Maybe this is a phenomenon unique to the craft/cooking/art and fiber arts blogs that I like to follow, but they are filled with joyful statements of how beautiful life is. Pictures of flowers, beautiful bowls of ripe cherries, kids dancing around in tutus eating giant home made cookies frosted and decorated with home made families. Everybody's husband or “DH” is a saint. Every child is precocious, precious and a genius. Nobody drinks, smokes or swears. Okay…they do swear. Because swearing is cool, damn it!
What is real? What dirty laundry are they cropping out of the photos? Why not blog about how DH gambles away the family money or is a work-a-holic? Why not write about how DS (darling son’s) teacher sent him home with a note about how he bullied a kid in school, demanding he be seen by a psychiatrist? Why not blog about how your 11 year old child can’t read. Mine can’t. I’ll admit it, but more about that later.
My life is not beautiful. My life is hard. My life is filled with lots of pot holes, pockmarks, boils and blisters. We hide behind masks. Masks of pretty big headed girls in our art journals, close up shots of our intricate cabling in knitting, detailed descriptions of the curry in our rice….maybe we all need the escapism of thinking that somebody else’s world is perfect, so why can’t ours be? Maybe their world really is picture perfect and mine is the only one that’s fucked up…..doubtful though.
Okay. Maybe fucked up is to strong a way to put it. I make no bones about fighting with depression. I make no issue of stating that I’m a struggling hoarder. But I haven’t fully disclosed that here, have I? I haven’t put pictures up because maybe I want my mask too. Maybe I want you to believe that I live a fairytale life where I’m not a (mostly) gay woman who lives alone with her two cats. That my son doesn’t live with my parents (about 7 minutes away) because the environment there is better for him. That he’s not autistic and struggling to learn to read in the 6th grade. He’s smart. Brilliant even, but he’s also so terrifyingly a perfectionist that it stalls him. So why tell you all this? Well, why put myself out there if I’m only going to do it part way? Maybe reality isn’t what we’re looking for when we are browsing blogs? Reality is to real.
My life is messy. My life sucks more days than not. There are blessings there, a family who is helping me with my struggles and pushing me towards becoming better. A partner who while not “present” and physically in my world, is supportive. My son. His giant smile and endless energy, even when that energy is thrown to anxiety and fear. I wish I could give him a perfect world. But it doesn’t exist. I love hiim endlessly but I can’t give him the world he deserves. Only in the fantasy blogland we create…
I don’t think I have many readers of my little blog, but if you are out there reading, I challenge you to pull the mask aside, if only a tiny bit. What is hiding behind the crafts and creations? What really motivates your art and passion? Who are you really? Just a peak..then let’s all get back to our beautiful fantasy worlds.
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