You have to keep your eyes open to possibilities.

Don't miss the chance at a golden ticket.

Never forget Charlie Bucket.
His chance appeared in the gutter when he thought he had no more chances.

But he was passionate about Wonka chocolate.

Not just during the golden ticket buzz but always.

His persistence and continued dedication meant that he was the one to find the last one, when everyone else had given up and stopped looking.

As a child I would design machines.

I would draw designs for inventing machines and dream of one day living a life sharing my brain's creations

I was obsessed.

Inspired by Willy Wonka's inventing room.

The three-course dinner chewing gum machine.

The buttons, levers and pedals on the Everlasting Gobstoppers machine, and it's

boing! Wizz! Zing!

The Wonkavator! The chocolate river that mixed the chocolate! The goose room's egg-decator! The Fizzy Lifting Drinks! The Wonka vision teleportation device!

And...The Wonkatania!

There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going.

There's no knowing where we're rowing Or which way the river's flowing.

-Willy Wonka.

---

These Wonka words represent where I am currently placed quite aptly.

I don't know in which direction I am going.

But I am surprisingly OK with that. My husband is having a quiet breakdown, but I feel like I have been given an opportunity to find my true purpose.

---

When I was at school, the only class I routinely attended was visual arts.

The others didn't interest me.

Sometimes I even went to an empty art room during those class times and just painted.

When I finished school I applied and was accepted into the visual arts degree of my choice.

Everyone told me there was no career to be found at the end of a degree in painting, so at the last minute I transferred to a nursing degree.

During lectures at university I would doodle in a lecture pad.

I looked every bit like I was diligently taking notes. Once the whole room was waiting and looking at me as I scrawled. A power point presentation was on the screen of the auditorium. The lecturer assumed I was immersed in writing every detail of the presentation and was kindly waiting until I got it all down. The person sitting next to me gave me a nudge and I looked up to 100s of pairs of eyes.

I was immersed, in a highly intricate doodle.

When I graduated I would spend the occasional quiet night shift completely artworks that would just pile up in my pigeon hole.

I had a performance review when I was working in a front line acute public psych unit. It was an intense setting. My manager asked me what I wanted to be in 5 years, and feeling slightly burnt out by the mental health system I answered honestly.

I wanted to be Picasso.

I suppose an element of that has stayed with me, as my user name @girlbeforemirror, is the title of one of my favourite works.

Source Museum of modern art.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my work.

At a very young age I was exposed to the insidious effect of suicidality. It molded who I am and how I view life and the vulnerability of people.

I see how it still effects my family decades and continents later.

When I hear celebrities talk about their passion for mental health I feel somewhat defeated.

We still have so far to go in acknowledging that we are all vulnerable.
If you heard them say, I am passionate about physical health, the phrase would sound a little absurd.
Who isn't?

We still have such a long way to go in accepting that mental health is an aspect of everyone's wellness. There are not mentally ill people and mentally sound people.

We are all just people. Our mental health is just one dimension of who we are, and we all suffer it at some time.

We think, we feel and we act. The human condition and balancing a conscious existence is a burden and a miracle.

No-one is free of the human condition.

I entered mental health in the hopes that I could help just one person avoid the pitfalls of being human, and stay in the world long enough to see that their anguish can pass.

I think I achieved that, several times over.

I also lost people along the way too, to them their torment was unrelenting. I remember each one clearly, they were courageous people.

I have spent almost two decades working in mental health and I have been privileged to help many people through some tough times and be privy to their most vulnerable moments.

I would still be doing it too and gaining great satisfaction in the work, if my body hadn't decided otherwise.

---

But my life took a different turn.

Two events altered my path.

•A wonderfully successful, albeit surprise pregnancy in 2014.
•An epic charity stunt in 2016 in which I ran 300kms.
I ran 7 consecutive marathons in a week for survivors of my once beloved uncle, now incarcerated for his crimes against children.

