Would you believe me if I told you my heart is pounding right now?

Sweaty palms.

I am nervous and really don’t want to do what I’m about to do, but it’s a necessity.

Allow me to regress before progressing forward …

As a small child, I loved art. I loved looking at it {still do} and I loved painting — drawing — anything I could get my hands on.

Then, pre-school happened. My love of making anything art related stopped the afternoon we were finger painting and my teacher scolded me. I can still clearly see the table I was sitting at with the other kids in my butterfly group {even then I thought group names for kids were stupid — way ahead of my time here}.

Now, in all fairness thinking about this as a rational adult, I’m willing to bet she wasn’t telling me my picture looked like shit, it was probably more the mess I was making. Or most likely the fact that she had to deal with 15 4 year-olds — hell, that’d be enough to make anyone lose it.

But little chillens can’t reason these things out. We just know someone is displeased.

I was crushed.

This theme continued throughout my entire schooling career. I felt like everything I did, was utterly f-d up, in the art realm. To this day, my stick figure people still look rough.

No, really, they do — I’m not just saying that.

My childhood BFF completed every single one of my elementary and middle school art projects. No joke, People. This was a well known fact.

I had zero confidence and it seemed others reinforced this belief, as well as myself.

If I said, “Oh, I can’t draw, I’m horrible at it”, the Brothers and my parents, fellow friends — they’d all nod along in agreement.

Again, I don’t think they were trying to hurt my feelings by any means — it’s just one of those things. Like how some people go through school saying they suck ass in Science and everyone goes along with it. Which, yeah, that was me, too.

My point is — we all do this about something. And then we find everyone else kinda just falls into the same agreement trap.

Now. Back to the present … as I’ve been meditating, another thought has continually been coming to me. Very strongly … to paint.

I’ve been ignoring it and nudging it aside for a few months now. And you know how when you try to ignore something, it just nags at you that much more?

That’s the case here.

I’ve been struggling with the inner dialogue of, I’m horrible, I can’t do it, it will look like shit. What if people laugh at me and think it’s childish, and so forth.

But.

I decided to listen to higher self here {since I’m trying to trust that higher self knows best}, and I went out, bought paint and some canvases.

Last night, I did this :

Return to pounding heart, sweaty palms, pre-school me, whose feeling extremely vulnerable by even posting this picture.

Who, at any point, feels like you can completely break me down by one wrong word. Hey, keeping it real … keepin’ it real.

And see, I know, this is completely irrational to hold onto this, to think this way. Just goes to show how strongly we carry these moments that shape us as children.

After I painted this last night … I thought … I’m going to share it. Part of me did not feel ready to go there, still in my delicate state, but the other part, was ready to move past whatever this b.s. is in my subconscious.

This afternoon, I showed TC, and held my breath.

I think his exact words might have been, “what the hell are you painting for and what the hell is that?”.

And People! Guess what! I wasn’t crushed! I laughed. Something in that instant, completely freed me.

I got it — it never had anything to do with anyone else and their opinions, which I held in such high esteem as a child, it’s everyone’s own shit that they carry.

For every time TC never supported my artwork, that was his own hurt as a child he was carrying on. It’s what we do by default, I think.

We’re all just trying to do the best with what we have, I truly do believe that. And I don’t believe we set out to intentionally hurt people, it’s just learned behavior, what we’ve been taught ourselves and our own deep wounds. When we can see that, we are freed … then we understand, it really never is about us — it is about what the other is dealing with.

And so, I’m going to keep painting, little by little. Maybe sometimes it might look good, or it might look what I could judge as “not good” … the point is, it’s time to follow through on the things that are speaking to me, putting myself out there.

For everyone to see.