As I sit in the wreckage of my life
The pieces, strewn about the floor around my feet
I wonder
Has she read my messages
Does she now know
That it was all a misunderstanding
And that only by leaving
Did I finally draw out the truth
That could have prevented everything
I wonder what will happen next
And how I can stand up again
When all I want to do
Is lie on the ground
Curled up
Like a hibernating bear
Waiting for the summer
I don’t really know much about what I want from this challenge yet just so as to say that there was a part of my life when I felt really connected to visual art. I used to draw all the time, I used to think about ideas for paintings and dream of illustrating children’s books and graphic novels.
A part of me is still excited by those things but for whatever reason, maybe it was going to a school without passionate artists, maybe it was pushing myself to be more logical and working in logical STEM fields for years, or maybe it was just a part of growing up – I lost touch with art somewhere along the way.
The challenge is simple but difficult to define. I will have succeeded if I feel that I am meeting my need to be creative and finding that joy, wonder, and creativity in my life again like I did when I was younger.
I will try to express the feelings through a poem:
Anything Was Possible
Anything was possible back then
And by anything I don’t mean that I ever dreamed of anything as boring as a seven-figure salery
I felt the worlds of magic at my fingertips
The rush and pull of sorcery
A great clash between good and evil
And a bond between friends, unwavering
Of great courage and great sacrifice
I think now
In what my younger self could have only described
As old age
30 years old is practically ancient
I know that the only way I can do this challenge
Is not through an arbitrary goal or metric
But rather it has to be a portal to another world
A graphic novel
Like I always wanted
Or an illustrated book
It doesn’t matter
Because it is the world that matters
The world that I can escape to
Like the little mouse hole my six year old self would crawl into
To read frog and toad books at the library
Perhaps this has all come full circle after all
Because 30 years old is precisely the age
My younger self would expect to be the time
When people stopped being readers
And started being writers
The creators of the worlds
Like the ones I used to like to escape to
When I was young
It’s actually both fantastic and sad that it took a poem for me to understand what my focus will be for my art challenge. I think I will rename this challenge. I wanted to find myself reinspired by art, and I forget how art inspired me in the first place – by entering and creating other worlds.
This will now be known as the “The Other World” challenge and I will dedicate a year to it.
One year to develop another world that I can dive into, be comforted by, and be lost in.
That means by October 9th, 2024 I will endeavor to have created a miracle. Shaped and molded a whole new universe out of words, images, and maybe even music.
I’m excited because I thought this challenge was going to be like the rest of them, so difficult and challenging. I thought it was going to be about doing Inktober and drawing for an art competition. I realize now that those goals are meaningless to me, and using them as goals, made me feel directionless in art.
This feels more true to my love for art. I remember crying to my girlfriend today about a beautiful book I read when I was young, called the Power of Un. It was a world that I fell into, just like all the others. It was all these worlds that made me feel excited for life. And it is the absence of these worlds that have left me feeling like some part of me was lost and never quite found.
She used to message me and beg me to get on to play
I thought she needed me then
Loved spending time together
We would joke
And talk about life
Little things
These days she plays
Without me
It’s me who asks
And she reluctantly accepts
In the game, she’s all anger and frustration
She hates the game
She hates the teammates
She hates me
And she hates herself
She denied that she ever had fun with me today
Says she can’t remember the last time we played
That I annoy her
That we need to win if we play
That we just don’t work together
“I like small talk,” she says about her new friends
“We are too busy asking about favorite colors”
“For me to be mad”
I remember a time we asked each other our favorite colors
I wonder if it was less special than I thought
Or if her new friends are more special than me
Its doubt that destroys love
Not hate or anger
Doubt eating away at a foundation so strong
It promised forever
Today I worry
If I left
Would she even notice
Over the laughter
Of her new friends
This poem is about feeling like what you thought you both cherished, only you actually cherished. That there wasn’t a connection at the level that I originally thought.
If that is actually true, I don’t feel heartbroken. Only depressed. So incredibly disappointed that everything was not as special as I thought it was. It takes me back to my dark places, wondering if anyone could truly love me.
Part of me knows it’s more complicated than that. That there is still hope for us. Still hope for me.
There was a big journey I went down in terms of working on myself, becoming more mature and being able to live a free and meaningful life.
But I realized that they are all part of the same things and have different parts to play.
In a way, everything is about not abandoning yourself and taking care of yourself. You surround yourself with people who you can talk about what is on your mind truthfully and emotionally. They help you understand what you need. You are able to then give yourself what you need and walk down further along the path of understanding different parts of yourself that are in pain.
From processing emotions, we can truly love ourselves, and the people around us, and be present in the moment.
There is a sense that being with people who don’t accept us, don’t allow us to feel safe speaking our truth is self abandoment. In a way, even if someone meets some of our needs (for example is attractive enough to make us feel special), if we settle for someone who doesn’t love us or allow us to be ourselves, we are putting ourselves down.
Not allowing ourselves to meet our own needs (for example, asking for validation from others because we refuse to give it to ourselves) is self abandonment.
Refusing to look deeper, and shielding parts of ourselves from the world (for example, keeping a confident outward appearance when we feel anxious) is abandoning parts of ourselves and placing the outside world’s comfort above our own.
Early this morning I parted ways with a friend and a girl who I loved deeply. While everything is fresh, I want to write everything I loved and hated about her in order to deal with the heartbreak and to understand better what I want in a girlfriend.
What I loved:
What I didn’t like:
Overall, I felt that my needs were getting met less and less because she would never deal with any trauma that came her way, choosing to avoid things instead. I felt that she stopped being so objective and instead was really unable to listen to the truth when it hurt her ego. However, I still love her very much and hope she will at least come back and want to be friends. I do feel some relief though to be able to focus on myself and explore dating in the city. I feel very alone without her. I hope she is doing ok and will see one day that I really did love her.
Final selection:
I felt her anger like fire
Burning in my face
Searing like acid
Felt the heat of it
Within her body
But all I could think of
Was the weight of the cold stones filling my heart
While I wondered
What happens
When love
Gives up
I realized something today. Sometimes when you love someone so much, you can’t give them space. Love needs space to grow, absence to remind you what it is made of. Sometimes, if you really love someone, you have to let them go. Even if it means they may never come back.