What made me into an artist.

This is a long and personal story. I find it an intriguing story and might even publish it one day.

It starts off with my basis in trust.

Okay. Talk to like 80-90% of young women (18-30) in this world, and they will tell you that they have trust issues.

[Oh man, as soon as I turn 31 I'm going to remember what I said this day and hate myself. But whatever, I still have a few years! Ha... ]

But they won't just say they have trust issues, they will say it in a low, serious tone, as if they are dark and twisted on the inside, and then they will probably proceed to tell you their entire life story, usually with some "personal" stuff thrown in there. And then it's accompanied with "haha you're so easy to talk to! You must be trustworthy!" And I just stare back at them in shock, thinking I couldn't possibly do what they just did, and also feeling pretty awkward because to me, the things they say feel very personal.

So I usually walk away in judgement thinking "trust issues, yeah right." And of course half of these are the people who will tell you every other time they see you that they have trust issues. Just to remind you what sensitive, tortured souls they are. And all I could think of is "stop telling me things then!!" Not because I'm untrustworthy, but because I can probably count the amount of people I'm comfortable with on my fingers. And having people's personal lives at my disposal like that actually scares me.

Now, from what I see, I trust people way less than what these (usually) women seem to trust people. And I don't see how I'm more welcoming than the next person. In fact maybe less, because I don't say much to people I'm not comfortable with. Especially not women. Would you open up to someone who just stares back to you in stunned silence with the odd "that sucks," or "I don't know what to tell you"?

My point from saying that is not to be like "you think YOU have trust issues? I'll show you trust issues!" Because I actually don't see myself as having extensive trust issues... 

Anyways, moving on! To my friends, I like to be a wealth of information and help and knowledge, but only after I've gotten comfortable enough to tell them about my opinion and judgements. Which takes a while. Now in my last post, when I said it takes me 2-9 months to warm up to someone, I was not exaggerating. In fact, I might have underestimated that a bit.
I have six specific people that I would call myself completely comfortable with, seven if you include my father, the one parent who raised me. So that's a given. One of them is Laura. Two years before we became close friends, after seeing each other every day. Three more are classmates of mine. It took 3 months to become friends with two of them, 5 months for the other. Another friend I've known for about 9 months, and it took me 6 months to really talk to him. He's special. The last took me a year to talk to, and four more months to trust. There's another that might be close soon, too.

Every single one of these people I saw every day, for a good portion of the day, for the whole time. I went to university with them.

I don't think of myself as hostile, or as having trust issues, or as being dark and mysterious and twisty. I just like to be SAFE. I don't think laying your personal life out for someone you've just met is safe in the least bit. Should they choose to use it against you, you have given them the most efficient weapon against you, your emotions. You've told them how to use them too. AND, if you're the type to consider yourself to have trust issues, you've just given them an excuse to make them worse, should they choose.

Human beings are nasty things, a lot of the time.

So I've found a solution. 5/6 of the people I'm very close with are men. 6/7 if you count my father. I was raised by a man, I grew up having guy friends, of course I've only ever been in relationships with men (seriously, if you haven't figured out "Person" is a woman by now...).

This is because the girls and women I was around were BATSHIT CRAZY MAN. They delighted in mocking others, thought themselves bold if they did it to the person's faces, and saw themselves as incredibly clever and awesome for how higher than all the peasants they were. And you'd think it would change as I grew up, but no. I know some women twice my age who're the same way.

I could never understand how they could look me in the eye and say the nasty things about others they did. And again, it was all personal things. Even my mother would go off on rants about the "scumbags" that were in her life and odd obscenities about her friends, and even the preacher at her church. And she was/is the type of woman who uses Jesus to show others just how right and better than others she is. And that drove me as far away from religion as I could possibly get.

I don't mean I turned Atheist or something, I was actually TERRIFIED to be associated with any sort of belief system, including Atheists and Agnostics. Just because I thought of the judgement it would bring, and the last thing I wanted to be was haughty about my beliefs. But that's changed in the past 5 years, and is also another story for another time.

