Last year I stayed at a B&B down south with my narcy ex called “Gunnado”. I didn’t get it at first. I pronounced it “Gunardo”. It’s actually pronounced “Gunn-a-do” – you know, I’m gunna do it. Simply because the owners had the flat on their ‘gunna-do-it” list. Didn’t realise that flat was an oracle telling me to get around to all of my ‘gunn-a-do’ stuff….
I abandoned myself as a traumatised child and I hate myself for it. I shouldn’t hate myself, it wasn’t my fault what happened. I can’t remember how I felt at the time when my aunts abandoned me and mum overnight taking possessions they wanted, including money and mums wedding jewellery. I know I never cried. But I can’t recall how I *actually* felt. Oh, I can recall the racial abuse where we all lived, living in daily constant fear of the public diatribes and verbal abuse, wondering when the next act of criminal damage will occur to our property and if I’ll get attacked in the street again ( I was attacked in the street when I was 8 years old coming home from the shop with one of my aunts, by a group of boys). I’ll go into the ins and outs of exactly what happened and how bad it was on another post.
But it was that deep, deadly shock of my aunts who lived with us, my mum’s younger sisters, disappearing like that, like a fart in the wind, literally overnight with zero warning that left me completely stunned and dead in the water. These women were like my sisters, whom I loved like sisters; I’d grown up with them from 6 months old. They left a 12 year old me and mum alone, dispensing of us in a cold, calculated and mercenary way, feeding us to the racist wolves where we were left alone to fend for ourselves and continued to be victimised for many years that followed. There was no other family, only us. Literally. We were on our own and cut off from any larger community, living in an all white area. How can your own family be so callous and deliver such a calculated, heinous act, literally putting your life and wellbeing on the line? Something died within me when that happened and I changed. Unfortunately, for the worse. Something left my body and I shattered to pieces, unbeknownst to the 12 year old me; I abandoned myself; I lost myself; I abandoned my soul and the truth of who I was only for it to be replaced by a darker, rageful, angry energy.
Anyway, back to abandoning myself. I’ve been trying to really live a life true to myself (since around 2015) but I kept getting distracted by other shinier things, trying to create a life true-ish to me, but feeling so fragmented that I just wasn’t getting it right. At this moment in time, having allowed another narc to control my life in 18 months from 22-2023, I don’t know how to recover the lost and abandoned parts of myself. I had a break down in 2017 following a few years of trying to keep it together after jumping from a successful career 3 years previously (before I was pushed). And I feel the same feelings so I know I’m having another mini breakdown this year because I’m starting my life rom scratch AGAIN!
I should have become a writer and an artist from a young age, and I resent that I didn’t have anyone to guide and steer me into honing my natural talents and becoming the creative I should have been. But as an adult, it’s not a career you just walk into. It has to grow organically and people need to get to know you. Time, it takes time. And when you’re on one speed setting, things taking time is not what you want to hear. It helps, I suppose if you have rich mummy and daddy and/or are well connected. Sad but true. It is who you know. Anyway they say where you fall there lies your treasure. But it’s so fucking deep and decomposed I’m getting exhausted trying to bring the abandoned self back to life. I’m so upset with myself because I’m finding it so very, very difficult to reignite my artistic streak. Perhaps I need to immerse myself into it, like a cold shower or a cold water swim, just consume myself in it.
Here’s the actual Brene Brown quote I mentioned in a previous post, verbatim: “Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame.” It’s true. I really get and understand that. I have had (and still seem to have) a huge mental block when it comes to getting back into art. It’s like some sort of paralysis. As long as I can remember I was always quite brilliant at art – art books full of pencil drawings of pop stars and actors from teenage magazines – I was particularly good at pencil drawing and I was discovering who I was as an artist. I had a huge A1 folder full of paintings, pastels, inspired pieces that were either a figment of my imagination or something I’d seen in a magazine, art work either for school projects or just as a hobby in my own time at home. Art was one of my A grade exam subjects, something I loved, that naturally flowed from me effortlessly. But I’ve left that part of myself on the shelf for so long it has gone very, very ugly, disfigured and stale. It’s disabled. It’s become a huge effort to even look at the paints and get them out. It’s become one of those gun-a-do things that I never do. I buy canvases, recently metallic pencils and pastel pencils, printed some images of doggies to draw, bought some 3D frames to do the seascape 3D murals I’ve been meaning to do for ages. It remains “gunnado”….and never comes around…..
…and it makes me sad, frustrated and sorrowful. In 2013 or was it 2014, I can’t quite recall, I rediscovered my hidden box of art tools – brushes, paints, pastels, paper – all neatly hidden away in a brown cardboard box on the self. I had all good intentions to turn my emotional state into pieces of abstract art work. It never materialised.
In 2017 when I had my first breakdown and when I first went to see a counsellor, I recall painting a hummingbird and a lily, and I realised I hadn’t lost the gift. But I didn’t carry on (although I did start a creative cake art business the following year because I didn’t know how to make immediate money as a writer and artist). Frustrated with my lack of focus on my god given talents I enrolled on an oil painting course. But rather than having a lust for my art and immersing myself in my talent, I realised I was just an over-competitive grown up woman-child who wanted to be better than everyone else. I didn’t get on with the oils and was just obsessed with trying to produce a masterpiece…although I did paint a rather good Offred/June picture (The Handmaid’s Tale poster of the recent TV series).
And then the other week, I forced myself to paint some beautiful, pink hydrangeas growing in my back garden. It was absolutely rubbish. Probably because I forced myself. But I know I have it in me to create beautiful art….I need to slow down and calm the fuck down….
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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