Finding a Fix

These past few days I've been feeling very depressed and angry, bored and uninspired, disappointed, sad and emotionally stagnant.  At the end of the day, I feel more and more like I'm becoming all of the things about my mother that I despised.  She was miserable around the family, but clearly able to perk up and have loads of laughs and fun around others.  Why not at home?  Now I find myself in the same position.  I have grown weary of my own hurt feelings.  I am worn down by feeling so unhappy at home, finding happiness in the company of anyone but my own family.  I think back to those days of avoiding my depressed mother and my angry father, trying to remember positive things about them and my childhood, though it is a challenge to come up with much.

I remember that my mother had a beautiful singing voice.  She talked about painting, but I could only vaguely remember seeing one watercolor she created of a little bird back when I was in high school.  I mentioned this to my sister recently, and she surprised me by telling me she had the painting and would send it to me.  This is it.  This is the one and only piece of art left by my mom prior to her death in 1996 at age 63.

I found it odd that she dated it '86 because I left home in '78 and saw the painting about two years earlier.  She also signed it P. Carter-Carlson and while her first name was Patsy, she never, ever answered to that Patsy, and never used her maiden name.  Her family referred to her as Patty, but the rest of the world referred to her by her preferred middle name of Carole.  Odd.

Today I have spent a lot of time reflecting on how I was going to find a fix to my mood, my lack of motivation, and stop the self-pity party.  Trying to cheer oneself is not easy!  However, I can't stand my own company, so something HAS to be done.  Today I received an email for art classes being taught fairly close by, some of which I wanted to take a couple of years ago but couldn't because of my mom/driving/kid school schedule.  Now I'm free.  I'm actually free to take a class, free to pretend to be more artist than mother.  As luck would have it, the single-day class being offered on what was the day I would have been taking a friend to the airport (she had to tell me today that she had to cancel her visit due to work vacation freezes) is an all-day course in simple soldering.  Given my most amusing and dangerous soldering results, this was perfect timing.  I signed up for the class, paid for it (no backing out now!) and emailed the instructor about purchasing one of the few supplies kits she is assembling for sale.

While I've wasted a good portion of the day feeling sorry for myself, I did manage the first, albeit gentle, kick in the behind to fix what is ailing me.  It's not dark yet.  I have time to start collecting bits and pieces, photographs and papers for the class next month.

Onward and upward.  If this doesn't make me feel better, I'm going to give the cat a haircut that will give me chuckles for a while.  That always works ;-)