Extra-Ordinary
(First published on my personal blog Snell-Pym)
Today I feel like a failure, today I feel fat and not ugly so much as plain with frizzy hair and glasses. Today I looked at the things I make and think… they are all a bit naff. Today I am the failed scientist and the untrained artist, today I am FAILURE.
Today I am the stuck at home, non housework doing, burnt cooking mum, I am the can’t spell, can’t concentrate hack filling in forms to apply for events/jobs that I know wont want me, not daring to apply for the acting roles as I’m too fat, too old, too short, the wrong physical gender, I am the failed to get my kids to the things they want and need to go to, I am the fail parent with a trail of failed careers.
Today I finished knitting DNA, and worked on a mermaids tail, cut out and folded a micro-zine I drew and scanned and made, I helped Mary write a story and she made a cover for it to be a book, Jean helped me find my unfinished knitting projects and I finished the basis for some little easter rabbits. I typed up a poem and ordered polymer clay to make little creatures with. I put away a giant papier mache sculpture I made for the visually impaired and checked that the brain I am making is drying ok, there were piles of paintings I had to move, piles of my paintings – I can’t see them as good, I can’t compare to the other artists that I see locally, my stuff just… does not quiet cut it and yet… it is the headline picture for the group.
Today I feel like a fraud, I feel like I am pretending to be good, to be amazing, when I am not. I am just me, a lost, lonely little me. A few days ago I performed at a launch event, people came to tell me how animated and full of energy I was, they said they liked my work, the world was full of chances to grab and take and I did… but… I stood outside the venue looking at the door, wondering if I was truly supposed to be there, weather I was an interloper, I had to battle mind doubt dragons to go in and whilst I talk, whilst I feel alive at the creativity around me, I look at the crowd of amazing people and think how wonderful they are and how drab I am. And I feel the press of eyes and the expectation and I want to run, I want to hide, I am the extroverted introvert or introverted extrovert and sometimes I think I have wasted my life.
Today I sit writing this drowning in craft supplies I need to put away, this week I have designed many new workshops covering science, art, writing, specific themes and the environment. My old injuries ache with the clammy cold weather and I long for summer but know I have much to do but I can not stir, my head still rings from the head injury I had coming up to two years ago now and I feel thick, stupid, clogged, my c-section scar is hurting, skin burning and sinus pain is king. It is nothing to the physical pain and discomfort I have suffered in the past, I’m a little inflamed and virally that is all. I fail at not moaning, at not feeling used up and rung out.
Today I think of all the people who have helped me and I know I have failed them and worse I have not always passed the buck, I have been too busy or distracted or lazy. I walk past the homeless and realise that it more than two years ago that I did any proper charity work, even though an event I acted at this month has just raised over £400 for charity, I had to claim my expenses – I have a loan to repay and things I need to get to – I failed at money management – I struggle with numbers now, I did not used to. I had to take the money but not because I would starve because I wouldn’t and that makes me wither inside. Am I greedy?
Today I told my husband – I told him how when I write down the things I have done they sound fantastic and great, or brave and selfless – when I know it wasn’t like that, it was clutching at straws, it was trying stuff, it was itself often failure. My life has twisted and turned and looped da looped and I am giddy.
Today he told me I am extraordinary and that most people – are not. He told me that people are in awe of my work but these words hurt and puzzle. He gave examples and I am like “no that is just because they have had to survive differently, they want to do stuff, creative stuff, science stuff.” And then I was angry about how their potential is being lost, how my potential was lost, about how my husband would be the better home maker and can’t be, how society traps people in rolls and classes and demographics.
Today I survived, I live and so does my family, and for that I am truly in awe and fearful of a harsh and unrelenting world. But sometimes… sometimes survival is not enough and that is only because I am lucky, I have capacity, I have safety nets, I have family and friends and love and food and shelter. I am higher up the triangle of needs – but that should not be the case. Potential maximum should be achievable for all, with no judging as to what that is, no expectations of what a successful life is, no squinting and muttering when a sideways corse is taken. Failure should not be seen as well… failure. It is the experimenting, the living of life, it is were the discoveries are made, if you don’t try you can’t fail, but if you don’t fail have you ever really tried?
Today is not today anymore, today is now tomorrow and I feel the ideas scritching in my brain, they have been gone a long time, I have to rest lots to let my brain heal – it healed enough to give me ideas again. Proper new fresh ideas, but my health has always been shoddy and I have lost so much time, and I can’t go fast, I can just be. So I pool and collect the ideas, and hope they will get their day. Somedays they erupt into the world and the world laps them up, other days… not so much and I gather them back in for another try, on another day.
Today is new, I still feel hollow, but that will pass, it always does, and the void will be filled with colour and patterns and thoughts and then I’ll accidentally create a thing or things or a thing of things. Until then there is hugs and coffee, and admin.
Posted: Thursday, April 6th, 2017 @ 7:39 pm
Categories: Short Stories, Uncategorized.
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