Painting a New Me

It was the nicest day here and I finally got around to planting a bunch of plants given to me over a month ago. I have felt real guilty seeing them there in the driveway but I have been too swamped to do anything about it. So today was the day. Nobody was out in the neighborhood. I guess with church, Halloween and football they're so many choices. I could hear screaming so I am thinking our team was winning or some one's team was winning.

The plants looked dead some of them but I planted them anyway and hope for the best, sometimes plants can surprise you like that. I cleared out some old asparagus ferns that the previous owner probably planted 20 years ago I had to dig them up. I am sure I left enough behind that they will return when they are ready.

I worked in the studio this morning and painted some and then took an inventory of the paint colors I have. I have really evolved with my thoughts about painting. I had it rough in high school with all the super stars in the art class. The teachers always catered to them. Once my favorite teacher ask me and another average student to paint the sunset for the school play. We were excited and honored so we painted a fiery sunset and it took us all night. When the play opened and the curtain was raised it wasn't our sunset it had been over by one of the superstars.

We were crushed and I didn't want to ever go back to class. She could have told us we were so young and already felt insecure about our talents. But she was probably twenty something herself and didn't know how to say it wasn't what she wanted.

I didn't try to paint again until my mid twenties when I was unemployed and then only under the direction of the Bob Ross method painting on TV. Happy little clouds. I still have them and yuck. I was so afraid of being judged or feeling silly so as long as it looked like everyone elses I was happy. I was so sick an insecure.

I didn't paint again until this last breakup. When you are in a relationship your free time is not your own. It is made up of compromises and if that doesn't work you end up not doing anything but watching tv. I never really realized I was giving my life away a piece at a time or I should say an hour at a time.

So here I am alone and back to my first love creating. I like all forms of creating and watch all the shows that have to do with the creative process. Everything we touch and see was an idea in some one's mind or in the mind of God. It never gets old to me and if it does I will just create something new.

Since I came to Al-Anon, after my first marriage ended, my need to please others and feeling inferior, has just about vanished. I accommodate when it is a win win situation but what I have realized lately that I have to really listen to my gut before I say yes to do something. I can easily get to where I say yes because I can't think of anything else at that moment that I would rather do. But having nothing scheduled actually gives me time to think about things I do want to do.

Sorry, I went off on that tangent it is a big issue for me and something I have been trying to understand. Doing something is not always better than doing nothing.

Now I paint what I want. I like to paint ordinary things. I painted some light bulbs a couple of nights ago. So what, I am not that girl that was jilted in high school by her favorite teacher. Let's face it art is purely subjective and unless you paint like the masters, which was already done by the masters, who cares.

I evolved in the program and my art has followed. Relationships change even the relationship with yourself. It is good too, that the girl inside me can let go of feeling inferior and accept the gifts God has given me. It has been a long haul.

Happy Halloween

Flat Line - Bored to death

Home alone tonight watching bad movies, actually Flat Line a not so bad movie from the early 90's with all the famous twenty somethings. Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon. I also think one of the Baldwin boys was in it, I could be wrong. They were med students and decided they would experiment with death. Medically stopping their heart for a number of minutes and bringing themselves back.

After each had their turn they were experiencing some scary unresolved issue that haunted them until they faced it in this life. For some it was by making amends an for others it was by seeing that they were children and couldn't be held responsible.

It is the past that holds me back or really how I look at the past that holds me back. Tonight for me I feel restless and tired from the work week and not feeling like doing anything. I have had enough TV and so am sitting in my newly created den doing a little writing, which always makes me feel better.

The distant past doesn't haunt me so much anymore it is the not so distant past that has showed up. I know that everything is as exactly as it is suppose to be but is is me that is impatient.

Overall I have had a good day, I closed a deal this morning, visted a job site and then bought some new canvasses at half price. So I am bored tonight, I guess they're worse things. It is quiet and I am happy to feel like my house is finally becoming my home.

Finding the new me - I am enough

After rearranging my house I of course I had to think about why I did that. It was perfectly suited for entertaining and large gatherings. What I realized is that is not who I am anymore.

