It is a pretty morning, and Dave Matthews sings songs of love and life while I sip my morning coffee. My loved ones are home from their weekend getaway, and returning with them, the tension and stress of everyday life, notably absent while they were away. I am considering that, and perspective, this morning.

Much of my PTSD is related to family and romantic relationships, and associated with trauma over time, and small ‘inconsequential’ things that somehow destroy my sense of balance and calm very suddenly.  Fears that overcome me are often based on some historical detail that results in my utter uncertainty about whether or not I am still ‘rational’, whether my here-and-now experience is ‘real’.  The rapid swings between paralyzing panic and trapped-animal rage result in wildly unpredictable behavior – most of it  unpleasant.  One of my highest priorities right now is really getting that under control.  Strangely…’getting it under control’ is turning out to mean ‘accepting myself’, and my feelings, and not exerting so much control; giving up on forcing myself to comply with some arbitrary standard of performance in the face of my own suffering.  In the past, the ferocity applied to ‘forcing myself to be okay’ resulted in splitting headaches, problems with my blood pressure, anxiety and panic attacks, and fits of uncontrollable crying that would sweep up out of nowhere, leaving me feeling like I had, on top of everything else, failed to ‘control myself’.

“Myself”. My self. My self. My self.  Damn. Who am I? Where does my experience begin, where does it end? What is the boundary between what is me, and what is someone else? You’d think an adult would have this one mastered by 50.  Well, sometimes the answers to my questions, the understanding I seek, the resolution to a challenging problem, are inconveniently buried in the basics.   So, this weekend, in addition to being about ‘perspective’, is about applying an understanding of perspective, an experience of perspective, to the question ‘who am I?’

Sorting out the difference between what stresses me, and me stressing over other people’s stress, turns out to be more complicated than I expect.  I’m learning to ‘make room’ for my feelings, and learning to accept myself.  I’m also having to learn to take those new tools, and accept my loved ones, and ‘make room’ for them to have their experience, without that urgent need to intervene, ‘make it right’, ‘force it to work’, or ‘fix things’ sweeping aside the very things that make us individuals sharing a relationship – our unique and individual experiences that we are having, and choosing.

Sometimes words by themselves are not enough for me to gain real clarity.  Maybe I don’t have the right words, or enough words, or maybe I don’t choose them well, or define them with sufficient clarity.  I have painted a number of self-portraits over the years, and studies of my state of being in the abstract.  This morning it occurred to me to take a look at them all, as a body of work with a story to tell – a story to tell me.

“Portrait of the Artist’s Tears” 1984?

My shoddy bookkeeping tends to indicate this is my oldest surviving self-portrait.  A small work on watercolor, my recollection is that I was hesitant to make my unhappiness with life too obvious, for fear of making it a great deal worse.  The cries for help just kept coming…

“All I Am” 1985

Slipped between sheets of rice paper, stored in a box, shoved into the back of a closet for many years, “All I Am” stayed quietly hidden, along with my truths.  i struggled with myself, with my experience, with my PTSD – although I didn’t know then, what I struggled with.  I knew I wanted something else, and I knew my relationships were a core concern…

unfinished “Brownie” 1986

I clung fiercely to the illusions I loved most, hoping that somehow wishing hard enough would be enough…

“Waiting for Morning” 1986

It wasn’t enough, and I didn’t yet have the tools I needed to find peace, or clarity, and my cynicism and ancient pain overwhelmed me.  Futility became an everyday experience, and romantic love did not exist in my experience in any recognizable form…

“Marriage” 1987

Grim, bleak landscapes figured prominently in much of my work by 1987, and expansive vistas of far away places. I wanted to get away, but I lacked certainty about what I was running from, or to.  It wasn’t all tears and trauma, and even our worst trials may be interrupted by some wonderful moments.  Marriage didn’t treat me well, and love was pure fiction as far as I could tell, then, but…

“Lovers” 1991

I found love for the first time, later on. It, too, was a momentary interruption on a very scary ride through life, then.  It was something to hold onto for later, and that would mean so much…

“Joy” 1995

“Joy” is still my singular favorite self-portrait, because it speaks to me of that moment of wondrous realization that love exists.  It was a mundane enough moment, at the dining table, watercolors out, painting simple sketches of moments and feelings, and suddenly… joy, desire, love, passion, and a feeling of being filled with something powerful, something beyond me, and something that was – and is – profoundly positive and transcendent of pain, and chaos and damage.  If I had any thought I could ‘take it with me’, this is a painting I’d want buried with me – it is the best of all that I have within me.

