Life has been a little bit topsy turvy lately. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed. I’m fine. Nick is fine. My pets are all fine. I just mean the world in general seems to be spiraling a bit out of control. And being someone who struggles with both depression and anxiety, one of my least favorite things in the world is not being in control. So, I’ve been struggling with all the feelings.
I feel the need to preface everything I’m about to say here with some facts I’m very much aware of. I’m a white lady. I’m a middle-aged white lady who owns a house and a car and has a masters degree and works a job that is currently allowing me to work mostly from home. That job provides me with pretty good health insurance, and I’m lucky enough to be fairly healthy and not need to use it much lately. I have plenty of food and toilet paper in my house, and I could go get more quite easily if I needed to. I have an amazing man sharing that home with me, and he makes my life infinitely easier and more pleasant. I’ve never been afraid of a police officer. I come from a family with law enforcement in our blood, and every time I’ve encountered a police officer in my entire life, that person has been there to help me. So, maybe I have no right to be worried or afraid or upset by things going on in our world right now. Yet, I am.
I’ve been reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I just love her so much, and I can relate to so many things she discusses. I’ve liked her for a while, but her first two books were a bit too Jesusy for me. Now she’s a divorced lesbian who gives zero f*cks, and OH MY GOD I LOVE HER EVEN MORE.
One of the things I read the other day is that she’s always been called “too sensitive.” She is also challenged with both depression and anxiety, and she recently posted a video on Facebook comparing this to being both Eeyore and Tigger all at the same time. I honestly think I’m more Piglet, but I have my bouncy trouncy Tigger moments too. And this analogy has come in quite handy since I’ve shared it with Nick, and I can tell him, “You know, I’ve been Tigger all day long, and now I’m heading into Eeyore,” and he gets it.
The thing about people with anxiety is that we are hyper-aware of all the bad things that could happen at any moment. Not only that, but we feel a responsibility to prevent them all. Like, someone I love could get in a car accident. They really could. It could happen. It probably won’t, but it could. It’s a real thing that does happen to people. And I know and love people who get in cars. Now, most people kind of know this in the back of their head and just go on with life. Not me or Glennon. We KNOW it. If someone I care about is late arriving to someplace I expect them to be? Dead in a ditch. I’m sure of it. And I’m sure it was my fault.
There’s a pandemic in the world? You get it from breathing air droplets from an infected person? Well. That’s it. I’m not breathing around people anymore. That person over there just coughed, and she’s not wearing a mask, and oh my god she’s coming toward me and AAAAHHHHHH that’s it, I have it. I’m going to die. I’m going to spread it to my friends and family. Everyone I know and love is going to die.
Now. That could happen. It really truly could. It probably won’t. But it’s a real thing that’s actually happening in our world right now. It’s true that there are people in my community who have it, and people in my community have died from it. It’s true that I personally know at least one person who has tested positive. It’s true that I know and love several people who have health conditions that put them at high risk.
All day, every day, I KNOW these awful things are out there and could happen, and worse yet, my screwy brain thinks it’s MY JOB to prevent them. If I can just worry and stress and plan and plot and control enough, I can keep everyone safe. Which is crazy. So I take medicine to help me get on with the business of living life, like everybody else in the world does.
Anyway, Glennon says that this so called flaw of being “too sensitive” has always been a challenge in her life. Until one day it hit her. What if this intense sensitivity to everything going on around me isn’t a flaw at all? What if it’s my superpower? What if God made me just the right amount of sensitive so that I could truly see what there is to see, feel what there is to feel, and know what there is to know? (I didn’t make that up, and neither did Glennon. I think it came from Anne Lamott.) What if we sensitive souls are here to pay attention and do something? What if my fear of this illness makes me hyper vigilant about wearing a mask in public, washing my hands, and just staying the F home as much as I can? And what if that makes a difference?
What if me being so completely crushed by the stories and videos of police brutality and BLM makes it impossible for me to watch them or read about them because I feel what these people are feeling? What if I’m so twisted and torn about what, if anything, I can or should do right now because I know there are wonderful police officers in the world and I know police brutality happens more to black people than it does to white people? They can both be true.