For the past two decades I have made more food than you could possibly imagine and served more people on a regular basis, than most people do on the the holidays. What I realized is, I have moved on. Don't get me wrong I loved cooking and entertaining like my version of Martha Stewart.

It felt good serving up bowls of love and creating the family I lost as a child. I needed to find out that even with all that I couldn't feel secure the way I did as a child. As an adult I have found that that love is conditional and the only way to make sure you are loved 100% of time is to love yourself. It isn't easy to think of yourself as lovable but we expect others to think we are lovable.

I have spent the past few months facing my own insecurities and loving myself despite them. Looking at the core of me and facing the fear that I am not enough. Enough for who? Me, I am not enough for me. New flash, I can change that thought I can't change whether or not I am enough for someone else but I can be enough for me.

It sounds a bit dramatic but this longing to be good enough for someone has held me back in so many ways. I feel somehow free for the first time in my life.

Last night I painted for the first time in a long time. In rearranging my house I converted a room that would be used for social occasions into a private studio. In a matter of a couple of hours I had a new painting. I feels really good to be a peace.

Letting Go - Again

The meeting has been postponed for now. For a moment I just wanted things wrapped up as I stated, yesterday. But I guess the timing isn't exactly right. God's time is perfection, mine is not. So I will wait and it will all work out the way it is suppose to, this I truly believe.

I am good with this delay, because I am busy and stressed with my schedule and truthfully it threw me off when a date was set. I just wanted to be done and free from the thoughts of what might have been.

I was re-reading Eat, Pray and Love last night and her summary of what she learned from her time in prayer and I could understand with such clarity her thoughts on love and our nature to seek a spiritual path. The peace we find when we step aside and let our higher selves run our lives. Without the fear and worry without grasping for something or someone to fill the void and satisfy our hunger.

Seeing everyone from a higher place, a spiritual place, can remove the feeling that it is personal and that ultimately we are not worthy of what we want so badly, love.

Can I trust myself?

It seems that sometimes I am last to know my true feelings. I have been blindsided time and time again by my own emotions. My mind says every things fine, you doing great, not obsessing content maybe even happy and then boom out of left field I am overtaken by sadness, depression and even love.

In relationships I am always the last to recognize the attraction or even the distance that has taken place. Why is that, am I so out of touch with myself that I don't notice or am I in my head most of the time and my heart is doing it's on thing.

I have set up a meeting with someone that I loved and lost. The timing was bad and it would have never worked. So we are meeting again for the first time since the drama has passed and we are both in different places.

It is my nature to analyze and process something until every nook and cranny has been analyzed. It is my way. It is my brain that does this, I can't be done until I am done. I can't be free to move on until I have completed this cycle.

So do I think there is hope, maybe. Does it really matter at this point, maybe. Can I accept the outcome no matter what, maybe. Do I have expectations, maybe.

The bottom line is I feel good about this and I think I need this to move on but, I don't trust myself.

Can I trust myself?

Trading Spaces - Moving on

I spent the last two days rearranging my house. I have done this since I was about five starting with two twin beds a dresser and a desk. My Mom would find me laying up against the wall pushing the furniture around with my feet. She would roll her eyes and close the bedroom door, except during the time I had groovy beads instead of a door. She was a strict parent but only when it had to do with right and wrong, everything else was in the category of " how important is it? "

I was strong willed to say the least and she picked her battles with me. I am lucky even though she died when I was 11. She gave me a strong since of myself early on and it was a good thing because after her death I was on my own. I was a leader and not a follower and that kept me away from drugs and self-destructive behavior, I was no angel but the damage wasn't permanent, I don't think.

So changing my space this weekend says two things about where I am spiritually, first that my energy is back and second that I am ready for change, whatever it may be. I am not scared of the future anymore and I have accepted the past. I have been stuck in that in between space for so long, not knowing if I would ever be free again and just when I gave up, the funk of depression moved on.

I have a new space in my head and in my house. I am sure my mom is shaking her head about now.