10 Things You May Not Know About Me

1. Once I know something ~ a tidbit of news, a secret ~ I somehow assume that everyone else knows what I do. Makes keeping secrets for me stressful (not to mention potentially dangerous for others) and also leaves me feeling distinctly unspecial. Or humble. Somewhere between those two. It also makes creating lists like 10 Things You May Not Know About Me difficult since on some level I think I'm so obvious that everyone already knows many more than 10 things about me. Circuitous.
2. I have synaesthesia. However I have probably the most common form of it. And I simply can't imagine NOT having all these colours involved in my daily life.
3. I see photographic opportunities all around me daily, but have difficulties acting on them.
4. I can become paralyzed by my perfectionism.
5. I think I should be living elsewhere. I have difficulty feeling 'at home' most places.
6. I secretly suspect that I deserve all the goodness that I have right now. I'm okay with this feeling, but I don't know how to express it without it coming off as arrogance.
7. I don't believe we have a soulmate, and I don't believe we can have only one great love.
8. I do believe that human beings ~ as a species ~ are incredibly resilient.
9. I know I don't have all the answers yet. Nor does anybody else.
10. I think depression and anxiety disorders are on the opposite side of the coin to creativity. They co-exist, and help each other.

no title will do justice

Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada's 145 birthday. Living in her capitol allows me and my family to indulge in some really great Canadianna... not sure how much or exactly what we're gonna do today as of yet; there's a cousin's birthday and party at his place. With this heat that may be it for me until the cooler evening and fireworks!


My husband has to attend a funeral though. I'm incredibly sad. Actually, I'm immensely angry. The anger supercedes the sadness. She was slightly younger than I, three kids under 10 years old, taken by a bitch of a cancer in ten months. 


And that? That is. just. plain. WRONG.

synchronicity and synaesthesia

I have synaesthesia. I'm sure I've written about it here before, but can't find that post and I'm lazy so I'm repeating myself. I'm a lazy, untidy synaesthete. Synaesthestian. Synaestheseologist. (huh, none of those triggered spell-check)


Note to self: must go back and tag some labels onto posts cuz now I'm cranky that I can't find where I wrote about my synaesthesia.


And, just to take my geeky nerdiness a bit more pedantic, I have chromatographemic synaesthesia. Or grapheme --> colour synaesthesia. Or letter-colour synaesthesia. I associate colours with letters. But don't feel too sorry for me, this is the most common form of this particular neurological glitch. 


A glitch that I didn't even know about until well into adulthood, and a glitch that I cannot imagine living without. 


But more recently, I've come to realize how important colour is to me. Now when I need a cheery moment to pass me by, I find a lovely colour combination to make me smile. I've started to collect certain colours too. 


By the way, this guy does a bang up job of describing this type of synaesthesia.


So I was extra special curious to see just what my colour perception would be, and jumped in both feet when I saw this test on a recent Apartment Therapy post.

Good thing I studied... I got zero. Perfect colour vision!

lexicon needed

You know, there should be a term for what happens when you go online to look something up and then next thing you know TWO HOURS have spun around the clock and you've forgotten exactly why you opened your laptop and the battery is running down and you're lost somewhere in the tangled branches of the internet tree.

thirTEEN

Maeve, on her 13th birthday

a rebirth? no, not that.

Once upon a time there was a young girl. Let's say she's 10 years old, living in a large multicultural city nearby. Despite everything, life really sucks. She's got two parents, a fairly stable financial situation. 


Gets pretty good marks, even though she seems to not do as well as expected. She has siblings, someone to play and argue with. Friends at school. Doesn't cause problems.


So, what I'm saying is: things could be so much worse. 


Eventually she grows to adulthood, having learnt how to deal with her anxieties mostly by herself. And then things start to fray, and she is compelled to live a better life. 


And she does: she gets better, moves ahead with her life. Doesn't become bitter, mean. Learns how to juggle vulnerability and strength. 


So now she looks okay. To her family, to the world around her. Proof that her parents did a "good job" raising her. Right? No. Not at all. In order for her to heal, the grownup young girl has had to put aside the needs of her younger self: packaged them up and squirreled them away. Secured, and personal. Those unfulfilled needs have only made her sick. 


But this looks the same to her parents as if everything had been rosy in her childhood. So do her parents think that they did a great job? Probably, but don't care what they think. But I do care for that young girl: she's had the short end of the stick twice. Once as a child, and now as a memory in adulthood. 


"I'm sorry." That's what I'd tell her. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And I've said all that to get to this thought: now what? 


If you've spent so much time and energy healing and all that, and then you achieve it... then what?? If one spends the bulk of ones's life... occupied... with a project, and then the seemingly neverending project actually comes to an end... 


then what?? and: how does one honour her presence without living and carrying a grudge the rest of the time...

week eight, unravelled

This is something I thought I'd never see: a self-portrait. Even more surprising was how quickly I got used to seeing myself. I guess the course title ~ Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self ~ was very aptly named!