3.20.10
My last two weeks I have been devoting my creative energy to my visual arts--painting, drawing, throwing color on the page, taking photographs and learning how to get them from the camera to the computer and to the printed page. I've made some cards, I've painted an ugly butterfly on a fiery background on a board I gessoed--the biggest piece I've ever done. I've done gruesome abstracts to reflect my mood and thoughts (these I really like the best, as they capture both shape and motion in a passionate palate of color, but they are not fine art.) Some of these things I've done in my art studio group, but I've also tried to uphold a pact I've made with myself to do something creative every afternoon, no matter how little. As I've done this the thirst in me to create has only grown stronger, pushing for an outlet. This clear, pure urge, however, must escape prison to come to fruition. It must clear, or at least not be mortally wounded by, the barbed wire rolled along the top of my exercise yard of thought fence all the while looking not to get shot down by the guards of my mind sporting rifles high above in the tower overlooking the prison of my heart.
It has, a bit, as the couple of weeks have passed. A few times I have really enjoyed making my art and like patches of low level fog settling over a day or two, I have begun to notice a change of heart--my creations are of me and for me instead of "these I really like the best...but they are not fine art." Do I need to make fine art? Is that the goal?
Arise fear. Arise fluttering wings inside my body. Arise tension like pulling on stale bubble gum. Arise urgency to answer the question once and for all. Arise anger and blame which deletes all the other feelings. Arise discomfort with not knowing the answer. At all. I do not know the answer. I could draw you a schematic of all the years and all the dynamics that led to me being so stymied in expressing myself but that would not be the truth, I'm sure, even if I don't know the truth now myself. I don't know. I just don't know. What else is there to write?
All I know is that my best moments, my deepest insights, my best artwork, come from places of not knowing. Not knowing the end result, not being able to answer a posed question, allowing myself to sink into experience without the rope of years of therapeutic understanding dangling beside me. I'm afraid that all the answers just lie in the doing and I've never been a doer, always a thinker, an analyzer.
I also punish myself for not being a doer in that I can't do as much as my roommate, my friends, my family, my fellow clubhouse members, the people I went to high school with. Example. It is the first day of Spring and it is sunny and seventy degrees outside. It seems to me that everyone is talking about it, everyone is outside with friends or family or their dogs. I, on the other hand, am inside. I mean, not having taking a shower, not walked, not gotten out of bed until almost 12pm, lying there picking at the scabs on my scalp (an old habit I have just recently started again.)I made a list last night of all the things I wanted to do today and tomorrow--walking, shopping for art supplies and a yoga mat and a water bottle; raking leaves and writing on my blog; yoga tomorrow, paying bills. Even more so I had fantasies of bring my friend S. to my hometown with her dog so we could run him on the beach for the first time in his life. Yet here I am, all musty and moldy, in the house--in my bedroom--not wanting to talk to anyone or do anything with anyone. I am a failure. It is only my call from my father which brought to light my Catholic guilt and got me to jump out of bed and throw on some jeans and make my bed. Otherwise I might still be there. Ya' I spent the whole morning lying in bed, thinking about writing this blog--"How will I write my story. My writing has to go somewhere. It hast to! I am exploding! But I can't organize it. My brain can't organize the scope of work I have already produced. I don't want to work hard. I am lazy. I am not a good worker. Do I really want M. to read my stuff? What will I ask him to comment on? 'What grabs you? What is interesting? What is informative?' How do I make this mass of work mean something? What do I really want it to mean? I can't do this. I'm doing this just to make a name for myself; just to mean something. It's all for me; I don't really care about it helping anyone else. I am bad. How do I write the truth without hurting anyone? Do I erase the mother blame from the whole book or --wait! can I really write a book? Do I want to? Will I stick with it? I can't do this. I am too small. I don't mean much . I can't create anything big and meaningful like my sister and her book. It will mean this, it will mean that. I keep changing my mind. i just want to do this to make meaning out of my life. Is that so bad? Do i have to feel so altruistic. I am filled with garbage that has to get out. What if it is just a 'tell all?" I don't want to write that. How can i use the details without falling into gruesome, the angry, the blaming? I have no time to write. And do art. I don't have the time in the morning. I have to write in the morning. No, the real block is in the details. How do I write my truth, without harming others. Not just without harming others but without falling off the path of what my family imagines when they tell me to write a book. Here is what I mean. Writing a book seems like a sure-fire arrow fired towards and landing on the mark of finally making something meaningful and acceptable of myself and making my family happy. When I wrote for my high school alumni bulletin about a retiring teacher my mother had exclaimed in joy "...shows them you're not dead yet!" But what if my arrow gets bent and does not reach its mark. Meaning what if I write a book, but it is my book, for my purpose, for my enjoyment and finally from MY VOICE! What if it doesn't affirm that i can still compete with my fellow prep school alumni who now have careers, marriages, children, houses, and belong to the posh clubs they all group up at, and instead what if i write something that just affirms me.
Arise the urge to shed tears. Arise the same boring old theme in my life that I can't seem to shake. Arise the same anger that I can't just fix this conflict between fear and anger. Anger--I want to break free! Fear--I am afraid I will be on my own if I do, abandoned by my family (are those the same?) It is this conflict that as a sixteen year old had me sticking my finger down my throat and vomiting up all my meals in secret. It is this conflict whose only answer seemed to be to finally stop eating altogether and train my mind to hate myself by chanting horrible insults to my reflection in the mirror. There seemed no other solution. Writing a book is not the solution either. But it might be nice to be heard. It might be nice, truly, to help someone else out. This book will not cure me, it will not resolve this conflict, and it will not make me back into the daughter everyone wants. But it maybe nice to write for the sake of putting down my experience--struggling every day with the conflict between fear and anger in revealing myself. And the conflict between wanting to write a masterpiece and wanting to write an honest work. It's that "masterpiece" that will thread my life through the eye of a needle and get me back into the graces of those I grew up with (although I think they think fine of me anyway.)
Notes: Distortions to be noted: I am more of a doer than I think--I just do what I'm allowed by my symptoms, and what I want, which may be different than others and my expectations of myself. I am not about to be abandoned by my family, but I may be more on my own (which is terrifying in and of itself.) My prep school classmates probably don't give two hoots about what has happened to me and would smile upon seeing me. And most importantly, thus needing restatement, writing a book is no endpoint--no solution, no cure, no resolution. Am I still interested?