Confronting Regret And Journeying Back To The Most Fundamental You

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I just finished a painting session and I had a pretty profound moment while I was painting, so much so that I feel a little sick. And I wanted to share it with you, because what is the point of sharing this journey if I’m not sharing these deeper, more profound moments and thoughts that come up? Any act of creating is going to tap into some of those deeper feelings and thoughts.

I was painting and listening to music. Lately, I’ve been feeling compelled to go back and listen to some of the more influential artists and albums from my life. I feel like when I was younger, I would get so involved and addicted to certain albums, and they had really strong effects on me and my life and my taste in music. One of those albums was Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream. I was, I think, in 9th grade when that album came out, and I couldn’t have been more obsessed with an album. I just loved it so much I can still sing every word and every lyric on that album.

I’ve been listening to it lately and I put it on while I was painting. I started having these deep feelings of nostalgia because when I was in high school, I painted all the time. I was really involved in my art practice. At that particular time in my life, I went to a school where art was really highly valued, and I was super lucky to have this beautiful art studio to work out of. Art was an incredibly important part of who I was. And it was also a time of my life when I really started feeling self-conscious about creating art. I was in high school and I was with other people who were also incredible artists, and I would judge my work against their work.

I think self-consciousness is one of the reasons people stop making art when they get older. When we’re younger, we don’t think about being judged and we don’t judge. We just create. The self-judgment and the judgment from others tend to be what creates these blockers.

So anyway, I was reconnecting with all of those feelings just listening to this album, and then the next album I listened to was Dummy by Portishead, which was another profoundly influential album in my life. I don’t know, I was in 10th or 11th grade when that one came out. That time of my life was really bad—a really profound turning point in my life that affected my whole life trajectory. Art became very much a refuge for me. My art became very dark at that time, and it was such a survival tool for me to cope with the very dark and lonely feelings that I had at that particular time in my life.

So again, these waves of nostalgia were coming back as I was painting and listening to this music and reconnecting to who I was at that time. And it all came back to this conversation that I had with a good friend of mine recently, just telling her what I was up to. We were catching up, and I was sharing this journey I’m on to rededicate myself to painting and creating and being an artist. Because I feel that I lost that person, and that person is who I am on such a deep and fundamental level. I’ve spent so many years of my adulthood neglecting, ignoring, and sometimes completely avoiding that person and being distracted by so many other things, so many other paths—which had their own value, of course.

Here I am, back in this moment. I’m sharing all this to say that who you are deep inside yourself and those things that are important to you—you know what they are. And you know whether or not they have a presence in your life. When you make the space to connect with those parts of who you are, you are so deeply honoring that piece of you. It moves you. It really does, and it will make you feel profoundly alive.

There are so many emotions connected to this because it makes me feel really happy to paint. I love it. It’s so much fun. And it brings up a lot of deep feelings of sadness and sometimes deep, deep regret. It’s all there to be acknowledged and honored and worked through, and I’m grateful I have these moments to confront those feelings and memories. To really make a point of honoring this part of who I am.

So I wanted to share this very real moment with you and these thoughts. This is all part of the journey, and I hope that it resonates with you in some way. And if so, I would love to hear about that. Thank you.

Post featured image by Patrick Fore on Unsplash