I am immensely proud of these achievements.

What I didn't know at the time however was that I have Ehlers danlos syndrome.

www.ehlers-danlos.com

Which for me is chronic and life obstructing pain and fatigue. Triggered by these stressors and I'm told is largely untreatable.

---

For the first time in my life I was completely grounded, not by my choosing, and I landed on Steemit.

---

Recently I read a post by @stellabelle where she talked about her past business ventures and her childhood aspirations to create Willy Wonker lickable wallpaper creations.

It was a great post

About freeing yourself from robotic task oriented job slavery. Making out of the matrix of wage slavery, escaping the matrix and

Finding your superpower.

---

She utilised the matrix of enslaved employment.

But she also referenced wanting to be Willy Wonka.

Not an Oompa Loompa and a desire to create lickable wallpaper.

I had a scratch and sniff sticker wall in my bedroom that I pretended was lickable Snozberries.

Perhaps I even licked it once or twice.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwvB4_Te8A

I am still obsessed with thinking of a way to turn my situation into something new.

I have been engaged in dozens of crazy upcycling half baked notions over the past year.

I have reconnected with a desire to create and design that was buried under the daily struggle to bring home the bacon.

I have also been lucky to become involved in the lives of others in steemit.

All unimaginable to me if I were not going through my own issues.
__

People assume that this year sucked for me.

So many doctors have presumed I am depressed because I have an emotional response.

I think it would be strange if I didn't.

I've had a few hurdles to jump.

I turned 40 and was too sick to go to my own party, so we had home delivered Chinese and almost burnt the place down with my flaming cake.

But it wasn't so bad.

Why is happiness valued over every other emotion anyway?

An array of emotions is what it feels like to be alive and human.

I too have been spewed from the matrix.

It wasn't a voluntary birth, but I have been unplugged.

It has challenged my self concept and my worth. I have had to reassess what it is about me that is of value, and I continue to.

---

If I got better, I don't think I would want to go back to what I was doing.

I was proud of the work I put in one on one connecting with people and talking to them about who they are.

Beneath the layers of social expectation that we wear. Where we truly live. There is so much expectation for projection of perfection that we even forget that underneath we are so much more.

More than our jobs

More than our bank balances.

Our diagnosis

Our current emotions

Our associations and relationships.

More than the ideas projected onto us.

Expected of us or presumed and prejudged.

I was able to talk to people about the coping strategies they use to carry themselves through life everyday. We all have them. They are mostly unhelpful behaviours that served a purpose at some point but over time become our demons.

But I had to compromise my beliefs about mental health and life balance in order to do it.

After the year I've had within the medical system, I don't think I'm prepared to do that anymore.

---

Aside from the fact that I am not earning anything which is a biggy , I am free from the construct of corporation.

The burden placed on my husband @azurejasper who seldom complains.

But I'm sure within the scores of wacky things I create, there is a gem just waiting to be uncovered and revealed to the world.

My super power waiting to be discovered!

I think I have found my power in many ways. I have endured and come out the other side mighty. So where or not that mightiness is exploited to it's full potential, I'll be OK.

---

I was the only non-hoarder in our home before.
Maybe the recent power I have lost to make other choices has assisted in my molding me into a hoarder, but

I'm loving it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-oiBSCypUYY

This past 18 months Steemit has been my one constant, in a very changeable time.

I know it will continue to impact my world.

Thanks for giving me purpose and connection.

---

Ode to Marie Therese Walter, the muse who inspired the painting Girl before a mirror.

@papa-pepper receiving my little parcel of gratitude.

Marathon finishers shirt sent to @cryptopie.

Buzz for bravehearts.

@schoolforsdg4 receiving my parcel of winter hats and gifts.

Dash drawing never entered, mailed to @justinashby.

@cryptopie receiving my obscure package.

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PS Stellabelle, this is @girlbeforemirror. Making myself known to you.