How many times can you think the same thought?

Round and round and round we go

I consistently score “moderate” on the anxiety-o-meter used by healthcare professionals.  During the day, the anxiety is allowed to flow free from my hand.  A sad face smudge of downward energy.  A color pushing right, while a contrasting one pulls left.  It feels real, but not as though it is feeding on itself.  It’s moving.  

The buzzing yet stagnant feeling, the one that actually feels like anxiety, that is saved for when I am laying in bed.  It has no where to go.

I usually fall asleep easily, but lately I’ve been waking up sporadically to have all of the worries that actually don’t worry me during the day. The main focus being on the pitch I am doing for the Artist Career Training.  It’s in two weeks.  

During the day thoughts:

Just tell a story. Let them get to know you.

Haha, what!? I have to get up in front of all of those people and entertain them for five minutes!? Well, that sounds kinda funny.  It’ll be like the open mic night I’ve never done.

Should I just teach them five minutes of Pilates?

I’ll wear the dress I wore to my opening, so I can feel like I am a person who has openings. 

I’m going to pick someone and stare at them until I blush.  Then I will say, “Now that we got that out of the way.”

I’ll show them that miserable picture of me at Boston Harbor from 1991.  I can still feel how fat I felt in those shorts.

I will show them the picture off me from my yearbook for the superlative photo, “Most Unique.” And explain that my clothes were thifted, and in my small town that made one unique.  Which is not to say that I didn’t have my sights set on winning that.  I’m not sure what made me unique beside the fact that I didn’t fit in to any certain clique, I dyed my hair like Angela from My So Called Life, and I yelled at people when they called something or someone “GAY!” 

I’ll show them the picture of me taken after I busted my head open.  I’m in a neckbrace talking on my brand new cell phone, my first, that mom bought me in case I busted my head open again and thought to call her for help even though she was 12 hours away. 

Story, you need a good story.  Something that brings them in.  Ok, So I was a depressed kid.  Great! What else you got!? I score mild for depression now.  Super!

Oh, I haven’t had a drink since February.  Stellar! But what’s that got to do with anything?  Uhh, it just does!

I will say, “I want to make a book for people like me.  People who have self doubt.  People who have emotions.  People who want to think about that. People who don’t want to think about that, actually.  People who are cut off from how they feel.  People who learned a way of being and forgot to expand their horizons.  I picture it as a coffee table book, along side architectural digest and the New Yorker . In a therapists office, or a waiting room perhaps of any purpose.”

I want people to put their phones down for a second and pick up my book and find themself in it somewhere.  Somehow.  Then they feel a twinge of pride when they think about how they didn’t look at their phone, in fact they paid attention to something in their environment which made them feel like they belong. Fancy that.

It will not be sequential. You can open to any page and see what you are meant to see.  

Night time/early morning thoughts:

Do I need to create a budget? How do I do that? Oh, my god, what is money and where do I get more of it?

YOU ARE GOING TO BLUSH. HARD.

What if I am shaking? Then I am distracted because I am shaking?!

It’s in less than two weeks and you don’t even know how to make a Power Point. 

What if mom can’t find that picture?  Wait?! Why am I showing them a picture of me in those fat shorts!?

I am too ugly to have any not miserable pictures of me. 

Oh, yeah, find those Polaroids you used to take of yourself crying at 25. Wait! No one wants to see that and what am I even pitching here!?  I was miserable and now I am not, a vote for me is a vote for a book full of self indulgence!?

GGGGGGEEEEETTTTTIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTOOOOOOGGGGGEEEEETTTTTHHHHHEEEEERRRRR

This morning I woke up at 6:30, which is not something I embrace.  I lay in bed petting my 17 year old cat, Goma, thinking the above thoughts. 

But also,

In that pitch proposal, full of photos of former me, I only made it up to the year of my accident.  Then I remembered, of course! My 27th year.  

On my 27th birthday, I pulled into my parents driveway to live indefinitely. 

