of the missing family members. If he was an Israeli citizen, we would know what they looked like; we would easily know how old and who were missing. I couldn’t find it. And where they were when they went missing. Dahdouh went to the multiple funerals and back to work the next day. The Next Day. I don’t think he could do anything else with those multiple losses and mother in law still unconscious. I found the story with the most details:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/al-jazeera-journalist-still-reporting-230756180.html

I started stopping the obsessive need watching and reading. Yesterday I got so disgusted with the US behavior with the UN resolution. ADHD I went back into angry hyperfocus texted long reactions to 3 friends, 2 of which are not only checking in on my mental health but don’t mind how long my rants are. Each day feels like a week. On Tuesday I took the day off; I got up late and couldn’t go to my weekly great yoga class my friend teaches. In all the 9 or so years of my home practice I don’t think I’ve missed this much daily yoga.

Later I cancelled a bunch of sessions, stayed in bed and realized I needed to cancel the whole day and my group. I used to have a rigid boundary where I couldn’t take sick days. I would have forced myself to go to work. I’m old now. It was a good day to take off. I couldn’t function and ate adhd style which is too embarrassing to talk about, meaning no real meals, and consistently crap until bed.

I just before the game wrote a poem from the point of view of a football now that I know the players give the ball to the fans at touchdown and also that they use a lot of footballs during the game. I learned that from the famous Patriots “football-gate”; around 24. Here’s the link to preparing footballs for the game:

I speed read part of it:

https://operations.nfl.com/updates/the-game/preparing-the-footballs-for-nfl-games/

Time outs /cease fire moments to bring in water, food, fuel, etc, sounds like a fucking football game, not a war. Feed people then bomb them. I don’t know what to say. My therapist texted me this photo today. I was talking about moving maybe to Canada near the house my sister bought and living there most of the time, actually anywhere. Today I fully accepted based on how Biden’s talking, the Republican immediately talking about Israel when finally voted in; this is a fascist state in the making. I don’t want to vote for Biden. The democrats are all in. Some people fled Germany early in its rise to fascism. I would think flee as quickly as possible but we need the last thing left that is providing a good public high school education as good as private schools. And therapy. It’s of course worth it.

My heart and spirit and mind have mostly fled. As I watch the Bills vs. Buccaneers footfall Thursday night game; the NFL is no doubt disgusting but I like it anyway. At least the aggression and controlled I guess violence of the game is still a game and they’re my team. When I became a vegetarian I realized I was a hypocrite. “Humans are walking contradictions.”

The truth from someone on the inside- it should be in the NY Times Opinion Section Letter to the Editors. Read the things she was told in childhood and the real truth of a colonial occupation basically free to preptrate whatever atrocities they want to for over 50 years. The only people with any credibility for all nations and people fighting the propaganda war and hate speech, are the people actually in Gaza and the people in Israel who denounce the behaviors of their fellow citizens.

Are they being heard? Former Israeli Generals? Avigail in the article above? The group I can’t google anymore, founded by Israeli Lawyers, doctors, academics that is pro Palestinian and due to my ADHD I can’t remember exactly what they do but they definitely have credibility, citizens of Israel who are able to stand up against injustice in the sea of COlonial Occupation Propaganda going on.

What do you call a nation that gets a pass to do whatever they want. that is not held accountable and is helped by other so. called democracies to carry out ocupation and genocide and state sponsored murder (by. illegal Israeli settlers of Palestinians.) When will this end? When will the atrocities commited against the Palestinians stop? When will the state sponsored terrorism end?

As Jews who can see wrong from right, it is our responsibility. to stand up against Israel’s policies and the propagandan around what is anti-semitic and what not. NBC fired their Muslim employees this week. A 6 year old kid got stabbed 26 times; I think he was Palestinian. It was here in NYC. I’m sure. Jews in NYC have been killed this week as. well as the. Swasticas painted on synagogues.. There is hatred and disgusting behavior everywhere.

