Delusional

He dangled a
future in front of me
as an unattainable carrot
that only he could see,
then called me delusional
thinking that I want
what cannot be.

This selfie is proof that I am NOT delusional.

The painting is called SOAR… as in, NEVER TO NEST.  See those birds? I paint birds to represent souls. One of those two black birds flying solo is ME… the other is the old friend who cold turkey cut me out of his life via a one sided early morning text slam in January.

My art is abstract, but I am a realist…  I knew when I painted SOAR back in 1998 that there would never be a fairy tale romance leading to some happily ever after bull between us. That is one thing we had in common… neither one of us wanted that! I was fresh out of a suffocating marriage and the R.Tist was leaving before I met him.

Yes, there was a time when I wondered if we could be more than friends.

That was TWELVE YEARS AGO… he made it very clear that would never be, and described our relationship as a unique and special friendship back in 2004. Later that year, he moved to PA. The last time I saw him was in 2006, when he drove to Ohio to cheat on his then live-in girlfriend, who had gone to Vegas with her friends.

If he wanted to be with me, he would have stayed with me or asked me to go with him.  If he had a change of heart, his feet would have brought him back to me… that never happened so I had to get over it, accept what is as is… we were meant to be friends, nothing more.

So, I’m like totally confused.

I thought we were friends… long distance muses and friends.

I don’t understand why he would say things like he always doubted my ability to be his friend and how I could care less about what he’s going through… as if my interest in being friends with him was holding onto old hopes for more, rip me up one side and down the other.

Has he harbored a delusion of me being delusional all these years?

Maybe I gave him the delusion of me being delusional when I was twirling ideas of leaping in leap year… I wanted to run away, make a fresh start somewhere else and yes, I did considered moving closer to my old friend so we could hang out once in awhile and talk in person instead of texting.  He talked about moving, too. He’s the one who said, “yeah, I could live with you.” We did not talk about hooking up or anything stupid… it was more like a yeah, we could tolerate each other’s artistic quirks enough to share space, split the cost of living, make it easier to survive. Those conversations were like daydreaming out loud… just twirling ideas, nothing set in stone.

 

Can we make amends?

No… I am dead to him. He killed our friendship because I failed to live up to his expectations. My crime was being human. Okay, one slightly flawed bipolar human who self medicated during a manic stage and kept her personal life private, but it was really none of his business… and should have had no bearing on our friendship.

True, I could have been a better friend. He picked up on something being off with me… but was he there for me? No… when I told him that I wrote a letter to explain what was going on with me,  he mulled it through memories, twirled it with imagination, drew conclusions on assumptions, and slammed me with a text good-bye BEFORE the mail had time to arrive. Straight up, he could have been a better friend to me, too.

I’ve been talking to my shrink about all this… confusion, anger, mixed emotions is all part of the grieving process. I still care… I miss my friend, but I have to let the friendship go… it is dead.

We also talked about the death of my nephew.  I have a lot of anger, confusion, and unanswered questions about that, too. I want to blame the asshole who dumped his body in a McDonald’s parking lot. Paramedics were able to get his heart going again, but too much time had passed. The hospital tried heroic measures to save his life, even dropped his body temperature for 24 hours, but it was too late. He was brain dead. They took his body off life support last Monday.  I wonder where he OD’d, how much time had passed, if this dude purposely drove up to dump him on the south side of Youngstown, where discovery wouldn’t make the news. They lived way down in Columbiana County. What was he doing with that guy anyway? He was clean, why would he use heroin again? Was it by choice?

Shrink told me to keep writing… to keep doing what I’m doing… he said I seem more stable now, so that is a good thing. I feel more stable. I’m just grieving.

Thanks for reading.

 

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June Bug

Well, I have done lost my mind and found it again.  It is hard to believe that it is already June.  Time flies while zoned into a wee bit of obsession.  I let myself dream without limitations and thoroughly researched possibilities.  Then I cranked the math and reeled myself back to reality, but can’t let it go.

Maybe it is a little wacked, but I am thinking “renew, re-use, recycle” all pretty much mean the same thing:  take something old and make something new out of it.    It may never look or work or be the exact same way it used to be.   It might not have the same function anymore.  It has been re-purposed as something else.  I want to re-able me.

That’s my wacked idea.   I was DIS-abled.   I am never going to be the “able” me that I used to be, so I need RE-abled along the lines of renew, re-use, recycle.  I am my own art project.

After an honest assessment of what I can and cannot do, not just what I want to do or dream of doing, I wrote a business plan that includes the following criteria:

• It must be something I can do, even with my limitations.
• It must involve art, or go well with my art.
• It must not require more than $5,000 initial investment.
• It must have a profit potential of at least $2,000 a month.

I am not going to go into details… for one reason, I would be writing this post well into August.    Another reason is that I do not have five grand to invest, so it still feels too much like a dream.

My mind keeps twirling ways to raise the money without going into debt.  I am doing things like calling up the cable company and saying, “I want to play slash my bill” (eliminating WIFI and cable TV dropped it  from $106 to $22.41 a month)  and looking at other ways to cut my cost of living.

Hey… I could become a “minimalist” and sell off most my stuff.

I keep hoping people will buy my art – it is still on display at the Mocha House in Boardman and I have two pieces going into the YWCA show later this month.  People say they like it and they sure do want it if I am giving it away, but no one wants to pay $35 for a nicely matted and framed 5×7 drawing.  No one has texted or called to even ask if I’d take less.   That’s why my business plan needed something else going on besides art.

By the way (if you happened to notice),  I replaced the drawing used as my gravatar image with a “selfie” photo that I had cropped square and flipped to black and white.   Here is the uncropped color original if you are curious as to what I look like.  I was brave enough to throw it on Facebook, where I rarely post any “people photos” so oh well… why not.

It’s not the best photo – no makeup, ratty old shirt, bad lighting, and hair not done to hide how thin it is getting on top.   Ye gads, it could be scary old lady hair with long wispy stands by the time I am 80 if I grew it long again.   I might do that, just for grins.  Yes, the mental image of myself at 80 makes me laugh.  People take things that don’t really matter way too seriously.