I dealt with a lot of abuse from women in my early years.


The big one from my childhood I remember was in elementary school. I must have been about ten years old or so. I went to a school that was 300 people and ranged from grade 5-9, so this was my first year at the school. There was only one black person in our school, just because of the area, and she was well-liked and actually very nice. Well, one day a girl decided it would be a good idea to spread a rumor that I had called this girl the N-word, and had been saying a bunch of racist jokes about her. Now, 10-year-old me had never HEARD the N-word before, so I was just over-the-top confused.

So after the whole grade had heard about this, all of the girls in my class brought the girl to me on the playground, clearing off all of the guy friends I was playing with. They demanded I apologize, and I asked for what. And they proceeded to beat the living hell out of me. As I was lying on the ground, struggling not to cry, they hovered over me and told me of my accused crimes and told me to apologize again. I protested like any child would, denying the accusations. When they started beating on me again, until I was screaming and begging the girl to believe me, that I would never do what they said I had done. But she walked away, saying she didn't know what to believe. No one came to my aide because all of my friends had moved to play elsewhere when they saw the field occupied by girls, and everyone else knew what I had done. And we were in the middle of a soccer field, far from the playground and teachers.

Eventually, after covering me in bruises and breaking the jewelry I was wearing (I was a fan of making beaded necklaces at the time and wore about three of them every day), they called me all sorts of names and left me lying in the field. I managed to stagger my way to the school office, only to find the girl who had made the accusations in the office, with the principal, smirking at me out the window as she told the principal of my racism.

So, when I walked in, he didn't seem to notice that I was severely beaten. He could only scream at me in a rage about racism and what a horrible thing I had done and how disgusted with me he was. I remember he mockingly shot a racist joke that I had apparently said towards me. "What are three things you can't give a black man?" When I could only stare back at him in desperation and shock, he sneered "yeah, that's what I thought!" at me. And I lost it. I ended up in the councilor's office because I couldn't stop screaming out of panic and pain and frustration long enough to get a word out. After the councilor figured out the truth (thank God for that) a few hours later, he took my pathetic, shaking self back to the principal and explained how it was all a lie and how they had given me my first very real psychological breakdown at the age of ten.

I don't believe the principal ever apologized, either. According to my raging father, he never did. The people responsible were given a detention each and were sentenced to spend one recess sitting on the edge of the playground and watching everyone having fun without them. Fair punishment, it would seem.

I'm pretty sure that event is the one that started my slow descent into fearing every woman on earth. A year later, I transferred to my mother's house (before she moved to Florida) to get away from the daily abuse. I had been beaten up a few more times at the school in the following year, and I was one of the children that had to take a deep breath to stop myself from panicking every time I stepped into the school. When my grandmother had died, they had mocked me for mourning her. It was the first time I had dealt with loss. It caused another breakdown, and I actually stopped talking. I was afraid anything I said would be used as an excuse to torment or beat me.

So I moved away.

But then I was the awkward new kid who didn't talk, was fashionably inept (a grievous crime for a 12-year-old girl living in the city, I assure you), and pretty socially awful. So of course the teasing started up again, but I had finally had enough, and I learned how to fight back. Every time it started to get to the point where they would throw the first punch, I would fight back like a wild animal, desperate to not be hurt anymore. The fights stopped when they figured out they couldn't get a punch in anymore without about losing their hand. I became hostile and vicious and kept to myself. I only played one sport, and if I wasn't at school or at basketball practice I stayed in my mother's basement, hiding. Drawing. Writing. I wrote a whole novel at the age of 13, staring a badass female with a strong, confident personality. The novel is still on my computer. It's awful in structure and development, as a 13-year-old's writing will be, but it shows a part of my soul that was being so crushed. The MC is a compassionate woman, but also very capable of defending herself and others when the situation called for it.

It was who I wanted to be. I wanted to be able to care for people, but I had it beaten out of me.

