The prompt today is compliments of Patty Bechtold from the Living Deep Studios. It is a Reverb sort of process but with a slightly different approach. Go check it out - I think you will enjoy it.
During the past year I was thwarted by…
I’ll call it the Big Ol’ Granddaddy of Juan de la Cruz and his dark night of the soul.
I started with this image:
Thwarted One: Art Journal Seeds for Reverb12
and then went into the studio and came up with this:
Thwarted Two: Painted Melanoma Center in Shadow (WIP)
The circle is my cancer.
The gray is the shadow from my cancer.
Did I mention this is a work-in-progress?
Thwarted Three: Adding some music in a slide & some "germs" and "people"
The muddyness is my confusion around my cancer and how I am “supposed” to act now (knowing there is no ‘supposed to’ there simply is… but I also need to listen to those whiney voices and comfort them for just a second so we can work together… the speaker who is whiney… and myself because we occupy the same brain and being cooperative partners rather than jousting mates is a good thing, don’t you think?
Before this thwarting, though, I was still holding onto past stuff because… I got this somewhere in my mountainous reverbing – there is a part of me that is afraid if I get too successful with my professional projects that my life will fall apart… again. It’s been such a lifetime movie rollercoaster ride since my last feeling of consistent professional success.
I got up to make myself a cup of ginger tea and I got the nudge to free write on the five words that were on my original pencil image.
Ugly: I have a scar on my face now that I am conscious of most of the time. I still don’t have feeling in it like the other side of my face. It feels weird and it still looks weird. I feel as if the possibility of having another surgery due to it not healing right is just another way for the world to prove to me that I need to be punished. Punished for what, for being?
Ummmm. Your past choices haven’t been paid for yet and your continuing stupid choices….
Shut up.
Well?
No one is perfect. I have so far to go, but going as far to scar my face just doesn’t fit. This is a permanent disfigurement.
Well are you inferring disfigured people deserve to be disfigured? What about the girls in Juarez who get boiling oil on their faces. Do they deserve that?
Ugly is having a fight with myself. My scar, my wound, is for now in the shape of a heart. Some of my friends joke with me and say, “If you have to have another surgery just have your surgeon finish off the heart.
Yes, well, it isn’t their face.
Most people don’t even notice my scar. My hair covers a lot of it and often times people are unobservant. I need to choose to wipe away the negative comments that people said to me without thought earlier on in my recovery.
ROAR! I haven’t had a big bad ass breakdown yet. Nor have I had a break up with my face. I wonder if breaking stuff would help? Maybe create an art project of broken china or something so I could just smash stuff until I laugh.
Not a bad idea.
Or maybe it is a remembering of Helen Reddy's "I am Woman!"
Attachment: I need to not be attached to meaning surrounding either my cancer, my face, melanoma, more cancer popping up… I would love to hang out in that “eh, no big deal” camp where yes, I put sunscreen on daily, but I am not obsessed with every freckle that pops up. And besides, my doctors have my back. This is something I also need to remember. My care is good. They are… invested in my progress, not in making me uglier or more unhappy.
Fault: It isn’t my fault that I got cancer! This is like having a fight with ugly! It is no one’s fault. Melanoma happens. It may happen to me again. We will take care of it. Let my Pollyanna reign for a bit. And if I go back to having most of my business over the phone, that will be just fine, too. No one will be able to point and laugh or wrinkle their noses and say “Ewwww”… I’ve done it before and was successful. I can do it again and be successful.
I may choose how I respond to it, my melanoma. And how I choose to respond to my new relationship with my new face.
The final one is unforgiveness. I know I am the one I need to forgive. This has been a long road, me forgiving me. Perhaps the cancer adventure is to finally get it… that I may choose to forgive myself well or I may choose to swim around in a vat of psychic pain.
Now that makes my cancer seem like a gift. Interesting.
Remember how I mentioned Juan de La Cruz and his Dark Night of the Soul? I made this photo poster after pondering his being today. Feel free to pin it on pinterest or put it on faacebook or just copy it for yourself to enjoy.
Juan de La Cruz shares some Word Love... What Words Can Do for the Heart
My thwarter is a gift. Bring it on, after effects. Bring it on.
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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
