art and life

Picasso's Woman With a Crow
journal entry from 6/24/07

It occurs to me I have lived in my own kind of prison, in one area of my life, for many years now and I’m ready to come out of it. The source of this trouble goes back to my last year of college. I was so stressed out, guilty and ashamed of myself the last year of college, over 15 years ago! My school work suffered as I agonized over my Mom and Dad’s situation, the stress of finances, working and keeping it all together. I felt guilty for being a “lousy artist.” I still feel sadness mingled with embarrassment when I recall a horrible memory of an evaluation talk with one of my instructors, figure drawing, as he criticized my work. I never told anybody - teachers or classmates- all of what was going on, with the exception my roommate. That was a rather large factor in my less-than-spectacular quality of work. I look back now and the biggest impression I have of that last year of school is STRESS and WORRY. Stress and worry about my parents and their legal and financial problems. Stress and worry about doing my school work, meeting deadlines and balancing that with working as much as possible to support myself and pay for it. We lived somewhat of a double life because my Mom did not want us to tell anyone what was happening with my Dad, and you can still see my reticence in this to spell it out exactly. I remember a time a few years later, when I became a stay-at-home-mom(SAHM) after having Adam how relieved I was not to have to get up and go to school or work and be so engulfed by the stress of all that. I still felt enormous guilt for not pursuing an art career or even doing any art on my own, for pleasure or passion. I think all of that was wound so tightly into the way I was dealing with my family problems. I’d associated art and art-school with such negative feelings because it was the goal I had to slog through when my heart wasn’t in it for worry over my parents; and the huge financial strain it was to keep it going. Then it was the strain of continuing to pay for it in the form of student loans after graduation. I was growing and changing as a person with new priorities: motherhood and Christian Faith. I was resentful and embarrassed that I could not afford it. I was still dealing with the blow to our family in the form of my Dad’s tragic circumstances. Having to be there for my Mom and him, and even bear some of the responsibility of helping them, and feeling at times guilty and resentful (and feeling guilty about feeling resentful!). Then there was the worry and concern over my brother’s problems with addiction at that time and the way that touched our family. I was privately torn with guilt and vacillating over mine and my husbands’s passion for me to be a SAHM and our assurance of it being the right thing for us to do as Christian parents, and the fact that I was not contributing to our finances though the loans and other bills were my debts. We had severe financial problems due to stupid mistakes we made, and some even from my parents’ situation. I can’t tell you what a heartache and despair my Dad’s situation caused. It was the dark cloud that hung over all of our lives, effecting us in various ways. I can’t even go into all of that here. When my Dad passed away in 2000, there was no more carrying that burden, and grief runs it’s course. It was a sad and unfair situation, but there is no more to be done about it… The victim of the cruel circumstances, my Dad was gone, and the situation that ruled our lives for so long, went with him. I suppose there was a returning to ‘normal’? Big Daddy & I finally paid off my student loans, and that was a relief. I no longer lived in the state of guilt and anxiety I once did. I am ready to be free and do art again. Lord, help me start.