Sometimes, when I do a painting that just does not sit right, I look at it from time to time ( if I took it to a sale, it would be the first someone would buy, just sayin’) and then get out my gesso and paint over it all until there is no sign of it. There are things I do not like about myself, so, do I hide that, too, or do I leave it out for everyone to see?
I grew up n a time and lace where we were to seek perfection but to even think that you could be perfect was a sin. I had a hard time chasing after a vague ‘Something. I. Never. Was. Nor. Could. Be’. Then, to top that off was the fact that I was a ‘perfect’ angel’s replacement. (Remember, I was given to my parents because they had just lost their baby). The time and place culture I grew up in was an exacting religion. Girls were to be ‘seen and not heard’. My father, was more of a grandfather; distant, emotionally unavailable, as was his own time and place. Both of my parents were good, good, people. They were looked up too in our community. Then there was this ‘wild child’ me. They called me ‘precocious. I had no filter and my father always said, ‘Your moth is always going to get you in to trouble’. He believed you made your bed then you slept in it. Another famous saying of his was, ‘You never learn from other’s mistakes, you always have to live your own.” I was so much for them to disapprove of, but my mother loved me, would spend her whole life being a good mother to me. I lived almost half my life before she told me how proud she was of me. I was impulsive. I was too independent for my own good. Her love was deep and as good as mother’s love could be. My problem was me.
I learned to wish perfection but lived with all the frailties of being human. I got myself into all kinds of trouble, like Anne Shirley, of Anne of Green Gables. I was not a ‘bad’ girl, but I did not often think before I acted. As I hit puberty, I set my own boundaries, made up my own rules to live by, and was as hard a task-master as I could be over myself. I felt like I was so bad that my parents had given up on me. Little did I know that they knew I would be a good girl when it came right down to it. I had learned to finally ‘wipe that look off your face’ and ‘be a happy girl’. I learned to mask my feelings and plaster a smile on my face and not speak of how I felt, for real.
I was mid-life before I realized that I was not bad at all. Yes, I was always in some kind of personal fix because choices were made out of fear of disappointing my parents, and ‘what would others think’ mentality. I sought my own definition of perfect in an imperfect world. I did not like hidden agendas but realized that I ha lived a life scripted by such. I finally rebelled, left a nineteen-year marriage, took my babies, and went to university and promptly divorced my husband. I should have been so proud of myself, but, no, I felt tainted and unworthy but I poured myself into being a good mother and make good grades so I could get a career and take care of us. I began to break away from all I was brought up to believe was right and good. And I was judged harshly for it, but I judged myself even more harshly. I felt I did not just have to do a good job, I had to do a job better than I was capable of. But I aced University. And I made lots of mistakes and poor choices, but, in the end, my kids were good people and I had a grew career, and I had greatly loved and been loved in return. University turned my life around and I became empowered. I came to truly know myself and what drove me to exhaustion because I was trying to be too perfect. I, also, came to a place where I realized that I had grown up in a ‘shame’ culture. I had to learn to let things go, to change my whole attitude about what living down here on earth was really all about. I leaned to love myself. If I could bend your ear for an evening, and told you all the ways I have lived a courageous life, a service-oriented life, a brave life full of awesome unique adventure, you would think me ‘pretty good’. I am finally coming to grips with feeling like I am ‘enough’.
I am not pretentious. I acknowledge my mistakes and my human frailties. I am no longer a ‘paste that smile on your face’ person. I am way more authentic than that now. I am raw and real and live my life in such a way. I do not fit a mold and that was my problem from the beginning. Simetimes I was too smart for my own good. But, I have, puddly, never been perfect, nor never will be for anyone else. What I lived by is how I am in the present moment and whether my being down her on earth matters; and then I make myself matter. I am a service-oriented person who wants others to know that being raw and real can have you become necessary in the world; that I carry a gift for the world, and I am all about making sure I be that. I do not have a hidden agenda nor a hidden parts of my self that I a afraid other will find out. I am a ‘what you get is what you see’ person. I have many flaws. I am far from perfect. I make poor decisions. I am like everyone else, who grew up where I did, in the culture that I did, and I have survived, overcome and thrived. I love my imperfect self. I have nothing to hide here.
©Carol Desjarlais 3.15.22
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