Once upon a time

When I was this little girl I had a dream, that I was all grown up, an artist and living on my own near an ocean. The dream provided hope, serenity and a sense of fulfillment.
I am grown up now, well sort of, and about to fulfill that dream. I am now at the stage of moving to the east coast to continue the journey of being an artist. So why I am I filled with fear? Why do I want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, ignoring all the details I need to address and set in place to make this happen?
With every step taken I feel relieved and then almost immediately overwhelmed with how to take the next step. I want to ask for help but hesitate because I do want to do it all myself unaided, but also know that's unrealistic. My son to the rescue. I am so grateful I have him to turn to. Being reassured many times by him, that he wants to help me, that I should be able to just accept that it's OK to ask for his help, yet still, I hesitate and feel like I ask too much of him. How did I, as troubled and unsure of myself that I am, raise such an exquisitely thoughtful and generous young man? He is a gift and I have said this before that just by virtue of his birth he saved my life and he continues to with every thoughtful gesture.

3rd year Fine Art year end Exhibit

2150+

  Heaving a huge sigh to have this year of my Fine Art Advanced Diploma program near it's end, culminating with our show at a downtown gallery in London, Ontario. At our last grading, where we have an area in one of the 1st or 2nd year studios to show our body of work in a professional display, they choose what will be in the year end show.
I had eleven mini galleries and one larger one hanging so when they emerged and said they wanted them all and two of my other pieces from last semester, I was giddy to say the least.

  This year has been an opportunity to concentrate on an area of art that I feel inspired by and create original work with no constraints, other than the usual money one. I was able to source materials at little to no cost and have amassed a body of work I am proud of because of that and because I stayed true to my (murky) vision.

  Now the time has come to move on and with that the decision, early in the year, of what that means and where it would take me. I have longed to go to Nova Scotia for longer than I can remember, mostly because my parents, now both dead, (one of which I had never met) met there, but also because I had heard so much about it.

  It doesn't hurt that one of the most prestigious Universities for studying the arts is in Halifax. I applied there and only there and received an acceptance letter about six weeks after applying to NSCAD University. Going there means applying for more students loans and I am not sure just how much I will be given as I am now going out of the province from where I am applying. I am scared but refuse to allow myself to be paralyzed by this.

  My daughter put it this way, quoting John Burroughs, when she said to me, leap and the net will appear. I am counting on it because I bruise and bleed so easily.

Lazy day, lazy me..lalala

I am having one of those days where I'm moving in slow motion but the time is still ticking away of course. I slept way late.Yay on THAT one! I got up, turned on CBC radio, shuffled out to the kitchen and made a coffee,went to the bathroom (yes I washed my hands), brought coffee back into the bedroom, crawled back into bed, turned on my laptop, read various news related stories (while thinking I should be reading about essay related things), listened to Sook-Yin Lee and her program Definitely Not The Opera about Taking A Stand. Now it is 3:58pm and I have finally pried myself from the warmth of my bed and moved to the couch, the midway point between my bedroom and the bathroom/shower.

So here I sit typing, while the thought of getting into the shower, fights with thinking I should eat something first. The shower is likely going to win this one, it usually does on the weekend, but wait, I might just change it up because I am feeling that creeping weakness that comes from waiting too long to eat.

Mmmm.. cereal, some Kashi cinnamon flavoured stuff with a sprinkling of bran buds on top and some cream because I do not have any Almond milk or regular milk. I did water it down a bit but seriously this stuff is delicious over cereal. Why would anyone choose skim milk? It's really just whey because that's what is left when you strip the fat from it. Think about cheese production. Through the process, the liquid that is separated from the milk solids is the whey and many places just pour that stuff down the drain. This is truth, I worked at a place that did just that. That stuff is apparently hard to digest. So I will choose the fat in cream every time. I love it but I do not love milk, go figure.

I feel better now and so the shower beckons.

I Am What I Am

Like a bolt out of the blue it came to me. Popeye had it right when he said " I am what I am"
I have spent more than the last five and a half years searching for myself. 

For almost thirty years I was half of a couple and not the easy identifiable half but the half that was mostly just a fuzzy shadow following along on my husband's path. 

So I walked away, left that fuzzy shadow behind, and stepped into the light on my way to search for who I thought I had lost by degrees over the years.

I have been searching so hard and anguishing over not being able to connect the dots between the girl I was and the woman I became or thought I had lost, that I didn't see that what was lost was only really locked away and I had just forgotten where I had put the key.

Every day, hour, and moment has brought me to this realization, that I am what I am. I don't have to look beyond what I like, what gives me pleasure, what makes me smile and what makes me cry. 

There isn't a magic button or magic pill. There is no big secret or profound discovery other than finding out,I am what I am. 

That for me is the key.

Solitude my healer

I have spent most of the four months of my summer break from school hiding out in my basement apartment, and while at least part of that time I was depressed, for several reasons I won't get into, I know that even if I hadn't been, I would still choose solitude.

People always say to those who choose to be alone, that you can't shut yourself away from the world. To them I ask, why not? I am safe here, I have everything I need, and the people I care about are just a phone call, text message or email away. It isn't often that I choose to be around people, but when I do, I pick my moments and the people I want to share them with carefully.

In reality, people are simply a drain on my energy, because I have to deal with sensory overload as part of my condition. From the outside looking in, to most people, I suppose I seem to be managing just fine, but that is very careful planning and assessing individual situations that makes me appear so. On the inside I am calculating where I will put my next step and what if anything I will say. I appear calm and have even been described as serene. This is self preservation as I prefer not to draw attention to myself. Once home after an outing that has involved being in groups of people, I will take a day or several days to decompress before I am comfortable venturing out again. If I don't or can't take this time, I will become easily overwhelmed and everything I try to do that is new has the potential to reduce me to tears, and my ability to communicate is drastically diminished as well. This doesn't happen because I expect it to and so create this outcome but I have arrived at this realization as an observation. This is just a fact.

