I have a friend D. she did something for me that i'm not sure i can ever pay her back for. she sold me my old self back. admittedly, that sounds a little weird. but let me explain.
no, there is too much. let me sum up. (just kidding, but i had to throw that in there)
i used to be an artist. an honest to goodness, paint splattered clay covered card carrying arteeste. i painted. i drug my best friend Andromeda all over the old market taking avant guard photos. some of which i still have by the way. i molded things out of wire. and clay. i carved huge blocks of plaster into a symmetrical blobs of... you know, that one, still not sure what it was supposed to be when it was done..... my chosen medium was usually wire sculpture and acrylic paint on canvas. not together. two separate things.
and i was good. very good. i'd been accepted into the San Fransisco school of art for my post graduate school. and THAT is good people.
but i stopped.
and i don't know exactly when that happened. it was somewhere in the beginning of my first marriage. it was slow, and steady, but all confidence in my abilities was undermined. when i'd decide to take a class, "you want to learn that? why don't you want to do something USEFUL?" if i created a new painting, "is it supposed to look like that?" a new sculpture; "where is that going to go?"
so i stopped. it was better to stop trying, stop creating, than it was to face what was ultimatly dissappointment. dissappointment that i wasn't what he wanted me to be. that i hadn't been molded instantly into what he thought i should be. so i lost a pretty big part of myself. but that's the thing, isn't it? we strip away a part of ourself so that the pain doesn't show. i still sewed. gods, if i hadn't had that i probably would have never made it through. i created beautiful things in fabric. and i still doodled in the corners of notebooks. but that huge bit of myself was slowly taken away. and i let him take it. because it was easier.
but thankfully, i had some very good friends. they helped me see my marriage for what it was, and helped me through what was ultimately the most painless divorce ever in the history of ever. (here's a tip, if he doesn't even show up for the divorce proceeding, he wasn't that emotionally invested) but i never really got back into that artistic swing that was such a large part of my life. yes, my sewing exploded, adding costumes and quilts into the mix. but i never returned to being an artist.
and then my friend D put a simple little message on Twitter. "i'm selling my camera. anybody interested?"
i'm still not sure what it was that made me jump at that tweet. maybe it was the insanely good deal (which i will NOT be sharing with you lest you try to beat me). maybe it was that bubby was getting more mobile and i wanted good pictures. or maybe it was just that i was ready. ready to be ME again. so i jumped. i bought her camera. and i have had two weeks of bliss.
two weeks of taking the most beautiful pictures i've ever taken in my life. two weeks of slowly returning to the artist that i was. two weeks of unfolding out of my caccoon. and it didn't stop there. 2 days ago, i bought a sketchbook and started doing some REAL sketches again. a couple are doodles, to be sure, but some have real potential. i know i'm not back all the way. it's going to take a while. but i'm ok with that.
and just a couple of hours ago i started planing out a wire sculpture. i hesitantly told hubby what i was planing, you know his reply? "that sounds really cool. i can't wait to see it."
that is awesome.
