When all the words....

I've been sick and am recovering fine enough. I'm still tired and am wondering more and more (with the help of a friend) if it's not my schedule creating the fatigue. I work all night and sleep during a pretty good portion of the day, when I'm not painting. Colors are coming out of me as though I can see where they belong on a canvas or a piece of paper well before they ever make it there or even before I know how it will end up. I can literally see the strokes as I look at a canvas. I envision patterns and shapes in my head that have to be put down. After considering all the past year has brought me, I am glad to have finished the labor of last year. Without those ups and downs, the painting shown below would never have made it to completion. I painted over a half-finished painting that I was told SHE didn't like the way it was turning out. I put so much gesso on the canvas, it will never be seen.

So I am done. I have a million things that I need to talk about and the person I'd like to tell it to probably doesn't know how to hear it. I mention it only because this person and I have not had the best history of communicating with one another and instead of beating my head against a wall, I'll just build another one. I've been doing a pretty good job of de-constructing my walls lately, but that's mostly face service to the reality that I probably aren't. There's a general notion that I freeze people out, but the way I see it, I get to a point where there's nothing more of me to give. There is only so much of me to be had and the rest is spent in my mind. For that, I am sorry, but my source of self is in my Self and I can only do so much about that.

Anyway, I am getting to know myself again. I've have been relatively alone since my accident in December and am learning to enjoy it. I learned early on how to be alone and somewhere along the way, I was deluded into thinking that I should need someone else. Need, I'm not needed, thus why do I place importance on it? So, I no longer do and I no longer adhere to the desire to have people constantly around me. December brought the last of my deleting phone numbers from my life. I am enjoying the self-imposed exile into solitude and when my old friends (from high school (like any self-respecting New Orleanian)) ask whether I am dating or interested in dating, I tell them no. Not quite yet again. I'm learning to like myself again. After feeling for years that I never could quite measure up to all the things someone else wanted me to be, after all the years of being told I wasn't needed, and after the years of seeing diminishing value placed on my interests and hobbies, I am re-learning that none of that matters.

Sure, I'm the bad guy in so many things when the roots are ignored and the surface is explored. With my family and friends, someone exposed all the gritty little details of my life that have no bearing or relevance on their love. Through all that, I have kept safe harbor on that person's secrets and though I have been angry enough to share those devestating tidbits, I am not going to be that person. I'll be the resident bad guy for as long as I am needed to be. And when asked again why I am being so nice by someone, the answer will simply be...because I am that nice. Believe what you will...

So, am I up for dating? No, not quite. I want to be firmly back to my own sense of self and not someone else's vision of me before I get into that mess again. Instead, I'm taking up the fine art of celibacy. To me, that is my path to sanity for the time being. I have my art to keep me company and keep me sane. Perhaps there's a career shift in the future to occupy my professional life (despite the fact that someone very recently derailed one of my plans). Perhaps there's a school I should go to. I was done with this brown water of mine well over a year ago and it's time I put this river to rest. In this, my new life of clarity, disavowing mere moments of clarity, I can start anew and finally say, "I'm sorry and goodbye" to those whose season has passed.

On a more somber note, I am tired of funerals.