A Year Since, Part III

No matter how wonderful painting and drawing is, I am grieving a part of me that seemed so committed, while admitting that those "tired ofs" are there, and the "oulda sisters" exist behind that door. I visit the idea of doors closing and windows opening, and hold onto it. I am back to working on doors that seemed closed, but were left open a crack, for instance, my lifetime quest to make my own Tarot Deck with all of my new realizations, complete with 79 poems that have yet to be fully edited and loaded. Then there are people are asking me if I'd consider doing a special portrait for them! Of course, I would! I'm learning how to set that idea to a reality score of inner music. Composing a real plan for it. I am also in a place of learning how to look at the windows around me.

Rainy Afternoon, Oil Pastels on Archival Paper, 11" x 17"

Physically other doors that have closed and don’t seem to be cracking open are hearing in my left ear, feelings on the left side of my face, and taste on the left side of my tongue. This is due to nerves taking their time to rebuild connections, or not. Also, I had a grand mal seizure in December that has me off the road (you should be happy about this!) and that has in turn limited my ability to be a useful chauffeur mom, and to getting to anything but the grocery store when someone can take me. I really relate to Arab women and those under house arrest now. To be constantly accompanied is both wonderful and uncomfortably demeaning. Don't feel sorry for me. It is just a thing.

It also means that I have to make peace with being on anti-seizure medications for the rest of my life, according to all the neurologists I've visited, and this is a huge drag. Better than having seizures. Yes. That. But, I’m still fighting acceptance of this for the long haul. I give in for the time being. This means I really have to look at ways to make that work -- which turns out for me to be changing my lifestyle choices - diet, exercise, self-care, how to be a productive mom and person and ways to make a living from my home (back to writing??). Oy! Never ending things that fate has given me. Everyone has them.

To focus on what CAN BE DONE is the thing.  If you haven't seen "Silverlining Playbook," yet, this is where I am highly recommending it.

I can be a great mom somehow right? Even if I cannot be there to scoop up, to deliver... I’m looking for that purpose, and meantime realizing that my kids’ lives are not about me anymore in any way, shape or form. I realized this by remembering my love of the Bay City Rollers back in the day, and realizing that they've already grown past that time and I know I didn't give a shit what my parents were doing even then. They’re out there discovering themselves and experiencing things they’ll never share with me. This is what every mother goes through. The empty nest. I’m just getting an advanced, slowed-down, warning. You know, mother birds do not stay in empty nests. They return to an adventure of flying.

I begin flying by learning about being an artist from something other than my childhood. There are a FEW (Har, many) how-to books, classes and crafts (like how to frame and mat an oil pastel piece) to take in. I can take some of the business skills I developed as a freelance writer and editor and apply them to an art career. Heck, ten years or more in Consumer Products branding, copy and content ought to be valuable to an artist. It is not really like I’m giving up on my experience so far, I'm just changing its focus from writing about the visual to making the visual. Who knows? It may bring me full circle.

I can make my body stronger and less dependent on medication to prevent the brain from having a lightning storm, if I keep after what I know. I know I have to reduce swelling, and I know going to a low-glycemic practice, and to keep walking is part of that. Perhaps I will find more. It will be a step-by-step thing. It took me 32 tries to quit smoking cigarettes for good many years ago. I must be approaching that with quitting gluten. Let the 33rd try be the one that lasts.

C,G, Jung Laughs, Oil Pastels on Black Archival Paper, 19" x 25" 

I can face the failure/success question little-by-little, first by linking my work of art to a higher goal of preparation and exposure by entering into an art contest. (I tell all my screenwriting students to consider it a real step along the way, to submit their screenplays to well-respected contests). Maybe if you vote, I'll win something that could help me along the way, a "full studio" Super Shawn Taboret, a nifty piece of furniture that would make it possible for me to do professional level artwork at home.

I could learn that asking for help is not a bad thing. I could use your help. I would really appreciate your help. All I'm asking you to do is to click on the painting to the left. When you land at Daniel Smith's Art Contest, click to "Monthly Voting Gallery," and then go to page two. You'll find this painting about half-way down the page. I am putting myself out there to see what the next step might be and to challenge myself to get beyond a shyness I have about having my work seen beyond a hundred FB friends. I don't know what will happen, but right now I appreciate what I'm learning about what I can do everyday to sell myself tall rather than short. You, by the way, can vote once every 24 hours for the rest of February 2013, if you so choose. Please choose.

So to sum it all up, my year of recovery: My gratitude runs deep. I accept the bits I cannot change...mostly. I can turn away from closed doors and let go of clothes that don't fit. I can ask for help...and even accept it. I can be content by embracing curiosity and dislodging expectations. I don't know what tomorrow brings...

2013 © Amanda Morris Johnson

A Year Since, Part I

Part I

It has been a year since I went to St. Anthony’s Hospital at the crack of dawn and had
my skull sawed open, an incredible year in many ways. I survived. That’s the
first thing. I survived and have so much to be thankful for all that’s around
me. I want to review that for my own good, and to clarify that challenges can
be met. The second thing I have to do is to face that in the next six months
or so I’m going to know how far the healing can go, and I’ve already begun to
accept that there are now things that will never go back to the way they were
without a miracle.  Finally, I want to do something with this acceptance
besides sigh, I want to embrace what I can do instead of tripping over the
obstacles again and again.

