My Creative/Artistic Self and Dysfunctional Family Stuff

My family has never been supportive of my artistic or creative work. After a long period of that, being diminished and ignored, I really would not look to them to be supportive, loving, kind, or good about anything that I really care about. I tend to share less and less as the years have gone by and I have to say they don’t seem to notice that I don’t share about my heart and what fills me with joy with them. Since that is so important to me and to my life, it makes it hard a lot of the time to find something to talk about, since so much of it is private and needs to be protected from them.

One time I did try to describe the inner creative process to one of my brothers and he burst out laughing and after my asking him repeatedly to share what he found funny and why, he made fun of me and the way that I had chosen to talk about my collage artwork.

I really have to admit that he broke my heart. That’s my family… and that in no way is diminishing how much he and they have hurt me and hurt my heart. That’s my family… they break my heart. Interacting with them means being self-protective of my life, myself, my creative self, my thoughts, my emotions, my beliefs, and so much more.

Sometimes it just leaks out of me, and I can’t stop myself from sharing, and it doesn’t go good and it doesn’t lead to good. It’s sad to me that sometimes I can’t stop myself or us from sharing things with our family and that it leads to more pain, more hurt, and more of a broken heart. It’s so sad to me that this is my family.

I don’t tolerate anything from my sister and when I started seeing her again almost three years ago, after not associating with her for almost ten years,  I promised myself that I was not going to endure another incident of emotional/verbal abuse from her and that if it happened I would never see her again. She hasn’t. Bizarrely she hasn’t. But I can’t talk to her about all the pain that she has caused me and how all that pain is still inside of me/us and how much it still hurts and how she derailed my life, many times, and made it so hard for me to have self-respect or self-love, because she undermined and humiliated me and verbally/emotionally abused me all my life and how my mother was my primary abuser and bully and how my sister was her toady, until I cut her out of my life. Part of her doesn’t know, part of her doesn’t care, part of her loves being clueless, part of her loved and still loves being both of our parents favorite little girl, part of her has cut me off when I’ve tried to explain in the past, and part of her would hurt if I tried to talk to her about it all now. I know, because I have tried.

One of my other brothers routinely makes fun of me, the things that I say, my politics, my beliefs, facts that I relate from studies, if I have to pause while finding the right words, etc, etc, etc. I limit him in my life, but even a little bit means emotional and verbal abuse. He only gets a little bit of me. After a few conversations in the last couple months I have decided to start hanging up on him again, it is the only way to have a healthy boundary with him.

The worst part of this all is that these are the two brothers who have the most interactions with me in my life right now. They have collectively done the most for me and at different times been my best support. They wound me and that is the best I am getting. Saying no means absolutely nothing.

My brother that shouts at me on the phone refuses to stop shouting at me, insulting me, demeaning me, misrepresenting me, and mischaracterizing me, no matter what I say to him. If I thought the things about him that he thinks about me, I would never have anything to do with that kind of person, I would hate that kind of person, I certainly would not have even one phone conversation with them.

I know all of it is lies, but it makes me wonder why he feels the need to be thinking so little of me and still associate with me. I don’t want to have anything to do with him, but then he acts like he cares about me, but then turns around and treats me like excrement. I know he finds it highly enjoyable, but I don’t. He is going to get the click on the phone line the next time we talk, if he goes there.

Connectedness to Artist

There are two quotes that stick in my mind about this topic.

One is of a teacher who said that when she is teaching art to a classroom full of five year olds and she asks them to raise their hands if they are an artist and all of the five year olds will raise their hands. But in a classroom full of ten years old and she asks the same question to only half of the students raising their hands.

Probably the opposite is true. Probably artistic ability has increased rather than decreased and yet they doubt themselves.

The second is a story from the movie Six Degrees of Separation. The person is telling a story about going to his child’s school and seeing so many beautiful paintings on the walls done by the children. He asked the teacher why they were all so good. She said the genius is not in the work, but in knowing when to stop and that is when I take the painting away and say they are done.

So, like most things, having a someone to take the roles of teacher, mentor, and supporter means so much to believing in yourself and doing. I never had that before; before finding my survivor friends. But more and more I am getting support and that has helped me to be bold and to believe in myself.

I am an artist.