I downloaded the Citizen app. I am off Facebook and Instagram, deactivated due to how triggering it is for me and to prevent me from posting something that will backlash and traumatize me as well as from being. exposed to hate and fights, etc. The Citizen App is for citizens of NYC to see up to date crimes being reported and the NYPD arriving on the scene. They post protests happening in real time as possible crime sites because of all the violence directed at pro Palestinian protesters mostly, propbably against pro Israeli marches as well. On Citizen I’ve only seen pro Palestianina Protests, Peaceful. People on the app ask whose protest it is. You can see flags so it’s pretty. obvious. Yesterday someone assaulted a person with a thermos down the street from me. THis was not related to the current insanity around the middle east. Someone else assaulted someone near my office. Anyway on this app for safety, there. were about 12000 or so comments just on the march. People posting flag emojis. Fine. But actual hate talk and. arguments from both sides. I contacted Citizen to report all of them for not following the guidlines. Then I went comment by comment and pushed report and Citizen removed them. Every fight on all sides. To the point where there were only emojis of hearts and a million flags. Also the checkered flags for auto races which I tried to google. What the hell do those mean in this fight? I was floored that people couldn’t keep their social media fights on the appropriate social media. Literally a site for New Yorkers’ safety in NYC, not in another country. The comments section is not for opinions. It’s usually for people to say, “I saw the person. then a description of the possible perpetrator who started a street fight. with. sticks, the. thermos assault, the guy who went into Target with a gun. As the former mayor said during the Covid 19 lockdown,, “Yes, The criminals will continue working during this time and committing crimes.” WOW, are you surprised that people are assualting people that are not clearly Jewish, Palestianina, etc.? There’s the other daily violence going on. The registered sex offenders in your area.

I’ve lived down here near this church graveyard that survived 9/11 since 1998

First time I’ve walked inside the graveyard. It’s peaceful to go to cemeteries. The dead don’t talk or judge. They remind me the only peace in the world of humans is death.

Half the people in Gaza are under 18. You’d think it would be enough.

This trying to post daily is not about historical events unfolding. I can’t do much about them. Maybe it’s about ADHD. Today I was more hightenely aware of how hard it is to just exist and do the things to do daily. How the PTSD from 9/11 caught me up in this ongoing war that makes me feel helpless, watching people being exterminated, mostly children. Around half of the people in Gaza are under 18 years old.

That fact alone; I did not know that. I should have but now I do.l How senseless to be killing so many children. Among those 18 year olds are babies and all ages under 18.

In going deep into trauma reactions that have made me mentally sick since October 7, can I get out of the behaviors and focus on being productive. Find a balance between learnign daily what’s going on and at the same time living my life and finding things to do. Last week it was donating to the Palestinian Children Fund and to a Jews for Palestininans group. Not a big sum.

There is a zoom tomorrow that I can attend and participate in in whatever way, Reform vs. Revolution: AOrganizing, Educating and Taking Care of One Another for Palestine. I will learn something and participate just by showing up. Meanwhile now that I’ve gotten out of the cloud of PTSD, which involved so many behaviors and things beyond my control, like having Gaza and what’s happening in my mind all day while doing whatever. I cccouldn’t control my brain doing that. I took a walk to the 9/11 pools and found the Memorial very comforting. The sounds of the water like a waterfall and the squares. It’s like everyone else sees it as an event from 22 years ago, but I was there. Downtown looked like places in Gaza after bombings. The white grey coating everywhere. People covered in the white grey cloak of whatever. There are no ccomparisons between the two events; Trauma happens when your being reaccts to the violence and everything else that mifht feel familiar. Anyway, during that darkness of PTSD and all kinds of symptoms; I coulnd’t control what my mind was doing. It felt unbearable to just be a human being. It helped to make art. It helped to talk to a few people who understand being Jewish and Pro Palestine.

I dont’ really know what I’m saying but the idea of this blogging daily is to write about something to relieve the ADHD PTSD cycle/circle. When you come back to your daily life, you see the mess your adhd makes and feel overwhhelmed again. How am I going to live and not feel so impotent at almost everything. How can I do what you do in DBT. Radiccally accept that you can’t change your own past and choices youu made but you can try more to be effective and live a life worth living as the founder of DBT says. Build a life worth living. DOn’t focus too much on your mistakes. Move on. I have learned a lot.

I may not have mentioned but I keep Afghanistan in my head maybe due to 9/11 and there were 4 earthquakes there. In the news, but who noticed them. I guess I did. Afghanistan has this particular blue pigment in the mountains hiddne away somewhere, hard to access. It’s some kind of hot spot historically it seems forever. Just like the area of what was Palestine and the areas surrounding it. It pulls some kind of terrible energy where people are asked what they wish for most, they say peace or way before this happened, Peace in the Middle East. It’s a very specific area almost people are saying if there’s peace there there is much more chance of being peace everywhere. How could a place so “holy” to different religions be so bloody.What does religion cause so much blood shet, hate and disgusting behaviors? Is it really oil and other things like that?The religion being the facade behind which there are all kidns of other complicated resource grabbing elements?

Don’t trust any source. What’s really going on is behind the curtain. Everything we’re told is lies and truths sprinkled in the lies. None of the things that happen in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank will make sense. More chidren are dying now. How is it that most humans would agree they just want to live their lives, protect and educate and love their children, and this is what is going on? It’s the eternal question. Tomorrow I will just post some images. This is isn’t real writing. It helps with ADHD to let go and stop, which sometimes your really don’t have control over. who would choose to let themselves suffer this way. It’s exhausting.