But my mother was losing it with me. I think she resented how like my father I was, and hated what a loser I had become in school. She hated my father and hated that I loved him. She was very popular when she was in school, and hated that I had no friends and had turned into a tomboyish basement dweller. She hated that my activities included hiding in my room and "scribbling," or running around and bouncing a ball "like a boy might." She began trying to make me hate my father, telling me all sorts of lies about him, and she began throwing my clothes out and forcing me to wear something that would be more appealing. I came to a compromise with her only by wearing jeans and t-shirts. As long as they were new, they weren't hideous.

She began forcing me to "go hang out with friends" by locking me out of the house and not letting me in until I had gone out to do something. I took to walking along the many paths in the neighborhood (rich neighborhood with parks and ponds...) and taking the little rat of a dog she had out for hours to keep me company. I had had a job on a farm for a couple of years, and through saving up with that I was able to buy a horse off of a family member and boarded it near our house on my own money, at the age of 13. My mother, who wanted to be a rodeo star when she was young, began living vicariously through me and my work with horses, and so I was pushed to work hard. The cats in the house, and my horse, and the horses I worked with, became my friends. It was good, because I didn't have to talk with them, and none of them were going to fight me. It was a quiet escape from the madness.

And so I started to heal.

It was hard. My mother had taken an abusive turn. Every night she would find a way to be verbally abusive and yell at me. She called me lazy, a brat, and once or twice a loser. She would tell me I was a disappointment. If I ever defended myself, she would hit me, usually in the face. Sometimes she would destroy an art piece I was working on or rip up some writing I had done. More often than not she would prevent me from seeing my horse, causing us to miss some rodeos. If I ever got in the way of her trying to destroy something, she would grab me and throw me either against a wall or onto the floor.

Eventually she sold my horse, and any healing I had done was broken, severely. I bought a metal box and any time I heard her approaching, my art and my writing would get shoved in there and hidden in my closet. She never destroyed anything of mine again.

After a while, it began to drive me back into the reserved depression. I stopped talking again, and became hostile. I forgot any compassion I had learned, and the only escape I found was working on the horse farm. It was the only time I had relief and could forget myself.

If my co-workers weren't around. They enjoyed throwing mud at me and mocking my awkwardness. My only escape was literally the animals.

And she tried to take that from me, too. When she told me I was no longer allowed there, I snapped out of my reserve. I fought back for once, kinda found my voice and defended myself. I'm pretty sure obscenities in every sort of combination, some of which lived only in the depths of my deepest imagination came out at that point, and I probably said more in that argument than I had said out loud in the past month. So she did the sensible thing and punched me so hard in the head I saw stars. I was so shocked that all I could do was sit on the floor in silence. She kicked me up and told me to get out of her sight, so I did. I ran out of the house and didn't come back until around 5am, after having wandered the parks all night. I found her crying on the couch and she told me she was sorry.

The next day, I asked her to please let me back to the farm. I was 14 at this point, close to 15. She said no, and another fight escalated. Some how, saying so much the night before had opened me up to saying more. It got out of hand once more, and I found myself pinned against the wall by my neck. I finally fought back, shoving her away from me and bolting for the stairs, to find a safe haven behind the locked door in my room. She managed to catch me and throw me into another wall. I shoved her away again and she began screaming about how out of control I was and how she was going to call the police on me and have me arrested. I told her I was leaving, for good. She said fine, and told me to pack my bags, because she never wanted to see me again.

I made for the stairs again, and she pushed me, against the wall at the top of the stairs, and I ended up falling down the steep flight into the basement. Now the basement stairs were carpeted and the basement was finished, so don't get too much of a barbaric scene in your heads. Still, it was brutal. Bruised and mentally damaged (but at the same time, oddly I had fixed something mentally), I packed a suitcase and left. Wandered around long enough to find a payphone and tell my father everything that had happened.

He rushed over and picked me up, then we went back to my mother's house. He threatened to call the police on her if she did anything stupid, and I was able to pick up all of my belongings, load them into my father's vehicle, and drive away forever.

