Happy Accidents

Why is it so easy to be so mean to ourselves?

Six months ago, I felt like a dry husk of a human being, like a sopping wet dish rag someone had wrung out and hung out to dry and completely forgotten about. Long Covid has left me intimately acquainted with physical fatigue, but what I'm talking about is soul fatigue. My spirit had been walloped so badly I couldn't peep even a flicker of light inside me. I felt washed up, burnt out, useless. I couldn't even write the simplest thing, and I've never not been able to write. For the first time in 16 years, I started to wonder if I'd made a mistake becoming a writer in the first place. I started looking for some refresher accounting courses and feeling out the job market for middle aged women who haven't opened QuickBooks in nearly two decades. 

Stacy encouraged me not to make any rash decisions, to take some time to just rest and heal and read and think. I agreed that was a good idea, and I decided to add drawing into the mix. I've never been able to draw, but my admiration for artists borders on worship. I've always wanted to be able to do it, even just a little, just a few cartoon dogs and cats maybe. So I bought a book called 15 Minute Art: Drawing by Jessica Smith and also one medium-sized pack of colored pencils. What came next kinda bamboozled me. 

I was not great at the 15-minute drawing projects, which wasn't a surprise; I've never really drawn anything in my life. But holy cats, was I mean to myself about it. I'm not talking about, "Dang, no one would be able to tell if that’s a strawberry or a duck, I'll try that one again tomorrow." I'm talking about, "Heather, you worthless garbage asshole, that's the worst god dang drawing anyone's ever done, you absolutely inept dick! A three-year-old could draw better than this! A buffalo holding a crayon in its mouth could draw better than this!" I mean, just endless scurrilous barking at myself about every single line, every single bit of coloring. 

Stacy was even more shocked than I was. I just don't talk like that. Not to or about anyone else, and not to or about myself. Like, ever. In the beginning, she was like, "Hey, be a little bit more gentle on you, okay?" And, "This is just for fun, sweetheart, you're doing so great." And, "Baaaabe, stop being mean to yourself." Which, after several weeks, escalated into real alarm: "Heather! Please! Stop!" She's known me for 13 years and she'd never seen me like that. And, again, I wasn't doing portraiture with oil paints or something. I was drawing blue chickens with Crayola markers. 

What made me quit being a monster to myself wasn't that it made me feel terrible. It was that I was really freaking out my wife, and I hate seeing her upset. I'd do anything to keep her from ever experiencing any negative emotion if I could. So I decided to get to the bottom of it and stop, just like she asked me to. 

I'll save the whys for later. For now it's enough to say that I kinda rolled over and gave up on protecting my brain and heart when I got sick, because I didn't have any energy to spare, and I was not existing in a good environment for that kind of acquiescence. 

So I kept drawing and I stopped being mean to myself. I stopped by saying, "Hoagie, stop!" right out loud every time I went in on myself with the negative self-talk. And then, I said a compliment out loud to counter it. Like this: 

Me: That line is crooked, you dumb bitch. 
Better me: Hoagie, stop. 
Best me: You really chose perfectly complementing pink and green here, Boo-Boo Bear. 

Me: Color inside the lines, jackass. 
Better me: Hoagie, stop. 
Best me: The purple zig-zags on those antelope horns add such a cute little texture, Kitten Toes! 

Me: That is the ugliest yellow I have ever seen. 
Better me: Hoagie, stop. 
Best me: I'll just add some red and — ah ha! Beautiful, perfect orange! You’re a color-mixing genius, Heather Anne! Basically an alchemist!

The more I did it, the easier it got — and then I started just complimenting myself without the rude lead-in. I drew and colored and drew and colored and drew and colored until I started getting a little bit good at it, actually. I even started sharing my drawings on Instagram and people said they were really cute. Pretty soon, I was drawing and singing and laughing and drawing and being so sweet to myself again. The kinder I was to me, the better I felt, which made me want to be even kinder, which made me feel even better. Drawing became my favorite thing to do, every single day, not because of the drawing itself, but because it was a time where I was sitting still and treating myself like I treat the people I love most. Like I was some kind of treasure, maybe. Like I was worthy of all the praise I was heaping onto my own head. 

Best of all, every time I sat down to draw, and my cat, Beth March, heard my colored pencils rattling around, she'd come sit right beside me with her paws on half my sketchbook, just purring away while I colored my little raccoons and pet her little head.  

In that softness, my spirit found itself revived, and I started writing again. Not just any writing, either. Writing like when I first began, all those years ago, excitement and silliness and love and magic. My creativity slowly started disentangling itself from the dysfunction I'd let it linger in far too long, and I could feel my imagination breathing deeply for the first time in so many years. Last night I finished a huge, huge writing project, one that could change my entire life, and I feel so hopeful about it. Not naively confident, but that kind of hard-won hope that boasts badass scars. The kind that says even if this dream gets batted down, I should keep dreaming anyway because I’ve failed before and I’m better for it.

I'm gonna keep on drawing and keep on praising myself because the only thing that really matters is that I'm having fun. Plus, the pages of my journals have never been so cute, cute, cute. 

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