Grief

This week has been hard, with the lead up to my Mum’s birthday and Isaac’s diagnosis of autism combining to make me maudlin and teary.

My research project for my drawing class is causing me some angst as well. Not much. But enough to contribute to this weeks tears.

I am researching myself. As a visual artist ultimately all my work comes from within myself. I chose myself as my subject because I wanted to examine why I do the things that I do. Why I am drawn to certain things and most importantly why I am happy to just skim over the surface and not really delve too deeply into anything that might require a bit of emotional effort.

Part of the research project is to collect historical data on the subject. Some of my historical data is in a suitcase that I can not bring myself to open.

During the lead up to my mothers funeral, my brother had all our child hood photos in his possession. They were in a blue suitcase that mum had kept in her wardrobe. After the funeral my brother returned the suitcase to mum’s house. I did not see or speak to my brother. All the photos of my father were gone,all the decent photos were missing, there were pages ripped out of albums, and the remaining jumble was  just thrown back into the case. It was heart breaking.

I have been staring at this case for a fortnight now trying to bring myself to open it again but I don’t think I can.

I have been skimming over the surface of who I am, and what influences contributed to make me the person I am today. I examined my relationship with the nuns and my early childhood memories of going to church and being thwacked with a cane every time I fainted and I have discarded those influences as not that important.

I have been trying to pry apart my own mythology and to see where the lines of myth and truth blur and every single thing leads me back to my father.

My father was an alcoholic who passed his love of a drink on to me. I do not drink. I have finished drinking.

My father liked to promise us the world and then on the day of the promise we would sit for hours in the car outside the pub.

My father lit his cigarettes with a match and would ask me if I had ever seen a match burn twice and put the still hot match onto the soft flesh of my arm.

My father tried to teach me to swim by carrying me, screaming in terror, out into the waves and throwing me into the water.

All the kids in the neighbourhood were frightened of my father as he liked to dispense summary justice with his boots and his fists and all the local hoons drove quietly past our house.

My father was killed in a car accident when I was fourteen and I battled with his ghost for a very long time.

When his ghost is strong, I still think that I am stupid and useless and really what is the point of anything anyway?

But my spirit is stronger. My spirit was always stronger. My father couldn’t break me.

I would not give in. I refused to let him win.

As a grown woman, I will not be told what to do. I will ask no mans permission to do anything or be anyone I damn well like.

Maybe pressing publish here will be the first step in really picking some emotional scabs and going down some paths I don’t want to travel.

Either that, or I will just take photographs of churches and pretend it was the nun’s fault.

Now onto the feedback.

I would like to thank my daughter Veronica from SleeplessNights who re did my blog for me. I am pleased with how the blog looks. The reason Veronica had to do a whole new blog design was because I wanted to be able to reply to people directly in the comments section and with my previous template that just wasn’t possible.

Previously I had been replying by email, though not to every comment every time, and I was starting to feel a bit guilty if I didn’t reply personally.

I am after some feedback, how do you think the new comment system is working?

Do you actually get the email notification when I reply to your comment?

Do you like it this way or would you prefer a private reply via email?

Or do you simply not care?

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