When I announced that I’d been diagnosed with a brain tumor, a benign meningioma on my left temporal lobe, back in October of 2011, I was rather in shock to be
honest. Giddy almost, I was, that there was really something to blame for the
never-ending headache and messed up phraseology. It wasn’t all-in-my-head, but
really it was something and it could be addressed now! Then I had the challenge of
getting on the right medication to deal with it, and that was a four-month
ordeal I didn’t expect, but like everything in my life, it seems, sort of
slowed down the pace of my impulsive tendency to rush in. I need those slowdowns
to step right up often, and so they seem to do that.

During those four months I received a great deal of support from people all over the
world, and dove deeper into far flung friendships through poetry sharing and
commenting deep into the lonely nights. I so appreciate the willingness of
people I barely knew then to stand by me, even if only in cyberspace, and
listen to my moaning and groaning, cheer me up with good and naughty jokes and
hold my cyber hand. I did not want to visit in person that often with people at
that time. I did not have much vital energy for live chit chat, but I valued
not being totally isolated. What an awesome social web it was, keeping me from
falling into a chasm of despair.

Meanwhile, my family drew in and caught me when I fell and let me cry on their
shoulders when one medication after another turned out to be that list of side
effects they play out at the end of a commercial. The fact is I will never know
if I could have made it through this experience without walking my dog, without
knowing that I was needed by my kids for something or other, without long hugs
through dark nights. They were there and they helped me through, and that is it.

So, the surgery went really well, I still believe, even if it isn’t to this day
perfect. It took four hours. I felt immediately relieved of the grayness that
had been in my head for nearly a decade and was getting very dark up to that
moment. I could count, speak, write, talk, walk and eat. All is well. I went
home in five days. I laid around for a week or two, and took up drawing,
inspired by “My Stroke of Insight,” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, whose
book I read before surgery. I had the notion that if the pressure was off my
left temporal lobe finally, perhaps, that gave my right brain a chance, a chance
to finally get a word or an image into the conversation I have been having with
life.

Five hours after they sawed my skull open...might good hat!

Oh my!

2013 © Amanda Morris Johnson

Ten Days Later - Survival

As the evening comes on, I realize it really has been 10 full days since I woke up from brain surgery. So, first let me say, "Yes, I survived!" There is a lot more to say, and I find that specific words can be challenging off and on still, so I'll try to stay simple this entry. All in all my body is pretty healthy as I return to life's everyday experience. I can walk. I can point and write. I can cook and fold. I can see. My appearance is rather rugged at the moment; though even since this photo was taken a few days ago, my hair is already growing in. I am itchy as the drugs fade away.

There are some good challenges. For the first time in several years or so I want to exercise seriously, do yoga and move my legs and arms. The desire is incredibly deep and has nothing to do with vanity. In the hospital I started doing ballet bar exercises from my childhood when I was left alone. In the middle of the night I have been doing half hour yoga sessions on my daughter's mat in the middle of the living room. I feel like there is this new flow of energy through my whole body that hasn't really been around for more than a few years. I go for a walk in the morning and find it way too cold, though. So that's a surprise. Here I want to exercise, but having freezing air blow into me is completely shortened to the very minimum I can get away with because I can't seem to defend my body's temperature.

Temperature is a funny thing, too. Last week I ran a constant low fever of around 99 degrees, and I'm down now to 98 something. However my "normal" body temperature for years has been 96 degrees. This is all numerical and blah, blah, but the weirdest thing is that as soon as I am thinking -- like now -- I break out into a full body sweat. Does this mean my brain is working out? Maybe so. I am having to change my clothes several times a day, and wipe the scar and staples with a cool wash cloth to deal with the fact that thinking is a very hot business right now that seems to effect me top of the head to the bottom of my feet. I really hope that this will pass in a few weeks.

Thinking is interesting. I don't think with words mostly. Hmmm. It's bizarre. I look out and I have a conceptual understanding of whatever it is, but it takes a bit of time to come to words. Like this. This takes a little bit of extra time to come up with words, though I know I want to recognize these few things and say something that means what my concept is acting out visually. I dreamt of entire life sets for everyone and that has created a whole story in my brain, but I am unable to write it yet. I enjoy the pictures and the meaning of the pictures.

So, of course, I've been drawing. I've commented on some drawings and paintings on Facebook, too. I have appreciation for art. It has occurred to me that my life belongs to the arts so much more than I've allowed almost my entire life until now. For some reason I always thought I'd be more practical and my artwork was not terrific. But, now I kind of like my illustrations and moods and I am inclined to say that there will be more artwork now than there was before. I hope that is true. I really do.

Finally, I'm thinking about filmmaking and screenwriting yet again. I always think that I'm done with it and the fact that I now have three screenplays in mind after fits and starts for the past several years, I'm basically entertained by it. We'll see if the words will come back and explain these visual films I have in mind that explore the edges of the world we believe in and the possibility that just the other side of the door is a new world edge that we could embrace, or pass through on the way back, and that the way they all fit together is like the most amazing faceted gem in the Universe. We'll see.

So, that's it for now. I'll be getting the staples out of my head on this Friday and will find out what comes next. Thanks for keeping up. I need to go take a shower now and change my clothes.