π Have you ever kept a piece of art that made you uncomfortable?
Last Updated: 3Β months, 3Β weeks ago
And possibly even because it made you uncomfortable?
My Collection of Notebooks
So I have a lot of notebooks, despite having gone through Marie Kondo's process. I shall probably write more in future on the konmarie method and how it in fact has changed my life, but right now what I want to focus on is the notebooks.
I have a picture of them right here, and in my opinion they're still arguably too many notebooks in the sense that I don't know what to do with all of them quite yet, but I do like them and since they all either sparked joy or were immensely practical, I kept them, and I am sure that I will find a purpose for each of them in good time if I can get past the anxiety of ruining a blank page with my less-than-perfect ideas or creations.
My collection of notebooks (and some stickies)
On that note - ah perfectionism, the initial cause of perhaps as much as two decades of analysis paralysis when it came to creating, well, anything of my own volition... until my recent commitment to start writing.
And I could write (and intend to write, and in fact am writing, as I've mentioned) a full post about the self-defeating pressure of the cycle of perfectionism (at least how I experience it) ... which will hopefully be out once I have finished working past the stress of confronting those topics, as I have mentioned before in my above-linked post. And that delay may in itself be partly due to perfectionism, which is an effect of my performative upbringing's resultant trauma.
At least the article on how to get started doing something creative everyday is up.
But I digress.
The Notebook I Inexplicably Can't Throw Away
There is one notebook among these that stands out for me in an uncomfortable way. It is this one.
This is the front of the uncomfortable notebook
This is the back of the uncomfortable notebook
Unlike the others, I didn't keep it because it sparked joy and familiarity and made me feel all warm and comfy in its presence or warmed my home space. I think?
For some reason, I just can't bring myself to throw it out.
And this uncomfortable notebook, not the many I do absolutely love and cherish and have so many, TOO many anxiety paralysis-inducingly perfectionistic ideas for utilising optimally, is in fact the reason I ended up writing this article in the first place.
See, I had so many ideas of topics to write about today which I wrote down in Google Keep (probably another tool I'll be singing the praises of in a separate article in future), but then my eye fell on this one particular notebook, for which I made the cover myself.
My Notebook's Uncomfortable Origins
I guess the negative association is that I made it while staying in a mental health clinic, as part of some expressive artistic exercise or other. I can't remember the purpose behind the exercise, if there was one. I do believe it was something to do with self-expression.
Unfortunately, the patients I initially befriended there weren't kind people, the warnings of the nurses against becoming too attached to other patients while in this type of environment supposed to be focused on personal vulnerability and painful and difficult self-healing now make a lot more sense and to be honest, even writing about that experience is a memory I'd rather avoid.
My mind also tells me that rationally, having to go to a mental health clinic means this was a difficult time in my life and that celebrating this cool notebook I made feels like trivializing the importance of mental healthcare or "rewarding" myself for my struggle. I know that this latter thought too comes from my performative upbringing from both my parents and the cult, where feeling one's negative feelings or allowing oneself some slack were seen as weak, immoral and unhealthily indulgent.
Perhaps I even feel guilty for going to that particularly expensive establishment that my insurance, fortunately, was government-obligated to cover. This guilt too may be partly or largely due to that aforementioned performative upbringing.
I also have further bad associations with that clinic stay in that my admission process during this time was assisted by a person I was enmeshed with who was abusive towards me and whose past involvement in areas of my personal life now feels utterly inappropriate.
In some other words, it was controlling, meddlesome, manipulative and weird.
Similarly to my mother, he crossed and re-crossed boundaries blatantly, flagrantly and casually, with no regard for prior clarifications or establishment of ground rules - when they were even acknowledged.
My mental health struggle was also unsurprisingly due to massive upheaval of my life, involving unemployment, isolation, and abuse from multiple directions - including on-and-off estrangement from my relatives. This brought on a lot of existential fears, trauma, and further re-triggering of past underlying traumas some of these were built on.
And yet... I can't throw this notebook out, despite it being from a part of my life I prefer to not think about (but it now seems, really should).
Why?
My Notebook's Aesthetic and Artistic Contradictions
I can't deny that my feelings may simply be surface-level; a conflict between my approval of its aesthetic appearance contrasted with my discomfort at its texture.
On the one hand, there is the uncomfortably too-smooth-yet-sticky artificial, almost clinical, sensation of the lamination work I did to protect the cover, which makes me feel subtly weird every time I touch it, as if it is meant to be clean and sterile, not comfortable.
