I hope that writing will help me to remember more. I am sitting in a coffee shop in Reims, next to where the kids go to school. I thought I forgot my wallet again, but I didn’t, so I was able to buy the small but good, overpriced coffee to sit and write. I keep having these packing dreams, airport dreams, what of them. In them I scramble to fill suitcases, in the rooms of strange, large hotels, quite suburban fancy but often a bit worn down. In one recent dream, the building was more of a residence, but the elevator, there was something very wrong with it. The floor was unstable, wooden, and balanced precariously, with gaps at the entrance and the rear. I think of all of the gaps, how they’ve always scared me, that idea of falling through the cracks. Terrified that I might just disappear completely.

I remember my airport photos from art school. They were so good, I thought. I still think so, honestly, but no one seemed to care then. An ex-boyfriend told me they looked like they were student work. I should have told him to fuck himself – what had he done better? Or at all? Sure, he dropped out of school and started a company and to build supercomputers, but what did he know about art? His definition was way different than mine, and that was fine by me, even interesting. Did I critique the primitive nature of the work he was so moved by? No, why would I, what would I gain from that, and what did I even know about what he was into, not much, except that it was science based, in a place between analog and digital, and I loved that. What did he know about feminist self-portraiture? About as much as everyone else – Cindy Sherman and her film stills. That’s all anyone ever had to say about my work, the work I fought to make, against the documentary and lighting profs who thought they knew what they were talking about. If you know, you know – it is the artist vs. the photographer. They are not the same, or at least they weren’t in the 90’s. I had the chance, the luck, the timing, to be in art school at the dawn of digital, in the years of change, between the future and nostalgia. I know what it means to make a photo, the lighting, the film, the developing, and the printing – the chemistry, the science, the analog algorithms that dictate what you can and can’t do. I was fascinated by the science, but from an artist’s mind.

I was an artist, first and foremost, and had identified as one since maybe around 16 years old. It was when I was first really grounded that I started to paint. I got a month for something, maybe my suspension from school for defacing an ex-friend’s locker with tampons and vaseline, maybe it was stealing money from my parents. I can’t remember now. But I do remember the peace and quiet of staying home and painting in the night, of being with myself, of knowing what to do by my own intuition, being guided by myself, my eye, my god, who knows, but I just knew what to do. During this time I painted when I wanted to be still and danced and when I wanted to be moving. Either way, I was alone with my music while my family slept upstairs. I was staying out of trouble, not drinking too much with strange harmless boys, or getting angry at idiot girls, I was just alone with myself, and it felt wonderful, peaceful, whole.

My parents must have grounded me that time for habitually stealing money from them, from their checking account. Having gone unnoticed for at least a month or two, they got Quicken. In the days before digital banking, apps, easy access to information, you had to do it yourself, on your big clunky beige PC stuck in the office corner. So they did, and they discovered a big hole where I’d been. They’d given me the PIN code once for a cash card, and I’d taken to taking money out when I needed it, for gas or cigarettes, a bit of food, perhaps. They had never taken the time to figure out an allowance. I’d had a job for awhile, my first, as a maid at a local motel. It was awful, I can still remember the smells. There there were two types of rooms, the redone and the not redone. They were both pretty awful, smelling of stale cigarettes, toxic cleaning products, misery, and desperation. I remember the girl I worked with on occasion, she was around my age, local, and probably never leaving. I knew we were different, worlds apart, even if I couldn’t put my finger on it then. With that job I’d had my own money, to fill up my little white car, but it was only for a summer and wasn’t sure what to do next. There were no conversations with my parents, no suggestions or guidance on what to do. I was just sort of there, existing in the same house as them, my basic needs provided for, but that was all. I still don’t understand how or why they were this way, and any hope of having conversations with my mom to understand is gone, forever. Now it’s just up to me to figure it out, to go back there, to unpack that, too, if I want. I would say that I do want, seeing as it has come up so easily today. So now what.

