Freeing Self From the Last Decade

“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” ~Ajahn Chah

Sometimes we let go of so much we almost do not recognize ourselves.  Sometimes one year can absolutely change us forever.  How do we crawl out of that pre-scripted way of being, when we realize we absolutely have to change? 

Health has been a big issue in 2019 and I continue to struggle to gain some peace with it all.  I could stay stuck in neuropathic pain and heart issues, or I can lern to take life easier in every realm.  

 myself.  That is huge.  I have to distance myself, emotionally from my own body issues.  I need to emotionally detach from things and people and places that create extra angst.  I am going to read more.  I am going to NOT watch news.  I am going to try to stay more isolated until I can get hold of myself and the things that trigger me. 

I am going to delve into art, as always, as a place to express my deepest inner self.  I am going to move to that place of ultimate peace.  I need to center myself around morning artwork so I can face the rest of the day or activities that will bring me into contact of triggers. 

When I am needing to be out and about, I am going to cushion myself so that outer angst does not get in.  I think things, like early morning shopping, will keep me from the angst of crowds that 2019 seemed to give rise to.  I am going to try to avoid crowds.  There are new things that I have awakened to and I am going to stay mindful as I do anything other than that which gives me peace.

The act of being gentle with myself is, now, not a selfish thing.  AS chance visitor gave me such a boost, a week ago.  A woman, now gray and almost not recognizable, to me, remembering something I did for her, forty years ago.  It was so me, but I had forgotten.  It was the one most important thing she remembered of me.  She used to babysit for me, in a small town, and lived a block from me.  Her father was killed in an accident and I had walked down, as soon as I heard, and took her for a walk.  Apparently I have comforted her, while her mother was headed to the accident.  She was the oldest in her family of five and I guess I had told her that now she would be so integral to the family's mourning.  I had spent time from my own time making sure she knew I was there to support her and her family.  There was more to it, but I recognized myself and what I would have done, as she remembered.  It was so precious to hear and remember.  I am still that person.  Even though life can really suck and people can suck, and I can suck, there are still those things that still reside.  It brought me to tears.  It mattered. I mattered.

I need to guard myself from negative emotions that arrive from angst activities, places, things.  I have always been able to shut off emotions.  Now I need to learn how to weigh what I feel and how I act/react, according to trying to come from peace and arrive in peace.  I am reading a new National Geographic special edition on pain and another on emotions.  I have to get a grasp on how to deal with the sense of negative ideation about how much I love life versus how much I hate it.  I have to find more and more things that fill me with joy.

I have to walk away from those who will not apologize and yet forgive...but, I have the memory of an elephant about some things.  They should not matter.  I have to have them NOT matter.  

I spent the end of January in some angst, medication-driven.  I simply could not seem to drag myself out of it until I realized that it was all about the meds being increased and new ones being added.  It was a couple of weeks of angst, to be sure, while I was gone and under medical supervision.  It all came out in this painting.

Sometimes I just simply paint without drawing.  I did a background color and then used Folk Art Real Brown to do some rough lines to get started.  

 

Then I added some white, while everything was wet, and began finding some shadows and lights. And, at this point, sometimes things have to get really ugly before things fall into place.

I dipped into some bright red and began adding some of the brighter red needed to start to contour, to blend, still working on wet. I switched over from the lightest mix of the bright red and white and brown on my palette and did not clean off my brush so I began to blend.  Once it felt right ( yes, I go by feeling when I am doing a spontaneous piece where I have not drawn anything with pencil), and added some definite white in eyes, end of nose, to contour the lips and the chin.

At the end, I did some defining of the background and around the face, the eyes with two different sized white pens.  It is the white dot in the eye that brings it to life. The three colors on my palette was all that was used on this art journal page.  

Lay your pencil down and give this freedom to your Muse.  It is so satisfying, and, to be honest, I think that I do a better job without drawing first.  Learning to let go is huge in any part of your life.

©Carol Desjarlais 2.5.20