I love my students, my colleagues, my friends, my neighbors, so much, and I hurt for them. What if they think I don’t care because I’m not saying something? What if I shouldn’t say something, because I’m a white lady, and if I say something, I would offend someone? Oh my god, I’m not in control, and I don’t know how to worry enough and stress enough and prepare enough to prevent the bad things from happening.
Okay, so. Meds. And also, art. Glennon says that if there is pain in the world, if you are in pain and you are an artist, you must create art. I don’t know what me tie dying and pouring paint has a damn thing to do with COVID or BLM, but I trust Glennon. Also I love to make art. And I haven’t been doing it lately. And I miss it.
The other day I ordered some grey sheets from Amazon. (There is a point to this. I’m not off my meds or off on a tangent.) The “grey” sheets arrived, and they were quite clearly navy blue. The package said grey. I showed Nick. I asked him if I’m crazy, or does this say grey? And are these in fact navy blue? He confirmed my lack of craziness (on this particular subject).
We decided that, rather than deal with the hassle of returning the sheets, we’d just use them. Blue is fine. We like blue. We put the navy sheets on the bed and they were fine. Except, we live in a house with six furry creatures. Eight if you count the two of us. Navy blue shows every single teeny tiny bit of hair or dust or dirt. Ew.
I had this brilliant idea that I could do a reverse tie dye technique on these sheets so that there would be a pattern to them, thus making the dust and hair much less noticeable. Plus, ART! I twisted up the sheets, tied them down, and got out the bleach. I put the sheets in the sink with some water and started going to town with bleach. And it didn’t seem like much was happening. So I kept adding more bleach. And more. And MORE.
When I decided to stop, and I rinsed and untied it and washed it, I ended up with this. And it was AMAZING. The more I untied and rinsed, the cooler it got. It looks like fire. I made fire! On a sheet! I was so pleased with myself, and Nick thought it was really cool. I decided I was a genius, and maybe I should go into the business of making and selling reverse tie dye sheets and retire from the rat race of teaching college classes and working for “The Man.” We were going to be artistic and free and create magic sheets!
Until we looked closer and saw this. Those are holes. Everywhere the fabric was the lightest, there was a hole. Turns out straight bleach will eat straight through cotton. Like fire. I’d made the most beautiful, cool, amazing sheets, that are full of holes. I wanted to cry. They were soooooo cool you guys. So cool. And so full of holes.
So, I was sad about this, and yet, determined to figure out what went wrong and try again. I did some research on reverse tie dying, and I found out that for one, you shouldn’t use straight bleach. (Duh.) You should dilute it at least 1:1 with water. Second, you need to neutralize the bleach afterward. Just washing the fabric doesn’t stop the bleaching. The interwebs suggested using hydrogen peroxide diluted with water in a 1:10 ratio.
Okay, I was ready to try again. Then we pondered, do we order more grey sheets? And hope they arrive blue? Do we actually order the navy sheets? What if the navy sheets aren’t navy but are instead some hideous shade of chartreuse? Then I got on Amazon and realized the exact sheets we bought were not even available anymore. Probably because too many people complained about the holes from their reverse tie dying of said sheets. I’m guessing.
The search began for the perfect set of navy blue sheets for me to try my new and improved reverse tie dye technique. (Now is not the time to remind me that I never even wanted navy sheets. I wanted grey sheets. IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE. IT’S ABOUT THE ART.) I found some, and I ordered them, and they arrived. So yesterday I spent most of the day on my quest to make these boring navy sheets amazing and cool, like fire.
I did all the right things in all the right order, for all the right amounts of time. And what we ended up with, was this. They do not look like fire. They basically turned only one color everywhere the bleach touched, which is ummm…terracotta? So now we have these navy and orangey tie dyed sheets that don’t match anything in our home and aren’t that cool and don’t look like fire even a little bit.
Maybe they’re kinda cool. I guess they’re fine. But not as awesome as the holey mess I’d created before. I mean before I realized they were holey. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.
