In the beginning I remember things to be so easy that I might have been bored witless if I had not had the kind of imagination allowed to live within a child.
As people grow older, those who insist on keeping their childlike adventurousness about them are dismissed as lunatics. Immature, stupid, crazy.
As more pressures are put upon the individual, these childish recesses grow smaller and smaller daily. It is unfortunate.
In my twenties I find myself enjoying Pixar/Ghibli movies more than when I was young. I read more comics and graphic novels than I ever did growing up. I find myself unable to shake the importance of laughing and giggling and lounging with friends.
At present, I feel the dirt becoming mud beneath my feet. Besides my love and friendship, beside my art and books and movies, there is not a whole lot of safety to retreat to. My parents live too far to feel reassured by them via phone call and sometimes I feel like fleeing all responsibility of this so-called adulthood and take shelter in their TV room... or underneath my old iron-framed twin bed that I miss. Sometimes I miss it so extremely, my childhood life of ease, that I am brought to my knees.
Life isn't fair. Nobody ever told me it was. Nothing has ever fallen into my lap and I don't expect it to, but the hope that things will piece together is never far from the front of my mind. However dark the thoughts which surround it become.
I am no prodigy, no great mind, no great orator. I expect that one of these three qualities are generally what lead people to success.
Hardship builds character. I have not lead a terrifically hard life. I enjoyed education for the most part. With the cliched exception of gym and mathematics. Both of which I hated with a furious passion, but endured because skipping school didn't even cross my mind as an option. I blame my parents for my responsible and scholastic nature. I usually wished to be educated on a one-to-one basis, finding many of my peers to be loud and obnoxious. That being said I never encountered alcohol or drugs until much later than most of my friends/peers did. Simply because I wasn't social and played the role of nerdy, quiet, average student who often faded into the background during class and played wallflower at parties.
I appeared when my friends needed me. I stood up for them and comforted them. I was no threat to anyone. No one has crushes on me and I failed to see why either boys or girls would be sexually appealing. I had no interest in relationships beyond best friends. I felt that I took care of people and only spoke when it was necessary. I was much wittier and sarcastic than I am now. I didn't cower, but I didn't have to. That aside, I never exceeded average until high school.
I suffered all of the usual illnesses of childhood without a hitch; with the exception of an overwhelming case of the chickenpox which I barely remember. I had some friends. None-of-whom prevailed to be lifelong partners in crime. A love of books and art set me apart from most cliques. And not having a shocking or wondrous appearance, I find myself referring to my image as plain.
An opportunity arose, while completing my first year in high school, for me to attend a school of art for my remaining three years. After submitting a portfolio and going through the entrance meeting, I was accepted. This door opened with such flourish I was stunned. Though, as it is with most new things, even this fantastic new sanctuary, I began to take it for granted.
Artists, even within there own culture, have cliques within cliques. At this new school I found that everyone knew everyone else; though not everyone moved within each others circles regularly. Finding oneself in classroom without any close friends at hand, it was particularly easy to find an acquaintance or two to bond with quickly. It was a new atmosphere entirely.
Instant friendships which lasted up until graduation. Even through the summer.
Luckily I made a few friends with whom I still visit and I feel like they are more family than anything else, even if I don't see them, sometimes, more than once a year.
As I convinced myself throughout school that I was destined for immediate success upon leaving its confines, I drifted through it. I felt blinkered and when I look back on it it feels foggy. As does most of my past, actually. An affliction I am not alone with. It makes me feel bad, though. Like I should have a clearer record of my life within my own head. But, as is my character, I find, I live only for the present. I live for comfort, affection, and saying what needs to be said. Right now. I have very little aforethought for the future. A fault which I see, but usually chose to ignore.
Oh well.
Once venturing from high school, I made my way to college. My first year felt like some kind of dream. Being at a state school I did not feel much love for. I had settled because monetary means, or lack thereof, had denied me from my school of choice. It was tolerable. I had at least two partners in crime with whom I spent a great deal of time. And I picked up some endearing acquaintances I have not spoken to since leaving that mossy, damp place.
As a sophomore I inserted myself into the school I had originally intended to be a part of from the start. I cried and told them about how I had no money. They gave me a grant for my tears. I never looked back.
Having a more extensive art background than most of my peers, I was able to skip at least two of the required classes and got bumped up into the Illustration program. It terrified me. I barely knew a soul in this new town except for my aunt, my set-in-his-ways uncle and one of my friends from high school.
Over the first couple of weeks I built a framework of friends. I built up a thicker skin for the critiques, let me artwork speak for itself; live or die. I got fat on student loan checks and easy work at a nearby video store. Not copious amounts of money, but enough to splurge and not think too much about it. I had never really been on my own before, really. I had never really made my own money and didn't have much concept of saving or resisting the odd impulse purchase, so extremely that by the end of it all I graduated and got two retail jobs to keep myself in rent, clothes, and food.
