it wasn't great by any means, but it was perfect

            A couple of years ago, I took a painting class at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.  I had always enjoyed making art, but got away from my creative side in high school while I focused on math and science classes.  I liked getting absorbed in complex problems to which I could find a definite solution.  Math and science just made sense to me.  If I followed the rules, I was rewarded by an answer that made perfect sense.

            After a couple years in college, I wandered into an art supply store on South Craig Street.  I didn’t really have anything in mind; I just felt the need to create something from within myself.  I bought a canvas, a couple brushes, and a few tubes of paint.  In my shared apartment, I spread newspaper over the coffee table, put some water in a cup, and arranged my new supplies. 

            For two hours, I furiously brushed paint across the canvas.  I had nothing resembling practiced technique; I just let it all flow without judgment.  The resulting painting was something of a self-portrait, I suppose.  I never actually gave it that label until now.  It was a rough portrait of a woman with wild hair blowing around her face with a dark orange background.  Her eyes were mine, though.  And her slightly pained  expression—of confusion or loss of control—was mine when I painted it.  When I finished, I was pleased with the image.  It wasn’t great, by any means, but it was perfect.  It was the first time I really got a glimpse of what had been trapped inside since Hurricane Katrina—frustration, hopelessness, guilt, sadness, maybe even some anger.

            After graduation, I still had a lot of feelings I needed to access and the only way I could think to do so was through painting.  I had kept painting occasionally, picking up a brush every few months, but I never continuously experimented and practiced with the art form.  So, I thought a painting class would be a good way to add some technique and structure to my need for art.

            Everyone in my class was nice, but not overfriendly, and my teacher was very talented and kind.  However, I found it incredibly stressful to test different techniques in class each week with ten other students at easels on either side of my own.  I couldn’t help but peek at their progress and compare it to my own.  Usually, I concluded that mine looked much worse than theirs, and I judge and criticize until I just stopped and stared at the few strokes I had made while everyone else continued. 

            I worked better in my apartment, while my roommate was away or at least in another room.  I turned on soothing music, poured myself a glass of wine, and tried to follow the instructions for that week’s assignment.  One week the homework was to make a black-and-white still life—so I painted a cup I had borrowed from work.  Another week we had to coat the canvas with a layer of paint, wipe a bit off, and then shade in the clean parts.  I never got the hang of this technique.  Everything I did was ugly and lopsided, which was completely unacceptable to me.  Later, we made landscapes and the teacher declared that this was my calling.  I captured the sun shining through a forest of bare trees, the ground covered in snow.  I styled it off of a photograph I had taken the day my grandmother died the previous year. 

            Finally, we were told to create a self-portrait so I started painting my face in class.  I was going to have my hair blowing around with a bird flying out of it, completely free.  When I tried to continue it at home, I couldn’t even look at what was to become an image of my face without feeling anxious.  This was never going to work.  I stared into the small bathroom mirror, looking at myself from different angles and blocking bits of my face.  When I covered up the bottom half of my face, I knew that was the only way I could paint a self-portrait.

            My eyes stare straight forward, expressionless, with my hair hanging down on either side of my face.  Entangled in my hair are the roots of a small tree, its leaves just budding in the springtime.  I have been obsessed by that image—a tree in the springtime—for many years, now.  It’s even tattooed on my right side.  To me, it represents new life, hope, dreams, strength, stability…everything that I’ve been searching for since August 29, 2005.  I may not be a great painter, but it allows me to express emotions that I am unable to put into words.  That's what counts.

horses were my safety net

             About thirteen years ago I felt something start to shift within myself.  I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly was happening, but I knew that I felt a physical pain that was not “normal.”  My own definition of “normal pain” is a tightness, a pinching, a burning, or any uncomfortable sensation due to harmful circumstances; or it is the deep fatigue and soreness after engaging in a physical activity.  This “not normal” pain I was feeling was in my back and shoulders and neck, where many people hold their stress.  This pain would not go away, it was always with me, which did not seem normal to me.  But, as a twelve-year-old, I couldn’t imagine what was really going on.

            At this age, bodies are changing, hormones are revving up, the kids in my grade started to form tightly knit groups of friends, and I felt confused.  My body began its chronic aching and I didn’t know where I belonged.  In all of the groups, whether they were labeled “popular” or “nerds,” there seemed to develop a kind of code—who to talk to and who to ignore, certain styles of clothes were accepted and others were looked at in disgust, and gossip was rampant.  To me, they all had a superficial air and I didn’t want to be superficial.  I was trying to figure out my own individual identity apart from the pressures of the seventh grade social rules. 

            Whether I marginalized myself, or other intentionally pushed me aside, I cannot recall.  This isn’t to say they I didn’t have friends, because I did.  It’s just that, they seemed to change year after year depending on whom I saw in class.  If I didn’t have classes with the friends I had the year before, then I was no longer included in the group.  And that hurts.  Eventually I became a part of this kind of oddball group.  We all had good acquaintances with individuals in other social groups, but we weren’t in the inner circle of any of them. 

            However, although I was included, I still didn’t feel right, or secure, or safe, or fulfilled, being in this social group.  Our friendships would sometimes be close and confiding, but other times they seemed petty and superficial, only worrying about looking good in front of boys.  I cared about that, too, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my own sense of self to do so, so it was hard to play along.  But, what did I expect?  We were in high school.

            I had been riding horses for years, beginning when I was eight.  I remember lacing up my paddock boots and stepping into the barn to be greeted by the sweet smell of hay and horse.  I rode when it was cold, I rode when it was hot, but I was always happy to be there.  It was different from the world of academics and clicks and I bonded deeply with the horses.  There is something to be said about being in the saddle and feeling the stride of such a beautiful and powerful animal beneath you.  And grooming the horses was a kind of meditation, as long as I wasn’t running late, of course.  But I loved it.  In this world, I was safe, and the horses were my safety net.

            When my back started hurting, riding no longer gave me a sense of strength and equanimity.  Something that used to give me such joy started to become hard and cause more pain.  This was awful for me.  I tried to keep riding, but the other riders in my class had seemed to form their own social group.  They all owned their own horse and went to shows on the weekend.  I was just as good of a rider as any of them, but I only did it for enjoyment.  Again, I don’t know if it was I who moved away from them, or if they intentionally did not include me in their circle.  I stopped riding shortly after that because the pain in my body was so great and the pain of being excluded took away my joy of riding. 

            How I do miss Love Bug, the little horse I rode for years.  She had been abused at a previous farm resulting in being head shy, meaning she didn’t like her head to be touched.  Every week I approached her slowly and calmly, to pet her and to slip her harness over her head.  Soon, she trusted me and no longer backed away, afraid.  In the beginning, she always ran out when approaching a jump.  I would be guiding her toward the middle, perched in the saddle, ready to give her the reins so she could stretch out over the jump when she would quickly run left, leaving me off balance.  After working with her, keeping only the best intentions in my heart, she and I became a great duo when covering a hunter-jump course.  We had a blast.

            Last year I met a man, a Happiness Consultant, in the coffee shop where I worked.  Instead of shaking my hand after introducing himself, he flipped it over and started inspecting my palm.  He looked at me questioningly and told me, if I may paraphrase, “You have a lot of love.  Right now, it is for animals, but they love you, too.”  I stared at him shocked at how deeply that had resonated within my being.  Then the Happiness Consultant told me that one day the right person would come, and I would know, and he would have so much love for me, too.