So if I choose to be alone it's because I actually do know what's best for me, and do admit I resent others trying to feed me their version of what is best for me. In their world, and possibly the general population as well, what they think is best might actually be so, for them. In my world I am the authority on me. This does not mean that I won't listen to people I trust and whose judgement I respect, because I will and then will make the decision that is still right for me.

I change what I can, adapt when I am able and make no excuses for settling for a life that causes me the least amount of anxiety while still following my dream.

It's not awful, it's just my life. Having always been this way and finally knowing I have an explanation, I do what is within me to make it work and don't beat myself up for not conforming to somebody else's idea of normal. What I offer is only an explanation, not an excuse. All I ask of anyone is this, do not try to change or fix me. Accept that and you accept me as I am. I have.

Flirting with happiness

I want to be happy and flirt with happiness, yet find it takes very little to tip me into despair and wish I knew how to prevent that from happening. My recovery time is getting shorter when this happens though and I know there is a learning lesson in it, but what exactly that lesson is, seems to be elusive.
I push people away who get too close and find the ones I know that I could probably lean on, I won't allow to see me at my most vulnerable for fear of abandonment. Most people do not know what to do with another person's vulnerability. Some want to jump in and fix what they perceive to be broken and others seem to see it as something that they will catch so they run for the hills. It is the rare find that will allow one to cry, vent or to bury themselves in the warmth and caring of their comforting embrace, wordlessly supporting, yet not enabling the despondent to sink into their despair, without judgement and giving advice only when asked.
In spite of my angst I do see myself as a happy person, or perhaps, more accurately as one who is content with settling for close enough. Euphoria is not something that can be sustained for long periods and there is no place to go but down from such heights.
So for now I will choose the halfway point and desire be content with that, while allowing room for the highs and lows to colour my life.

The Spirit, the Heart, the Bridge and the Soul

This past weekend four of my sisters and I went to Stratford to see a play, "The Matchmaker" as a birthday celebration for the oldest in the group, chronologically, but definitely the youngest in spirit. We started this more than five years ago and have only, when life allowed, repeated this for each of our birthdays, three times so far. We want to keep it going.

The sister whose birthday we were celebrating has cancer. She had a double mastectomy 5 years ago and is currently undergoing another round of chemotherapy. I got the news about her current condition while working on a painting in my second year of a fine art program. This shifted my focus for the painting. A certain percentage of the painting had to have personal content in it and I was going to reference an old photo of myself from when I was about 4 years old, but instead decided to use a photo of my sister, seeing as how she was on my mind constantly anyway. Once finished, I offered it to her while making sure that she knew that she was in no way obligated to take it if she didn't like it, and as it is a large canvas, measuring 4'x6' so finding a place for it is tricky. Happily she did really seem to genuinely like it from the photos I sent her of it and wants it. What followed was a short series of emails sharing and elaborating on our connection to each other.

I think I was about 7 or 8 years old when I met her for the first time as she was living with some of the relatives of her Father, my step-Father who had married my Mother. She is the only one of his daughters that came to live with us. He had 3 more daughters, and a son living in a different province with family and only his two oldest sons living with him. Their Mother had cancer and died when the youngest was only a baby of around a year old, and so for whatever reasons, five of his children, all but the two oldest boys, went to stay with his family.

My sister was a bit of a wild child apparently once she hit puberty, so she came to live with us. All I remember back then was her laughter, her singing and her constant horsing around with her older brothers. Other than that I just remember being a bit awestruck, as she laughed more often than anyone I knew and didn't treat me like the crybaby that I was. I am pretty sure she was the one that started singing with and to us girls at night in bed. Those bedtimes are some of my fondest early memories.

When she got a bit older she worked at a lunch counter in, Woolco or Kmart and would sometimes take me with her to work. I would wander around the store after being treated to an ice cream sundae that she would make for me. I'm not sure how many times I tagged along with her but I truly felt like the luckiest little sister to have her want me along. There were also times when she would return home early from a date and take me to her favourite Chinese food restaurant, if our parents were out for the evening and I was on my own. It was from her that I developed a taste for Chinese food and anything beyond the usual meat and potatoes we usually had at home.

When us four sisters did the play and dinner the first time for my birthday more than five years ago, she gave me this wall plaque that reads, "Chance made us sisters, Hearts made us friends". She said in a recent email, that she doesn't think about us having different parents, we are sisters. I can only add that I couldn't love her more if we had the same parents.

The four of us together are a wonderful mix of personalities. The oldest sister I think of as the spirit for her laughter and spark of positivity, another the heart, because she is inevitably always the one who thinks of personal touches, from making bracelets to knitting scarves for us, the youngest as the bridge as she has the same Mother as two and the same Father as the oldest of our foursome and she brings us together in other ways too. I am not sure what I am, I take direction from the others, making bracelets and scarves for instance and go along with whatever they suggest for our birthday celebrations but am still the one who will suddenly dissolve into tears at the thought of not being able to join them for future celebrations because of financial restrictions.
I looked up soul and found these definitions fit for me;
soul a : the moral and emotional nature of human beings 
       b : the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment.
I certainly arouse some emotion and sentiment in our sister group. I don't know if they would agree but I know from now on when I think of us together, we will be the Spirit, the Heart, the Bridge and the Soul, that embodies our sisterhood.