I’m being stripped.
Over the last three years, everything that I considered integral to my identity has been progressively stripped. It started with the desire to get out of the city then eased its way into my romantic life, and recently affecting the most pivotal aspect of my identity, my art. Like a virus this stripping is infecting every part of my person and like the panic the media and government create with every new virus entering into our solar system, I feel frightened and lost, experiencing bouts of panic and confusion while attempting to regain and maintain faith and knowing.
This stripping has felt forced onto me. I used to know who I was. I had dreams and they were clear. I dreamed of being an artist, and not just famous but legitimately great, with true skill and talent. I wanted to be featured in high school art history books. I wanted to live an eccentric life with my husband. At one time I thought I wanted children but that desire also stripped itself from my psyche.
Bit by bit, year after year, after witnessing friends and family have children of their own, I realized their altered lifestyles didn’t fit with what I desired for my life. So that was the first thing to go. What followed was my desire for romantic relationships. I got tired. I got tired of dating handsome assholes because they were sexy and passionate and aroused my passion but little else. I got tired of dating the funny nice guy who was boring in the sack because I thought I had to settle. I got tired of dating the kinky guy who wanted me to join him in his debauchery because in the end, the only thing I ever truly desired was genuine intimacy and I certainly never found that in a sex club or through any violent fetish. I got tired of believing that I deserved to be hurt, physically and emotionally and got tired of actively seeking out that pain. And so bit by bit, year after year, experience after experience, I lost my desire to be in a romantic relationship. Every now and again a young hot stud comes along, but it doesn’t last, and I’m left even emptier than I began with even less desire.
In my last year in New York, the stripping leaked its way into my finances. Trumps election seemed to coincide with my art sales slowing to a virtual halt and my Visa stipulated that I wasn’t allowed to take on any employment that wasn’t directly involving my personal artwork. I moved back to Canada thinking cost of living would be less expensive but as it turns out, it’s not all that different with the high cost of groceries and needing a car to get around. Art sales here are even worse and teaching gigs aren’t stable, often not paying enough to cover rent, let alone thrive. My current financial crisis’ is forcing me into living situations I would have never gone into. I’m obliged to take jobs that I would rather not take and my desire to create is suffering.
Spending time in my studio used to be my time with God, it’s since turned into a stressful burden, as I spend hours creating something that took years to learn how to make. I’m filled with anger and resentment that I live in a Country that underappreciats artists and in a world that makes it virtually impossible to be creative and survive. I’ve lost something pivotal, my hope and with that loss my identity has progressively been disintegrating and what I feel more often than I’d like, is completely lost.
Now that my last stitch of identity is being stripped from me I officially feel like meat tendon that just won’t give and something is digging it out slowly as one hand wraps every finger around that thin piece of membrane, that’s as strong as an evergreen’s root system, while the other hand forces the larger fleshy muscle down as that fundamental part of my being is ripped out of me. That part that I harnessed and developed as a child. I could have gone in so many directions but chose this one.
I chose to be an artist. It was all that I ever wanted to be. I dabbled in different art forms and if I had ten lifetimes or more opportunities or more confidence, I would have probably pursued different avenues, but I didn’t, I pursued one and I’ve excelled. I could name 10 figurative painters off the top of my head that are better than me, in every conceivable way, not just technique but in concept, composition, imagination, but I can also say with full confidence that I’m in their league and am a close 11, only getting better with every painting. My work is beautiful and sometimes I look at my own paintings and think, I’d buy that, which is the highest form of compliment.
I am an artist. I always wanted to be an artist. I’ve worked my entire conscious life to be an excellent artist. When I make it to the studio, I still work to be excellent, each painting to be better than the last and when I succeed, I feel God. There is nothing like it in the world, I’ve never had a relationship like this with anything else or anyone else and it’s being stripped from me. Taken without my permission. Stolen. It’s being torn from every fibre of my being. I can no longer afford to make art on a regular basis…Don’t scoff… I’ve been fortunate and I will be the first in line to admit that. Being raised to have gratitude and give thanks for my many blessings, I was allotted financial luxuries that gave me the freedom to learn and create my dreams. I had been living the better part of 20 years in that comfort. When I was financially stable, I spent my days in the studio, and I found happiness. When I felt free to create without fear, I felt God. My heart was at peace. My body was in harmony with the source. There were days where I couldn’t distinguish my skin from the air. I understood my purpose and walked in God’s rhythm and boy does It have great rhythm.
People have asked me why I moved back to Canada and normally I respond “family”. It’s not false, after my nephew and niece were born, I craved to be in their lives, but it’s not true either. The truth is that I started to suffer financial losses my last year in New York. If I could have sustained, maintained and grown my financial situation where I could have lived comfortably in Manhattan and afforded a studio and a couple of holidays a year (because everyone knows that if you want to live happily in Manhattan you have to be able to get out of Manhattan), I would have stayed. But with my financial struggle and my impending expensive Visa renewal, my failed relationships and broken friendships, life there became suffocating and lonely that last year. Everything that I knew about who I was, what I wanted and where I was going was shattered. And so, I came home. I can’t really call it home because where I grew up never felt like home, but it’s where my family lives, and they are a part of my home no matter where they are.
