Fight or Flight

Can I be me with you?

Silence is my trauma response. When I do not feel free to be me, I close ranks. I batten down the hatches, throw up impenetrable barricades, and hide my true self from you.

It is an internal flight. I’m still there, guarding my words, playing the angel game that I learned as a child.

I don’t have the patience for it anymore. My tolerance for BS has diminished over the years. At 62, I am more vocal. I stand my ground and speak my peace. Yes, peace. I’m not arguing with anyone. It’s not a war.

That means that there must be a third… fight, flight, or just be your own true self, confident in your own right. I like the old woman me, more crone than sweet old lady.

My blog has been in a flight mode while I recovered. Thanks for reading!

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Dear Santa

It’s been a rough year. The death toll is staggering… more friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances have departed than I can count on three hands. I cried too many and too often silent tears, lost myself in bottles, sought comfort and love in warm brown arms, then sunk my bare feet into the muddy waters of reality until my toes found solid ground on the south side of Youngstown.

So, may I have some paints please? Oh pretty please, dear Santa?

Here’s a link to my wish list at Dick Blick as I’m a bit particular when it comes to art supplies.  I also added a full set of pencils, as one should always dream big when dreaming out loud.

Odds are that I shall find the equivalent of another lump of coal in my Christmas stocking, if the jolly old elf bothers to stop by here at all. The children have noticed, they already know… they say grandma’s a bad girl, that’s why Santa doesn’t bring her anything.

~

Truth be told, I am a bit scared. My appointment with the retinal specialist is today. What if the sight cannot be restored? Depression is already swirling, will I sink into a deep abyss? Paints could save me… art is therapy, I could paint with one eye, fine line details not required.

I do so want to paint again…  I quit when I first became disabled, took up pencils because the medium was dry and I could draw little pictures with minimal body movements while stuck in a chair for endless hours. I still cannot stand at an easel, but paints could be next on my artistic journey.

I could always express emotions in paint, much more freely than with pencils… let the brushes take me where they want to go. Like in this painting below, my 3rd of 1998…

It is actually two paintings in one… the left side was painting out an emotional storm, then my thoughts turned to a man I barely knew in 1998, an elusive artist with unknown entanglements. I did not know what had him so bogged down back then, but I could feel it. It’s a bad portrait… beard too thick, &c.

I’ve been hanging art… can’t hang that one, still mourning the loss of our friendship, and with every painting comes the urge to paint again.

The wish list of art supplies is just words to the wind… come January, I will slowly start ordering what I need. Thanks for reading! And wish me luck today.

LEEK: art therapy

Have you seen her? She looks like your onion ass all over.

WHAT?

She’s big, not like you, she don’t have a neck or nothing man, like that girl on Willy Wonka, a blueberry, like your onion ass ALL over.

MY WHAT?

You know you got that onion ass, nothing you can do about it. I know you’re losing weight but it don’t matter how skinny you get, you can’t get rid of that… you’ll always have an onion ass…

I let him dig himself into a deeper hole trying to explain why he calls my ass an “onion” when I should just consider the source and move on, like this middle aged man pronounces “vagina” as “va-jay-jay” and probably pees out of a “winky” but my mind was stuck on that onion thing. How the hell does my ass look like an onion? Onions are round and firm – he’s never touched it, never will, so I don’t understand the comparison.

I happen to like onions, buy spicy red onions to slice in thin slivers on leafy green salads (spinach is the “new lettuce” in my world) and sweet whites are good sliced. I also occassionally buy yellow spanish onions for cooking although I do prefer shallots minced for some dishes and sliced green onions for others. And, of course, we cannot forget chives with their mild onion flavor as snipped chives is a favorite garnish.

Never once, in my 52 years on this planet, has it ever crossed my mind to describe my big ol’ butt as an onion. And yes, suppose he is right in that my body type will never change, I always was and always will be “pear shape” but geez… if asses are in the onion family, I am a shallot and he is a freaking leek.

Still, it bothered me. It laid on my mind like an irritation, especially that “you will always have an onion ass” and the best way to purge my mind of irritations is with a little art therapy.

The following colored pencil drawing started out as onions until I worked over it in my typical abstract fashion. Faber-Castell Polychromos on hot pressed 100% cotton watercolour paper, 4×6 inches.

Thanks for reading today!