Is it that it reminds me of looking at glossy magazines while waiting in a doctor's office trying to convince myself that this is fun? Probably. Actually, it reminds me more of the plastic cover over a bed in a doctor's office for examining patients.
This sensation and association contrasts with my attraction to the surface-level aesthetic and what it depicts. I loved whales as a child and have never stopped loving them, those fascinating, massive creatures. The ocean, too, has always held a special place for me, hence my love of coastal towns, and in that picture the ocean is a particularly beautiful colour.
Seeking some Hidden Message
I can also try to post-rationalise some symbolism into it, as the brain is wont to do.
In which case, let's start with the overt messages: The whimsical notion of just relaxing and blowing bubbles, as the text says, does sound idyllic. Whales and hippos lazing about both convey that relaxed sort of state, at least when humans see them on the surface of the water from afar. (Though a survival PSA to any safari-seeking tourists out there: hippos, as the second biggest killer animals after mosquitoes, are anything but docile. You certainly should not take their yawning as meaning they're just feeling sleepy - it is actually a sign of aggression.)
Maybe it's that, in combination with the words, that somehow reaches me.
"Turn and face" ... what, exactly? Some may assume this meant "face your fears" as the obvious conclusion, given I was going through a mental health crisis and struggling on mental fronts.
It's true, perhaps I sensed this back then while making the cover - that I should have faced some of these things more back then, and perhaps I should be doing that more even now. I'll add: I'm trying. I have CPTSD and I'm working on processing it. With self-therapy, which is all I can afford as it's free, it's hard to know when I'm "being safe and recovering and taking self-care" and when I'm actually avoiding and getting distracted, potentially as an online lifestyle and livelihood can itself have its own destructive effects. Maybe I should start looking into free group-therapy options.
But to me, what these words spoke of was opportunities waiting behind me when I was facing the wrong direction, looking the wrong way.
I often feel like I'm not sure where I fit in, or what my purpose should be. Perhaps I shall find that with writing, but perhaps there is more to explore. We shall see.
What I have learned is that one cannot remain in one's head without doing anything. I have learned that very well, and I think this, in fact, is what brings us to the root of it.
Beyond the Surface: The Medium is the Message
But before we get there, there's another level to it now which I also draw to mind. Those clippings from magazines, which we used to make those notebook covers, within an allotted timeframe of 30 minutes to an hour: those were me - the best I could do or be - in that moment.
Literally in that moment and metaphorically in my life, society gave me certain tools, and I used them. They were limited, and I did the best I could in the moments I had, to create something. Even though it was imperfect, limited.
That has been my life as an ADHD kid not really fitting in, as someone who didn't really feel understood but felt solace in creativity as a means of expressing, somewhat, what I felt through writing, music and other artwork.
It wasn't perfect, hell, in many ways it wasn't even adequate. How can you express the sum total of a person?
But it was helpful, it was enough in a way, because it was something, and that made all the difference in helping me overcome the loneliness, existential anxiety and the fear of disappearing off the earth without a trace and leaving nothing to show I had been there.
But there was something more to it than the outcome. It was meditative and calming, it felt satisfying and fulfilling to impart that something apon the world, to give of myself and express how I felt in physical, tangible and otherwise perceivable ways
It wasn't the creation itself, it was the process of creating.
Imperfection is the Key
At least, that's the way I'm approaching writing nowadays in removing all pressure to be perfect and knowing that what I will do will never be enough. But in accepting that and in doing something, anything, whether out of joy or just because... That IS enough.
And so I realise what I had no concept of when I first started writing... that my exploration of this concept in writing this article has led me to finding the answer to why creating art is so important, even though it is not perfect.
As one of my favourite characters in a series, Entrapta, the scientist princess from She-ra and the Princesses of Power said, "Imperfection is what makes scientific experimentation possible! Imperfection is beautiful... at least to me."
I will add that imperfection makes not only scientific experimentation possible, but makes art possible too; if we can only embrace it and move beyond the need to be perfect.
And for that reason, imperfection makes growth and healing happen too.
Imperfection is how we progress.
Imperfection is something we can accept and even appreciate.
I may be standing on the edges of uneven stepping stones and uncertain where my feet will land, or whether I'll stumble sometimes, but stepping forward still feels better than being swept away by the current.
_
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