It's official, I'm taking an art class... After years and years of thinking about it, and deciding not to for one way or another (always thought i wasn't good enough - that even though i like drawing, since I'm rather more of a cartoon drawing person, i didn't qualify as an artist- but there's a very good museum close, and i think I've fallen in love with the beauty here, because i long to be be able to paint it, so i got myself into a "plein air" class :) I've never been out in the open with people i don't know, in a different language, but i though it might be fun to try. What can be wrong, as long as i don't wear white, I'm safe from the buffalo flies, they said (i don't even know what the heck they are- but if i see anything flying towards me, I'm going to run. And scream. Like a girl) I get more and more nervous as the weekend approaches, it's been years since i took a class with a real teacher, and a real artist, and my girl awkwardness comes out again... I've been having thoughts i thought i ditched back when i was a teenager, but that somehow have come back out in the open in the past few days... What if they don't like me? what if they just tell me to pack and go, for i am the worst pupil they ever had?? what if... You name it. It can all be made into one word: FEAR. Fear to the unknown that lays ahead, fear to being less that the perfect standard that i have imposed to myself, i can't remember when or how... Why do i tend to judge myself more severely than i would other people??? I don't know, and i probably would never know. But I'm working on it, and by the grace of God, who gives me the strength that i lack to overcome my demons of pure and unadulterated fear, I'm being bolder now that I've been in years of being me. Not just the shadow under my parent's names, ME.
For those who know who i am, and who my parents are, they'll understand what i mean. For those who don't, I'll just say that both my parents are very talented people, both in their own personal way, but way more outgoing that their shy offspring. My father's famous in my country, a folk singer- my mother's famous in her own way, I've never been to a place (except here, of course) where they didn't know who she was. Both of them can sing, so people expected me to as well... Maybe that's why i don't. I was in every singing group there was in my school, and i can't sing a note. They just wouldn't give up, i guess. It was impossible that i couldn't, that i was different. And that's where my problem with my self image started. I wanted so desperately to be like them, that i forgot to be me, and got frustrated when i couldn't live up to the standards I had made in the first place. I've worked through it my whole life, and i think I'm getting better at it as i grow older, learning to enjoy ME, the person that God created, not the image i had of me.
When i moved here last year, i didn't think my doubts about myself would resurface. I'm a new mother, too busy working around the house and tending a toddler to have time to think about herself, right? well, i was wrong. Now that I'm here, forced to be ME by myself, I've learned that i do share some traits with my parents, that i can be friendly and warm like my mother, and funny like my father, two things i was too busy to recognize in my quest to be their perfect daughter, the person they wanted me to be...
That's why i went ahead and signed up to this class, even when i felt like a deer that had seen a car too late, i won't let the fear be the one that tells me what to do. Who knows, i may make some friends in that class, people that are like me, inadequate and quirky, but fun :)
That's how i want my daughter to see me, as a person that despite not being perfect, did the best she could with what she had, praising God along the way, and laughing at herself when she had to... Just a person that enjoys being herself :)
Ps. I took that picture with my cellphone camera... Can you see the geese flying?
