Where I Stood

I don’t know who I am without this pain, without this aching for what is gone, what is broken. I do want to find out.

Mixed media artwork I made this week, tentatively titled “Where I stood”

Dearest Doodle Soupsters,

I started the artwork above before I even added anyhing to the canvas. My first step was taping up drawings, arranging them in a corner of my studio …

A few days later, I started taping drawings and paintings (including the tiny red one in the upper right but some others not shown in the picture above). Then, I painted over, kept drawing, taping … painting onto other surfaces, then pressing those onto the canvas.

The next day, I drew on the surface with charcoals, pen, marker. With my exacto knife, I sliced into the canvas outward from a center point. I cut holes, threaded white yarn through and around the canvas, echoing patterns and shapes created from the collaged pieces, strokes of paint, lines of tape, drawn marks.

I see a wound. I see frozen pieces crackling, breaking apart. The way ice melts. I wonder now if the moment a few weeks ago seeped into this artwork as well, crouched before a frozen pond, a red warning sign (do not step onto the ice), a red ladder attached to a pole, same pole holding the sign up too. If I stepped onto the ice, would I fall through? Or, simply walk back unscathed, yet exhilarated?

I see constellations. For millennia, humans have looked up to the sky and pondered over the “i don’t knows’s” … what’s up there? what lies beyond? what do the stars mean? how can they guide us through unfamiliar terrain, faraway seas? what does it all mean?

I see a tangled web in the process of being untangled. Stretched apart, unwinding. The cat’s cradle game, child’s play, two hands. Creating shapes with string looped around your fingers.

There’s a song called “Cat's in the Cradle.” I’ve skipped past it, switch the channel! NOW! Something in that song that makes me feel something I don’t want to feel. A song about a dad and a son, two people out of sync, out of step, wrong place, wrong time, right place, wrong time, wrong place, right time?

I’m attached to my tangled web … I’m scared to unravel the rest. Because if I do, when I do, what will be left of my past to cling onto? PTSD (disregard the DSM lingo because it’s beside the point) is being confronted with your past over and over again, in nightmares, in flashbacks, physical sensations, etc. And it feels like a bombardment, a violation of the possibility of the present moment and the future. It feels like constantly being pulled back into the memories you so want to leave behind. Yet, PTSD is not a disease. It stands for “post-traumatic stress disorder” but it is actually the aftermath of disorder, not disorder itself. A result, not a cause. A descriptor for how our bodies respond to unprocessed trauma. A name. Yes, “complex PTSD” is simply a name for what happens when unprocessed trauma is stored away for a very long time with no end in sight, often during childhood.

Why does the body do this? The body gives us cues to heal ourselves. All of the time. Yet, the needs and demands of the present moment remain. Surviving now. Living now. And those cues aren’t real pretty, are they?

Still, I’m afraid to heal because as horrible as those cues are, they connect me to a past that’s long gone. And as horrible as that past was, there are people in it that I miss. It sucks that I had to choose between my well-being and continuing relationships with family members. It sucks that I wasn't believed. And it sucks that my own family hurt me the most.

Just because I miss and still love them doesn’t mean that they belong in my life now. And just because I have my chosen family, people who give me the respect, love, and care I deserve … that doesn't stop the grief and pain, the loss, this hollow space in my chest, hardened, softening.

That ice … smooth and unfeeling, until I feel it. And when it crackles, breaking apart, it feels like my whole world is ending and beginning at the same time.

A detail shot of my new artwork

While I was working on this artwork, I felt the urge to put on the song “Where I Stood” by Missy Higgins. So as I worked, I listened to this song, over and over. These lyrics, circling …

See, I thought love was black and white

That it was wrong or it was right

But you aren't leaving without a fight

And I think, I am just as torn inside …

There were sounds in my head

Little voices whispering

That I should go and this should end

Oh, and I found myself listening …

'Cause I don't know who I am, who I am without you

All I know is that I should.

I don’t know who I am without this pain, without this aching for what is gone, what is broken.

I don’t know who I am without questioning myself at every turn, hopelessly turning on myself over and over, drowning in doubt, fear, trying to convince myself that I am horrible because then these memories that don’t make sense would.

But I want to know who I am without the torture of doubting myself, repeating the things they told me to myself now, a loop in my head, because I don’t know how to make sense of the truth, to accept how deep and real these wounds are.

I want to learn how to be okay with my own peace, my own joy, my own happiness … to embrace this … to nourish myself, to ignite my spark and let it shine, as stars burn up in the dark, light the way, please … to not need to crush myself first so I don’t have to deal with the pain and confusion of feeling the dissonance … to let myself feel it, to see, experience the gap between where I stood and where I stand now, how far I know I will go beyond what I knew.

Still healing, in the process of accepting, finding my way through the dark,

Nicole Sylvia Javorsky