I also ended up staying here, in Portland, after graduating. In doing so I let a lot of myself float away. Having a boyfriend who has established his own community of friends over his long life here, makes it easier to feel less alone. I feel isolated during drawn out conversations about the past, though. He will sit with groups and they will reminisce about some long ago adventure and laugh. I will smile and sit, but I feel like I shouldn't be there, eavesdropping on this established family. Occasionally, after a shared laugh, they will turn and try to fill me in, which I suppose I appreciate, but in the long run I feel like a great deal of it is "you had to have been there" storytelling. I feel left out. I don't want to make this out as selfish, but I feel sometimes like I gave up too many people to stay here. Like I shouldn't have stayed. I wouldn't have Kevin, which I can't imagine, but I would have the group of friends sitting around me and being nostalgic... It's a tough and haunting subject for me. I love it here, but it is still new and somewhat lonely at four years. I lost a lot of my community after college, too, because a lot of them weren't native and moved home. Also, we have all been caught-up in staying afloat and in rent and food. I don't blame anyone for my sometimes loneliness, that's just how it is.
Having been graduated for almost two years I feel like a ridiculous kind of failure. All the hope for a gloriously dazzling future I had in my high school fog has dried up. I still want a sturdy income, but the whole art-side of it has vanished. What am I now?
I'm a retail clerk. With an obsessive art hobby.
I used to state, in the most assertive tone "I'm an artist first." But I feel broken down lately.
I am living on the edge of poverty with my boyfriend and three roommates. My boyfriend is wonderful. My new friends and older friends from college are great and I appreciate whenever we can see each other. On the verge of needing to get a second job again, and being wracked with nightmares about living on the street, keeps me from giving up all together.
I do art for the sake of it. I still love it, but I can forgo it for other interests, maybe too easily.
I fear for never getting out of retail hell. Never making more than $10.50 an hour at 20+/- hours a week...
Being cut loose more and more by guiding forces, I have my own phone bill, by own bus pass purchases (which just keep increasing), my own rent and utilities, my own groceries, my own blahblahblah.
I feel my toes scraping at the shore, while my head and arms struggle to keep above the water line. An overused metaphor to be sure, but one that fits more and more.
I find myself comparing myself to everyone I meet. Everyone I know. My sister and closest friends especially. I am envious of anyone my age, I hear about, who is doing any kind of better.
I want to go live on a farm and paint in the evenings.
I want to travel.
I want my own house.
I want a better job.
I want goats, bees, and chickens on my farm.
I want to live within walking distance of my job, a coffee shop, and a bookstore...
How do I do all of that? I can barely make rent. I can barely do anything, so I hibernate. I have become a touch more reclusive and more distant. I don't want to make friends with my coworkers outside of work, because I detest my work so much and resent it for paying my bills.
I resent the student loan payments that got me my Bachelors in Fine Arts/Illustration that I can't seem to put to any use.
I am 24 and I know things get better. I have to do what I love and put my talents to my own uses. To claw my way out of this hole and become my own enterprise.
I fear that the escapist tendencies that followed my like shadows in grade school are forcing themselves forward. When I watch Deadwood all day and barely move, I feel like I'm rebelling, somehow, from the things I'm supposed to be doing as an adult. I love laughing, drinking, having sex, drawing, painting, reading for hours, and making dirty innuendo jokes in the stock room at work. I wish I could sing and play bass guitar. I love going to museums and driving around at night in the back seat of a friends car. I love the smell of cigarette smoke and the moments before I fall asleep in a warm bed. I love bread and pasta and cheese and bacon and vodka and the hottest showers ever. I love dance parties in the kitchen. I love alphabetizing and filing and organizing, though my studio looks like a pit that monkeys live in. I love mixing paint and working with my hands. I want to be more mechanically minded and I want to start wearing more colors.
I don't want this to sound like a list of complaints. I see the world as messed-up and unfair. I don't expect things to happen all-of-a-sudden. This is just my existence right now. Presently.
I will get through what needs getting through. I am not full of dark, bitter, or sour thoughts constantly. Usually the opposite. I wrestle with poverty and discomfort. Illness and ignorance, just like everyone. I am a human. A person. Just like you.
A foggy, goofy, nerdy, serious, tired, caffeinated person.
All I can do is type and try harder. I am not alone. I am not worthless. I am merely at a point of trudging uphill in the rain. But like all storms, this one will pass and I might see a bigger patch of blue sky than I had expected.
The broken back from my past still haunts me. Sometimes I dream that I have lost the usage of my legs, or that I am once again forced to live on my back on the floor, screaming in agony, my sight blurred by tears. I fought through that pain and weakness, I can do it again.
I love you.
-Nathalie