I’ve been debating on how honest I would be about my hometown. Struggling because how I feel about this place is not very nice and I recognize that any local reading this will most likely get offended in some capacity, even if they do recognize that this is my experience and I have every right to feel what I feel and every right to express it. The truth is, I’ve never felt at home here, I’ve never felt love or joy or fondness for this place. I moved away at 18 and vowed I would never return and when I moved to California at 25, I felt more at home 2000 miles away, in a city where I knew no one than I ever had growing up here. I appreciate that there are people here who are happy in this town and I let them have that. It’s never been my experience. I remember sneaking out of my bedroom window only to run down to the waterfront (the only beautiful thing about this place) where I would smoke cigarettes, listen to my Walkman and cry about how I hated it here. I never felt understood. I always felt like an outsider. I knew if I stayed, I would die. We’re all a little melodramatic at that age. Nevertheless, I hated growing up here and because of my financial circumstances I could afford to leave without struggle and ironically, because of my current financial predicament I’m back, living in a town that I would describe as the slayer of happiness.
I have been practising healing from the trauma I grew up with here. The kicker being that I wish I felt differently. Logistically it would be so much easier if I loved it here and could be successful. I knew moving back would eliminate any future dating possibilities by like 99%, although that doesn’t seem to faze the old fuckers trotting around. I guess they’re accustomed to women who’ll make do with anything with a pulse, even if it is barely audible. I’ve tried to feel differently. I meditate on it. I pray about it. I ask my family to pray about it. They point out positive experiences that I’ve had in an attempt to help me feel better; like the exhibit I’m in with the local gallery. It is a top-notch gallery, which was shocking to see, but also gave me hope. My experience working with them has been wonderful and the exhibit they put together is beautiful, equal to any “big city show”. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been enough.
Believe it or not, I do look for the positives here, I try every day to find something of joy, but inevitably something happens, and it jolts me back to the reality of where I’m living. Like the people who want to develop a “friendship” with me because I lived and was successful in New York city and they misguidedly think that I have connections that will benefit them. Or like all of the free hours I’ve put into different events that I founded and was never acknowledged for, even being pushed to the side as though it wasn’t my idea to begin with, as though I was just another volunteer and didn’t deserve thanks or praise. Or how people think that just because I didn’t live here that somehow, I haven’t put in my dues and don’t deserve success without decades of struggle and strife. How these people talk to me as though I were a 21 year old moron just graduating from undergrad, rather than a 42 year old grown woman with 3 degrees under my belt, who’s travelled around the world, lived in 6 different cities, started from scratch in each one, exhibited internationally, been represented by a gallery in Chelsea, curated group exhibits in The United States and Canada, won awards and residencies, and been published multiple times.
People say that living in small town is inspirational, there’s nothing to distract you and your imagination can take the reins. I already have a strong imagination. I won’t be at a loss for ideas. But I am feeling a loss of drive. This town is worse than what I imagine a black hole to be like; at least with a black hole there’s the possibility of an alternate universe or two, maybe it’s a hyper port that will transport you to other galaxies and solar systems, maybe it’s an alien ship in disguise. This town is exactly what it is, it used to literally smell like shit because of the mill and now it just looks like shit. There is some integrity in that, to be unabashedly disgusting without shame, but I feel like staying here is stripping the very last inkling of essence that I have. I’m turning into an empty angry vessel, a person who feels no great joy, no great passion, no butterflies or excitement and worst of all no hope.
I’d rather die.
I’m stripped. I have to give up my studio because I can’t afford the rent, but I’ve transformed my living room into my new studio. I’m not sure how successful I will be at continuing to create here, but I’m going to try. I will be teaching some classes and workshops and am looking into part-time and full-time work with contractors and nurseries because I’ve always wanted to learn how to build my own house and love being around plants. I am also putting together a top-notch resume for residencies, grant applications and jobs in my field. Not in this town because there aren’t any and I’m overqualified; being overqualified here is like tying the noose around your own neck, your seen as competition rather than an asset.
I’m stripped. I pray every day that my new determination to get out of this shithole is exactly what God intends. Being positive isn’t always the answer, sometimes the answer is in the angst and the only way to happiness is stepping in that massive pile of shit and walking though it for what feels like miles, uphill, in a desert heat, the steaming hot piles of manure wafting up so that every step is a little more rotten than the last. Can you smell it through these pages? Sometimes, the shit is the answer, the shit is the joy because it’s the jolt needed to move into the next phase. If I were comfortable here, I would stay and if I stayed, I may not accomplish what I’m meant to accomplish.
I’m stripped, like a newborn baby only fully grown with all my faculties…well…most of my faculties. I’m stripped and it’s time. Time to get out. I am going to do what I need to do to succeed, and that my friend is how I will succeed. It’s not easy, I have to remind myself daily that there’s a whole other world out there waiting for me and that this isn’t the end of my life.
I’m stripped and I’m ready to start again.
Suck on that Motherfuckers.