Picture me in this false setting: I am waving a beer stein up over head talking boisterously like a man in a 18th century painting. I stand at a pool table and people, my friends in Asheville, are all surrounding the table, hanging on every word. “I am moving home to Connecticut so I can focus on writing and illustrating a book!” I proclaim.  

“Brava!” They clink glasses.  

There was a part of me that was that optimistic.   

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DO YOU FEEL THE DARK CLOUD ROLLING IN?

Do you see me, the weather maker, beckoning in the rain, the snow, the freezing weather?

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I moved in with my father and mother to write and illustrate my own book and guess what happened?  I met a man who wrote and illustrated his own books.  And then guess what happened?!  That became my story!  I no longer actually needed to write and illustrate my own book because my life story was sooooo interesting that I met someone who actually wrote and illustrated his own books! 

********************WOW!*****************************

Success adjacent! Cool! That’s good enough right!?

I was a person who wanted to write, wait, illustrate…huh? ok, yeah. 

We drew, a lot.  My drawing did get better. He would encourage me, “You’re the next Lynda Barry!” but I would hear, “I only know of one woman artist. And really there is only room for one. And really I am just saying that to humor you. Don’t leave, I need a ride to the store.”

Did I mention he was like my dad?

Three characteristics of the father I knew then: Quick tempered, always a victim, ingrained anger towards women

Me and this guy had the same birthday (he was eight years older) and I had read in some book that my soulmate had the same birthday as me.  Also, we had a psychic connection.  “Oh my god! You just answered the question I was about to ask!”

Things could get dark.  Mentally. I pretended the rolling hills in his backyard were where bodies were buried.  Nah, I thought that.  Things were really dark.  That thought made sense.  

I started smoking again and got back into weed, in a this-is-not-what-you-need, spinning thoughts kinda way.  

(I did start jogging.)

He didn’t like when I drank, so it was probably the driest part of my twenties.  

I don’t want to spend too much time or energy on the general vibe but I did watch a Rob Zombie movie and felt it like it was a documentary.

This is all to say that one day, he cut me off as I started to speak and said, “You know that you will never draw as good as I do.”

This is the person I was like, ’Soulmate?  Totally.’ 

“You will never draw as good as I do.”

”I know.”

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

This morning I was laying in bed thinking about this.  And I remembered, “Oh right! I used to want to write and illustrate my own book but I continued to let that story be more interesting.  Do I say this in my pitch? Hey, I’ve been on hiatus cuz some guy said some dumb shit that I let define me, but didn’t, but did, and now, like, I want to be 27 again.  Give me a do-over. 

“Oh yeah, I wanted to write and illustrate my own book. Oh yeah!”  I seriously relearn this all of the time. 

Slowwwwwwwww leeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr

This morning I got bored with my thoughts as Kris’s alarm went off, 7:45. I pulled up Instagram, pausing to read a comic strip posted by a major art institution.  In it his name was mentioned, alongside Munch and Bacon.  Artists who make “scary” art.  

Is this the crux of the story?  Scary art? Somewhere in here is the art of darkness.  I gravitated towards him for a reason.  I did like that he embraced horror, finding it funny.  But I didn’t like that it spilled into real life.  Where was the line between what he drew and who he was? Did he really have fangs?  Did I smoke too much weed?

I know there is a reason that he popped up this morning, aside from the freaking algorithm. I don’t see his name very often.  

Maybe it was so I could remember that he said I was the next Lynda Barry and this time not attach any meaning to it.  

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I have back to back weekend events coming up, both at The Shop on Tillery.

I decided to revisit making felt pillowy doll things. So I am busting out a bunch to sell the first weekend. I’ll have some drawings and paintings out, but it will not be a studio visit. I am saving that mayhem for the next weekend.

My mom couldn’t find that picture of me sulking in eight grade. She said there was an empty spot next to this picture, so clearly I pilfered it at some other point. Haha. But that’s my “fat” butt in the plaid shorts.

My favorite Lynda Barry book.