Can’t sleep again. Thinking about family relationships and difficult and sticky they are. On the way to Alicante turbulences were so sudden and heavy my son went pale, my daughter started crying, people behind us were praying and I started squeezing their hands an repeatedly saying: everything will be ok, “I love you very much, this is only a rollercoaster like a fun fair!” while simultaneously thinking: “this is how it ends, we’re going to die now” yet as soon as it ended and we felt. fine again, we all went back to our ipads and watching mindless crap that makes you forget everything you just felt so intensely. Why is it that we only realise how much we value someone when we’re feeling we’re about to lose them? Why is it so hard to live everyday knowing you could die and therefore enjoying each day truly and deeply? I realise I find it difficult to show my family(other than my children) I care about them. But I also see how difficult it is for them. How hard it is for my parents to be themselves around my husband and vice versa. How many hidden fears, how they all are trying to control themselves, to “be nice” and how pissed off I constantly feel at most of them rather than filled with love for them. It’s like we all live on different planets thaat sometimes seem to pass one another but without true connection. And while I sometimes seem to desperately be longing for that connection I simultaneously just want to be alone, left in peace. While on holiday trying to connect with my daughter by teaching her how to knit. She gets frustrated so quickly, but she’s only 8. Trying to connect with my mother, who has stories she still wants to tell me but she’s also busy working and trying to spend time with my brother who recently moved out. I try to connect with my husband but we so often seem to be disconnected. Trying to have a conversation with my stepdad and stepbrother in the morning and end up mostly disagreeing. Is it me? Maybe it’s something wrong with me that’s causeing me to be irritated and unable to communicate peacefully? I feel like I need to be fighting for something the whole time: the fight of my great grandmother, grandmother, mother and mine, for my daughter to have an easier life. But I think I’m failing. Dancing with my daughter was so fun today yet I was not in the moment, I kept watching my husband having too much fun while on the phone to his friend. And then my daughter asked if I enjoyed dancing wuth her. I hope my yes was reasurring enough but I feel I should have said more. Whatever I do it never feels good enough. I’m crying now writing this. So responsible and simultaneously so not ready for this weight.
So I’ll just keep making sugar water lace shapes on rocks. Being creative is the only thing I seem to be able to do without constantly feeling like a failure
Looking at my son and his joy of exploring, it’s so wonderful to watch him and so difficult to fear it might be over as soon as he starts high school, gets new friends who live inside their phones. Why do find so difficult to trust things might be ok for my kids?
Maybe it’s my dad’s depression getting to me, I want to try and take control over my mind and steer it towards positivity. I want to be more affected by my kids youthful joy than my parents aging. Worried about my own aging and perimenopausal sleeplessness. Torn with generational duality. But also so disgustingly self absorbed. Is that what it means to be an artist? Why do other artists seem so happy?