Do You Make Any Sense?

I Don’t.

I have attempted to reconcile the wildly different aspects of my personality for years.

At this point I don’t think it’s possible and I’m going to have to deal with that.

Where should I start? I’ve never been most peoples approximation of normal. I swung between goth and hippie in high school in the early 90s. I was in a good group of friends but we were “alternative”. I was artsy, into poetry, photography, and writing. I was often berated and called things like devil worshiper, slut, freak… you get it.

I was mostly fine with being a weirdo.

I have always really loved weird shit. Like Public Enemy and Fleetwood Mac.

Like tarot cards and Mother Jones.

Like flowers and mosh pits.

I may have worn some type of large black boots with a floral dress to my high school graduation.

I had some specific goals when I started college. But life happens as it usually does and I went for a year, couldn’t afford it anymore, and dropped out to work a bunch of dumb jobs.

That went on for a couple of years. During those years I felt acutely aware of my inability (or lack of desire) to focus on just one thing. That feeling made it difficult to have clear goals for the future. While I was still creating art and jewelry on the side for latte money, I felt adrift- and if I’m being perfectly honest, things could have gotten much worse. I was surrounding myself with other people who were equally adrift and it felt like maybe I was going to end up working as a server forever. (Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I had such big plans! Didn’t I?)

Enter my future husband. We courted for 6 short months and got married. He was older and had a stable working class job. He was fine with me staying at home painting, drawing, writing… whatever.

Things were different in the late nineties. I didn’t have Instagram or Facebook or a website where I could share my art. So I was in a little bubble. Twenty-two years old, and I felt like a housewife that called herself an artist. I felt like a fraud.

Then we had our first child. I was lost. Now I was a housewife/stay at home mom and there was no art in sight. No goals at all. No real plan. It was as if I had vanished, and any dreams I had vanished as well.

I decided to take some classes at the community college. I started going to the gym. We moved from our small apartment to a lovely house. These things felt good. Like I was doing something. (Besides being a wife and mother.) My creative pursuits were still taking a backseat but at least I was moving forward. We welcomed a second child and things were still moving as planned.

I continued to take pet time classes throughout my pregnancy and returned to take finals a couple weeks after my daughter was born.

I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do in the first place. (Albeit in the wrong-ish order) Pick one thing. Major in it. Get a job doing it. Keep that job forever. Retire from it.

But a tiny little hiccup made me think about things differently.

My husband got sent off to war. He was in the Army Reserves. (Having been in the Army on active duty several years before we met) So… 9/11 happened.

A few months later he was deployed.

So there I was. About 27 years old. Two children. Suddenly single for all intents and purposes. I had to drop my classes for that semester. And for the foreseeable future, school was not going to work.

After several weeks of crying and trying to figure out how to live while not knowing if my spouse was ever coming home or going to die fighting, I decided to pick up my camera. And my canvas. And my tarot cards. I sold my art and photos in stores around town. I had 2 art shows. I got some paying portrait/wedding clients. I read tarot cards at the metaphysical bookshop.

I want to state here that I know how fortunate I was to be able to stay at home with my children. I had a good support system as well. I am so grateful for how that time period went and I know that others didn’t have the luxuries I had.

All this to say that I still didn’t make sense. Remove school from the equation and I was still me. Still a person that loves several mediums. Still a person that does many things at once.

Those years that my husband was gone really allowed me to see that it’s ok for me to love those things. And really the only person who expected me to live up to some imaginary ideal was me.

Many years have passed since then- 16 years actually. I had two more children somewhere in there and managed to run a business and many side hustles as well.

I like that I have so many interests. I like being able to draw and take photographs. I’m not sure who slipped the idea in my head that I absolutely had to have just one career interest. It took so long to get past that.

It’s really ok and maybe even totally awesome to have several things you love to do. You can keep expanding and learning. It never gets boring. I don’t want to reconcile those parts of me.

I don’t want to make sense. Do you?

(Image by author)