Life is complicated stuff, and I have rarely been able to ‘hang on to’ the best bits.  I struggled for years, and did what I could to ‘keep it to myself’, even suppressing as much pain as I could through Rx psych meds. The next self-portrait I painted was from within an altered state so profound that I got lost, all the pieces of me separating as mists and fogs, dissipating and leaving me alone, and naked with who I had become…

“Separated from Self” 2010

I began making profound changes to, well, almost everything, shortly after that point. Life as it was couldn’t be borne much longer, and it was obvious, even to me.  I can’t take credit for being a willful adult being making reasoned changes… I’ve got to be as honest as I can on that one. I began grabbing any foothold and laying waste to my moment, to my status quo, hanging on to what felt like a change for the better with real ferocity, and discarding anything that hurt… and of course, circumstances, life, and the free will of others in my life threw assorted changes into the mix, too.

“Communion” 2010

I experienced profound love – that magical, amazing, wondrous sort of love often promised, rarely found.   Of course, life rarely limits our unexpected circumstances to the ‘magical, wondrous’ variety…

“A Ratio of 13 to 1” 2011

A sudden, unexpected, unsought career change resulted in anger, insecurity, and… freedom. I was suddenly free to make radical new choices about that pesky ‘who am I?’ question, free to redefine myself, willfully, as I came off the psych meds and regained my soul, and my intellect, and began to develop a sense of self that didn’t rely on any evaluation but my own.  Damn, that sounds awesome when I read it.  Actually, it sucked.  It sucked a lot, and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve undertaken, and more than 2 years later I am still working on it – although it is now as much a joy and delight, as a challenge.  There will never be enough ‘thank you’s’ to give to the dear ones who have been there for me throughout this incredible period of growth.

“Taking Another Look at Me” 2011

I have re-examined myself from a number of angles since then…

“His Bitch II” 2012

Who am I as a lover? As a partner? What is sex to me, now? Can I  put my demons to rest?

“Agent of Chaos” 2012

Can I ‘get it under control’? Can I ‘figure it all out’? What’s wrong with me? I continued to struggle, and somehow the things I expected would help me… data… analysis… writing in my journal… seemed to be making it all so much worse.  I was ‘spinning my wheels’ and not getting anywhere… I stopped writing. I stopped painting. My soul seemed to be stalled. Hormones. Relationship challenges.  Choices and actions that didn’t align to values I thought I had.  The chaos and damage were taking over, the wreckage in my head was becoming the experience in my life… I felt utterly lost.

“Broken” 2012

At the end of 2012 I painted “Broken”. I was trying to say… something. Trying to explain what it felt like on the inside, to communicate something I couldn’t quite seem to put my finger on… and as 2012 became 2013, I found out about the brain injury I had received as a tween.  (I still don’t remember it in any concrete ‘this is my experience’ sort of way… but the crack in my forehead refutes any desire to wish it away now.)  The new information, and beginning therapy more appropriate to my experiences and needs, kick started 2013 as a year of growth – and real healing.

These are who I have been.  I am somewhere new, now, getting to know this amazing being that i am… facing my world, my life, my experience with real hope, and real healing… I look at these self-portraits now, and it is tempting to be frustrated that I wasn’t listening to me, but I am done punishing myself for what has been, and waltzing endlessly with my demons.

I painted “Perspective” this weekend.  It isn’t as much a self-portrait as a meditation, a reflection on a bigger picture, a useful skill, a necessary step in the process of ‘knowing’ – or unknowing – what is, and what is not, and what may be.  I am 50 this year, and there is a lot to celebrate, to observe, to experience.  Soon… a new self-portrait.

I am learning that ‘who I am?’ is not a question to be answered with words.  🙂