I was contacted a while back from a blogger to check out her site called "Creating My Odyssey" as she started to rebuild her creativity and talk about her mental health experiences. She gave me permission to share one of her entries...and perhaps we will see more of her in the future with collaborative blogs!
Dried Up
When I was depressed, I didn't want to create art, and I felt really disappointed as an adult when I felt that way. As a moody teen and early twenties at home, my mother would say: 'When you feel like that, you should paint.' I appreciate her sentiment now, but I just didn't want to paint, or do anything artistic. She couldn't possibly understand because she wasn't made that way, and she never would. At least she tried, bless her.
But, as an adult, although, when depressed, I didn't have the inner spark to want to create art. I was happy to write though. That was easy. I had had light hearted anecdotal articles published too. And I could write exactly how I felt, particularly if I felt embarrassed and couldn't verbalise what I was thinking, especially if the thought concerned Husband.
For instance, I felt sad about my hobby, the wild west. What? You may well ask. (See what I mean about embarrassment?) I wanted to be a cowgirl, a rough 'n tough, smokin', cursin', drinkin', sharp shootin' frontierswoman. Not stuck at home, looking after family. And I couldn't indulge that hobby much because I didn't have the energy and also I felt out of it because of anxiety among the more intense living history re-enactors who I was anxious may judge (some did, because I was portraying an unconventional female character).
Husband, insightfully, had said long ago when I began to head into depressions, that he could see my hobby rearing its head and being the subject of my depression. I'd be obsessed with something (I was good at being obsessed with things) and the wild west was it. I was writing my novel (about a cowgirl, naturally...) and that did help, although, of course, I wanted my book to be perfect. So, yes – that was a subject I had to write about to make sense of it.
I had considered art therapy. To paint, draw or collage how I felt. That didn't work either. I didn't want to do any of that. In order to express how I felt, I wrote. If I did do anything artistic, the subject would be anything I would normally do, nothing to do with depression or anxiety. That was what writing did for me.
But I did, so much, want to be artistic. And I wanted to be happy working in my 'creative space' (I was too embarrassed – that word again – to call it an art studio) in our conservatory. But I wasn't, for a long time, happy working there. I'd be okay for a short time, then depression would gradually swallow me up. So I wrote a lot, about lots, and not in my creative space. It wasn't until really recently that I began to feel good about being there and being creative. It's taken this long.
And I'm delving into dark, dusty corners and discovering artwork that I'd done in the dark and distant past and forgotten about. 'Wow! That's good!' I've thought, occasionally. No time for modesty, thank you. Anyway, shoving modesty aside, I'm uploading them onto Facebook and my blog and getting lovely responses to them. I'm also on the verge of recreating and organising my art area. And I'm beginning to get quite excited about it. A plant or flowers here, a water feature there, paints here, pencils there, sketchbooks here, boxed canvases there...
Yay! Artistic me is coming back!
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