Getting there
I've spent a lifetime hiding my differences only to find at such a late stage in my life, through studying autoethnography, that being different is OK. OK to be me even if I interprete things differently than expected.
Learnt today that there is research out there that proves that trauma can ignite creativity. It did for me. Now I am content to re-connect with many different creative processes. Think I spent my time studying in all the wrong university departments. Should have followed my heart rather than do the 'sensible' thing. Where shall I go next?
Feeling that I have reached another significant crossroad in my life - and Dee I am doing it for me (and you - although you are no longer here to see it). Will rediscover my creative side as you tried to encourage me to do for more than 40 years when we shared the deepest most loving relationship. I think of you when I put pen to paper, paint to brush, push my fingers into the most deliciious lump of brown earthen clay, put words to verses or dance the way I always did before life stopped it. And no I don't have to wear purple. I can be grey!
Started all this blogging/arty writing and drawing etc. on the anniversary of your death. Wish you were here to share it. You saw in me what I hid from myself even. You always said you would wait until I was ready. Well I am ready now. Can you hear me? Can you see me. My paintings are on the ceiling now and soon they will be on the wall. You understand what I mean. Shame about the sculptue but I picture it daily in mind's eye and it will take up its rightful place any time soon.
I am free to dance, to sing, to write, to draw - to chase the crows across the the downs; to laugh till I fall and lay beneath the tees; to scream the most unholy noise ever heard by human ears in competition with the fiercest of winds. To paddle upstream where storm waters ravage the banks of my favourite place, to slip and wallow as the mud coats my chest. Who cares that some passerby tells me I ought to be ashamed of my self at my age. Who knows what age one should feel ashamed at not being gown-up. Who wants to be the gown-up? i'm the one who can appeciate each little moment of joy peeping through the trauma. I am the one learning that It's good to be different - she's getting old!