Now, like I said, something had been oddly fixed. I had been able to speak out and defend myself against her, and I had been able to protect the last thing I loved, the horses and my art. I continued pursuing drawing, driven by its comfort, and writing was there too. Back under the safe care of my father, I was able to heal for real. I had to go back to the hell-school for one year, but by this time people had changed, some new ones had arrived, and other bad ones had moved away. I had also learned how to protect myself, and thus my ninth grade year was not that bad.

I joined the band class and became a percussionist, and I was learning to play guitar.

High School came, and with it, a new beginning. I learned how to be my own person, and actually found people mature enough to accept it. This was a brand new concept, and I was thrilled to have it. I began learning new things about trust and relationships, started into what would turn out to be a six-year relationship with a special boy. I learned about earning friends, trusting them, and having the friendship expand. I also learned how to deal with it when the friendships ended or the trust was betrayed.

I became sort of a rockstar with my art at the school, too. I found other artists but seemed to be the school drawing master. Because I had worked so long and hard, I was "that kid" at school who could draw anything and impress people. I had never experienced something I was over-the-top good at before, never been much better than other people at anything, but I had found one.

I also found a love of music. I began experimenting on the drum kit, and though I was in guitar lessons I began to love the drums more and more. I also began teaching myself piano and submerged myself in art and music. And for once, I had people supporting me. I had a loving parent who was behind me, and though I had my teenager-esque moments of being angry with him and feeling his decisions were unfair, I think I fared better in those situations than most people that age because of my mother.

I had support, and freedom to do what I loved. I also continued on with horses and began to advance in the competition world. I exited high school with honors grades, and a new life. I didn't even recognize myself from not even four years previous. I had become bubbly and talkative and more out-going, but I've never been completely fixed. There's always been some residual damage there, but it's been a few years since then and I'm learning to get rid of it.

Out of high school, I auditioned for a prestigious jazz school and got in as a drummer. There, I found a community even BETTER than high school, with no worries of mockery (let's face it, it still happened in high school. High school wasn't a walk in the fairy park, but it was a halluvalot better than what I had left) and people who were all there for the same reason. Everyone was super nice.

I finally felt healed, more or less. I had found a place that I, without a doubt, belonged. But there was still an underlying hint of darkness there, which threatened to come right on back when I surprise lost a lot of high school friends to changing lives and their decision to no longer like me. I was hurt, and felt betrayed, and with those feelings once again so strongly exposed, I realized I had another thing to fix, and that was a spiritual matter.

I had thought I had everything. I was paying my way through school and rent on commissioned artwork and playing some shows as a pianist. I also had some horse shows and training jobs. I thought it was the dream. But I still was lacking some purpose.

So, in my second year, I finally asked one of my friends (one of the six I mentioned before!) if I could accompany him to his church, and there through some troubles and confusion and debates, I found a spiritual direction. Now, I'm not a crazy over-the-top, super conservative religious freak or anything, but I do find it to be a big part of my life, and it did begin to come out in my art and writing, and actually helped me to become stronger in my artistic areas.

It's been a few years since then and I couldn't be more comfortable with who I am, I don't think. I've had a long journey, with a long, hard path to healing. I've made amends with my mother, and I've fixed other broken relationships. I've grown up and learned to accept people, and I've become confident in who "me" is. Which is something I never thought I'd have.

And really I have art to thank. I honestly don't think I would have made it through without art. And that's why it's so personal to me. It's the only thing that's been there, since I could hold a pencil even.

I've managed to fix myself through it.

Now that we've come to the end of my story, and anyone who may be reading it might be a bit moved, I would like to point out something that is contradictory in this piece of history. I said I don't open up to people who can use this against me.

Yet here's my story.

It's a conscious decision I've made to put it into the world. Part of the reason why I've done it is so that someone may stumble across it and learn from it. Maybe gain some strength. Maybe reach out to me for help. I would be happy to give it! But the biggest thing is, you don't know who I am. anonymity is a strong tool, and I'm okay with using it. I just thought it was time to share with someone.

I leave you to your thoughts!