Finding Me

I’ve been rethinking a few things, drawing every day, and listening to music with lyrics that echo words in my head.

I mentioned shedding insecurities in my last post.

Underneath all those insecurities is a strong, confident woman. The secret is that she has always been there. All she wants is to live a simple creative life, speak her mind, and maybe do something a little outragious now and then just for fun.

Okay, that sounds good… but it’s not exactly accurate. Maybe I should replace “strong, confident woman” with “seasoned old woman who laughs easy” as I am more weathered than strong. I have endured. Winds of changes have swept through my life, each time spinning me off into the unknown, but I’m still standing. Might be standing crooked, but here I am.

Maybe “insecurities” is a wrong word, too. It suggests that I put myself down and that is simply not true.

So, what exactly are these layers?

I don’t know. It is the shedding of things I don’t need anymore, obsolete reasons to hide inside myself. Shedding the layers is not so much about finding me as it is revealing me as I am, flaws and all.

Yes, I am flawed. If I were in OA, those flaws would be called charactor defects. I kind of feel like it is okay to be flawed, as long as you accept the flaws that cannot be changed and take care not to let those flaws harm yourself or others.

For example, I am selfish. I know this about myself, but feel no need to mend my ways because I am not selfish about everything.

It made me a bad wife. I neglected my husband when I lost track of time working on my projects. Over-simplification? Yes, but not having his dinner cooked when he came in from work because I had spent the day painting did spark the fight that ended my second marriage.

After two brief marriages to the same man spaced eight years apart, I realized that I don’t have it in me to be the kind of wife most men want or need. It would not be fair to pretend otherwise, even though I occassionally toy with a fantasy of happy ever after Cinderella bull. That’s like wondering what it would be like to be rodeo clown or an astronaunt after 30 years on my own (as in combined adult years not lived with men).

Chance or Choice?

I never took a vow of solitude, just never had a requited love with anyone willing to accept my flaws enough to consider co-habitation.

Even with the art, the need to make things is so ingrained that it doesn’t feel like a choice. Every attempt to stifold that need to get along with a man or whatever has lead to misery and resentment. I am an artist, not a professional artist. I’m just one of those people born with a need to make things. I have to live a creative life.

Shedding layers is a choice, although it is kind of like removing layers of onion skin rubbed loose by the process of recovery, brittle and dry, crumbles in your hand. Underneath is the same ol’ person you always were… just no reason to hide anymore.

Advertisement