Dawned on Me

It has always bothered me when peoples action don’t line up with their words. When it becomes a do as I say and not as I do situation. So on Wednesday when things got hard I had to take my own advise. Had to listen to my own words and act on them. 

I was overwhelmed by the shaming phrase’s repeating all throughout my mind. “I need to get up, I need to move, I have to go paint, I have to do something, right now, we should be working right now, have to have to have to, should should should, NOW.”  I was paralyzed. I was stuck in this spiral and pit for hours. 

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I thought surly there is something wrong because I can’t just make myself go do what I should be doing. But is wasn’t me being unfaithful to motivation, it was shame, it was anxiety. In “An Artists Identity” I write about how artists tend to derive their identity from the art they create, and how this is seen as a virtue when it is truly a vice. I has unconsciously fallen into the trap. I had been getting so much satisfaction from getting my work done, that I had started to find my worth there as well. 

It finally dawned on me to ask myself what I needed. It was simple, I needed to eat some lunch, but I didn’t feel like it was the priority. So I asked, why is taking the time to eat less important than going to paint right this minute. The truth was it wasn’t. It was just anxiety, and a poor spirit talking, saying we were running out of time, which was a lie. So I made some lunch, sat down and ate peacefully. 

I’ve had lots of these duh moments lately, from stop fighting yourself and work with yourself, to just take the break; the paint will be there when you get back. I had to stop and think, if someone told any of my loved ones they they couldn’t take a lunch break I would go to war for them, so why am I waging war against myself rather than going to war for myself. 

It all sounds so simple once I put it to words but it is the culmination of four years, of walking out of mental illness and into fullness of life, of learning to live, of learning to accept who I was, am, and will be, of learning to love myself in all stages of this process. 

It wasn’t a matter of wanting to paint or not, it was a matter of listening to shame or not. It was confusing though, because the goal was the same as before but the way to get there wasn’t the same. Sometimes things don’t have a reason for happening but we still are left with the choice on how to continue. 

So I chose to take my time, to slow down and do what was healthy, not what was fast or made me look like I was doing the work. 

Still, for as long as I’ve been in this it takes every day effort to remember to do things way I need to not the way I’m expected to.