As I near the end of chemotherapy, I'm feeling more creative than I have in years. I've started to reclaim some of those creative parts of myself that I left behind because of my father. Unfortunately, my father was not only psycho, he was an extremely gifted person. His entire family had extraordinary talent in music and art. When I was a child, I thought he was an excellent storyteller.
My father was the most narcissistic person I've ever known. That's saying something, because I tend to attract narcissists in droves. Under my father's tutelage, I learned how to effectively manipulate them. But that's another story for another time. One of the ways my dad's narcissism manifested itself was an inability to tolerate anyone else doing anything better than he could. He had the artistic thing wrapped up and was probably somewhat gifted mathematically. I lost my interest in math very early because of some childhood incidents involving abuse. It was a terrible paradox. How to be good at things without threatening my father, who required high academic achievement from me.
Some things just got abandoned along the way, as a coping mechanism probably. I gave up art when I was around 15. I gave up music at about the same age. I hung on to my superior verbal skills, though I kept them to myself for the most part, unless I was at school.
I started to reclaim my math skills about ten years ago and finally came to understand that I'm not a complete math idiot. I'm actually pretty good at it. I never let my dad know that I had discovered my abilities. At about the same time, I decided to pursue my interest in science, specifically, the TOT and cosmology.
I gave up creative writing when I was around 30. That was more a result of a dearth of time and imagination than a response to anything my father did. This journal serves as a means of reawakening my commitment to writing, if only for my own pleasure.
About a month ago, I decided one night to draw one of my huskies as she lay on her bed in the living room. Suddenly it dawned on me that I used to draw pretty regularly and that I miss it. I also found myself led to learn how to create mosaics. I'm awash in creativity.
Before I started working again about 15 years ago, I used to spend a fair amount of time crocheting, knitting and doing crossstitch. I didn't stop doing those thing becase of my dad, but because of the heavy toll my job took on my energy level. I plan to crochet a throw for one of my friends at work. I've just been looking for the right pattern.
It's surprising and exhilarating to find the parts of myself that got lopped off along this journey. It's almost too much to bear. There are so many things I wish to do, so few hours in the day. I don't know where the surge of creativity has come from, but I'm embracing it with all my heart.
