Lately, I've been feeling like I've been getting myself back, bit by bit. I've been painting and writing again, which are the two singlemost things that make me feel like I'm in tune with myself. It's funny how hard it was for me to get back to what makes me happy. I had to do baby steps: start making lists, cut pictures out of magazines, that kind of thing. I'm so out of practice, it's like I need to stretch my creativity muscle, like I have to warm up before a run.
I wonder why we make it so easy to lose the things that define us, but so hard to get them back?
Last night Moneek and I painted and drank beer. I painted by streaking different colors against the paper and Moneek went wild with silliness, painting song lyrics and dirty jokes. We laughed and drank and in the end, I felt more like myself than I had in a really long time. It reminded me of when Mary (my gorgeous-spontaneous-impratical-gypsy-sister in spirit-ex roomate) and I lived at the beach. We had the second and third story of a duplex situated just mere feet from the ocean. My favorite time was at night, we would sit on the balcony sipping our wine or beer and look out at the blackness the sea and sky made when they blended together so seamlessly. I always thought that it looked like the edge of the world. Like life began or ended right there, where we sat.
Mary and I fell apart so many times during the short seven months we lived together. Most would say that we didn't handle our erratic depression well. We would smoke much more and eat much less, we would do things despite the recklessness, and I would center my life around exercising and boozing because they were the only things that would let me forget, even for a short amount of time, what went wrong. There were times when I would shiver even when it was warm. But we would snap out of eventually, I'm not sure how or when or why, we just would. Mary and I fixed each other and the marker of our recovery was always the action of painting. If I came home and saw her, brush in hand, standing in front of my easel, I knew that Mary was back. And she knew that for me too.
"There is magic in everything, and a little bit of loss mixed in to even it out."
I wonder why we make it so easy to lose the things that define us, but so hard to get them back?
Last night Moneek and I painted and drank beer. I painted by streaking different colors against the paper and Moneek went wild with silliness, painting song lyrics and dirty jokes. We laughed and drank and in the end, I felt more like myself than I had in a really long time. It reminded me of when Mary (my gorgeous-spontaneous-impratical-gypsy-sister in spirit-ex roomate) and I lived at the beach. We had the second and third story of a duplex situated just mere feet from the ocean. My favorite time was at night, we would sit on the balcony sipping our wine or beer and look out at the blackness the sea and sky made when they blended together so seamlessly. I always thought that it looked like the edge of the world. Like life began or ended right there, where we sat.
Mary and I fell apart so many times during the short seven months we lived together. Most would say that we didn't handle our erratic depression well. We would smoke much more and eat much less, we would do things despite the recklessness, and I would center my life around exercising and boozing because they were the only things that would let me forget, even for a short amount of time, what went wrong. There were times when I would shiver even when it was warm. But we would snap out of eventually, I'm not sure how or when or why, we just would. Mary and I fixed each other and the marker of our recovery was always the action of painting. If I came home and saw her, brush in hand, standing in front of my easel, I knew that Mary was back. And she knew that for me too.
"There is magic in everything, and a little bit of loss mixed in to even it out."
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