brooding

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honest to god, i look at my old art and i don't even know who created it.

i look at the work and i remember so clearly each stroke of the brush, the temper of the day, the way the light fell across the oil and lit up the green pollen that fell from the Evergreens above and endeared itself to the liquin on my canvas...  i remember how annoying it was.  J coming home from work covered in grease and kissing me on the forehead, looking approvingly at the progress i'd made since he'd last seen the canvas while our dog cowered with excitement at his feet, waiting to be scratched on the head and told "good girl!'.   i was waiting for the same phrase...

because it was me who spread that black across sheets of white.  it was me who went running down highway 128 each morning with a rotweiller at my side, cigarette in hand and a cup of coffee waiting at the finish line each morning.  it was me who blogged every day and slid my paint around and tried to read philosophy but got too caught up in dreaming about far away places instead.  i did those things.  i have the memories; no matter how hard i try to block them out.

it's been so easy to look away.

i don't want to remember the Past.  i like to think of it in huge swatches of time.  eras, rather than specifics.  i don't let myself think about how broken my heart actually is...  how sensitive i am...  how easily hurt, how easily turned off...  how easy it is for me to give up.

all it takes is one harsh word.

maybe that's unfair but that's the way it is.  i just can't stomach it anymore.  i've had too much of the yelling and the fighting and the name calling.  i just can't do it anymore.  and i'm okay if that makes me a freak.  i walk along listening to pop music with tears in my eyes and thinking of my mother's hand on my cheek.  i walk along thinking of a child i'll never bare running up and grabbing my pinky and saying "mama!"  i walk along and thing of the close family warmth that other people know and trust.  and i am separate.  i am individual.  and that's okay.

maybe after all that's happened i'm incapable of actually having the type of life other people seem to hold so dear?  i think of my dead mother and i can hear her screaming at me, "just be yourself!  do whatever makes you happy, little girl!"

and i do.  i try to.  i'm happiest when i can wrangle a plane ticket and some time off, alone with my diary, ink flowing and no clock to punch.  it's just that the lines get crossed so easily when it comes to other people.  my heart is so full of hope that it pains me to endure anything less that what we are capable of.  perhaps i am a perfectionist after all.  and, let me tell you,



it is hell.

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