Today, I decided to express my creativity in another way, and I got back to painting. I got super into acrylic pouring about a year ago, then it got too cold and I stopped. Then it got too hot and I never started again. (I paint in my garage.) I made myself go out there today and paint again, and it didn’t go so well.
First I decided to try a Dutch pour, which uses a hair dryer to push the paint around. I used black and some of my ickier colors, because I haven’t yet been able to successfully do this type of painting, and I didn’t want to waste pretty paint.
Which was a good plan, because I ended up with this. Which isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever painted, but is far from the best. I mean. Eh.
I set it aside and decided to try something else. I’ve been seeing a cool new technique called “wreck a ring” where you do a tree ring pour, then “wreck” it by moving a stick or something through the rings.
Well…here it is. It’s considerably more wreck and less ring. In fact, I see no rings at all. I think my paint was way too thin. Anyway, it’s still kind of a cool painting, and it will be a nice partner to a pink/purple/black one I already have in the bedroom. So, I’m considering this one a happy accident.
Undaunted, I attempted the Dutch pour again. This one went so horribly awry that I actually scraped all the paint off, something I’ve never done before. I didn’t want to waste the paint though, so I scraped it all into a cup, stirred it up, and it ended up kind of a dusty purple, which I liked. So I used that as the background color for what was really more of a “bloom” technique than a Dutch pour. This one, you make a puddle in the middle, and use the hair dryer to blow it all out, like a flower blooming.
I don’t love it. But I don’t hate it enough to scrape it again. I left it alone to dry in the corner and think about what it’s done.
Before calling it quits, I decided to try one more wreck a ring. Mostly I just wanted to use up the rest of the paint I’d mixed, plus I thought I could make it thicker and do better this time. Spoiler alert. I did not do better. This one has nary a ring to be seen! Because it was so awful, and so yellow, that I just tilted it aaaaaallll the way to the corner to get as much of that ugly yellow off as I could. Aaaand…it looks like fire. So, I sort of came full circle I guess. But not in a good way really, and certainly not in any way I intended to go.
I was kind of bummed that all my art didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, and I decided to call it a weekend and clean up all my cups and stirrers and hands and everything else. I was kind of Eeyoring about doing all that and thinking about what a bad artist I am.
Then it hit me. I have spent 20 years telling preschool teachers that when kids do art, “It’s not about the product. It’s about the process.” Three-year-olds shouldn’t be made to copy a craft made by their teacher, and they shouldn’t be made to color the grass green and the sky blue, just because that’s reality. We shouldn’t stop them from painting and painting and painting on the same sheet of paper until they’ve swirled and mixed and swiped so much that they’ve created a brown puddle of paint and poked a hole in the paper. Because it’s not about product; it’s about process.
Why is my art any different? Why should my art be about the end result, rather than about playing and having a good time and learning that if I mix this with that, the result is ugly yellow, but if I mix that with this, the result is kind of a pretty purple? Why can’t I just try things and see what happens and enjoy doing it and not worry about how it all looks in the end? At what age does it become about product and stop being about process?
Maybe the whole process was about me sitting down here to write this blog post about the process. (Does that make the post the product? Now I’m confusing myself, like Pooh and Piglet walking in circles looking for a heffalump.)
What if the whole situation in our world, in our country, in my community, with COVID-19 and the simultaneous Black Lives Matter movement is about process? My anxiety ridden brain keeps trying to get to the end product. The solution. The normal. Normal wasn’t working. It wasn’t working for our planet. It wasn’t working for our fellow human beings. It wasn’t working for me honestly.
This process of hunkering down, staying home, doing what I think is best to protect my loved ones and everyone else in the world is forcing me to slow down. It’s letting Nick and I focus on creating our home and our life together because, well, we can’t go anywhere else really.
The killing of George Floyd fueled a fire in humanity that won’t be put out easily. It’s forcing us to ask difficult questions about how our country treats black people, and it’s not allowing white ladies like me to pretend we don’t know it’s wrong.
I don’t know the answer. I can’t worry and stress and plan enough to keep everyone I love safe. But I can try. I can create art. I can type a blog post. I can be engaged in the process.