I think the thing that stands out to me the most, it surely did then, but without the awareness that I have now, is that my parents just weren’t that engaged with actual parenting. I did things I needed to do to get by, and I was lazy, not driven, but also depressed from everything, not the least being their laissez-faire attitude about being parents. Where was the pushing, the punishments, the overbearing, smothering guidance of the other parents, like those of my friends. Why were they so differen? Why were they so detached? Why didn’t they care enough about me to do things differently? What was the matter with them?

Now I know more, I get it. Things that I’ve learned, but also how the story continued, how it played out, how it has ended. I see now that it was not me, not at all, it was two very deficient people, together, in a very deficient situation, both too concerned with their past injuries to be present. Then, in turn, they caused more damage to each other, and to us, as kids. None of this can be changed, but I can try to look at it with open eyes, learned eyes, and see how I can stop repeating the same pattern, now, in my own family, and with my own partner, and children.

But hey, back to art school now. These streams of thought are so precious though, as if I let myself go, I can go oh so far to get somewhere deep and hidden. Hidden, but ever present, informing even today my actions. Free writing, arrives at the point so very quickly, wham – there it is. Now here I am, in a second cafe, this time in Rilly, and Bob Marley is on, stuck in a moment you can’t get out of it. How cent percent appropriate. So now, back to art school.

Cindy fucking Sherman. As if there is only room for one woman artist taking pictures of herself. One fucking woman artist. Meanwhile, here’s me, 19, 20, 21, in art school, after hitting not the but a rock bottom, after taking 2 years off, as I would later define in, between high school and college. In reality, it hadn’t been as much of a choice as a default, my only choice was to not participate, to drop the fuck out. I had been on a slow slide to rejecting the world around me my senior year of high school. I wanted nothing to do with you, all of you, your bullshit, and your unfair rules and practices.

In high school, my senior year, was kicked off of the dance team for having a nose ring in uniform. On my way to the parking lot from the football field, my coach crossed my path and saw, repeating to me that it wasn’t allowed. My answer to her was to take off my warm-up jacket, slapping it on the chest of my friend with me to take it and saying, there, I’m not in uniform. I was furious, it was 1992, and my face jewellery was seen as something that made the team look bad. Along with my alcohol consumption, and perceived sluttyness. My sexuality, because I was, even though completely inexperienced and inactive, was seen as flamboyant and unappoligetic. My mere existence was offensive, this is the message I received. Kids these days, they have no idea how different it is now, how much more they are protected. I am really showing my age now. There is still so much to do, so much progress to be made. In part, I am still that girl, that young woman, being told that her mere existence is not ok. Fuck that, fuck them, and fuck you for not letting me exist, to fight for myself as being just fucking fine exactly as I was, as I am. The irony being that there were so many others, doing so much worse, but they fit in, worked their whole young lives to fit in, and had parents show up and smile and have their backs. They fought to have a safe sexuality, a digestible femininity. I did not. I fought to express myself and my passion, my drive, my femininity and sexuality to be loud and proud, after years of being told I was the ugly girl by the same assholes that were clinging to any and every thread that attached them to being normal, I said fuck it, I’m going my own way. This is what it got me. Three days later I was called in a kicked off the squad. Three of my cohorts, my friends, my confidantes, quit too, in protest. That felt good, but I was still sad. I had lost the one thing that to me proved that I didn’t have to fit in to shine.

Two years before I’d seen the girls dancing at games and assemblies, while I sat in the bleachers up top and to the right, with the band. I’d thought, I can do that. I dance my ass off at home, I know the music, I have the moves, I can do that, too, and I made it. To my surprise, the veterans took me in, showed me what to do, and made sure I made the final cut. The second year, my senior year, I was made co-captain with three others. A few months later, I was kicked off, gone, forgotten. The worst part though, is that my parents didn’t have my back. They did nothing. My argument was that it was just jewellery that happened to be on my face. This argument would have allowed me to still be on the team but my parents didn’t even seem to react, to rise up, to protect me, to fight for me. They did nothing. I have sworn to myself to always stand up for my children, for their right to be who they are, in their world, to have acceptance. I am this way because I know that my expulsion was about way more than my nose ring. It was because of my audaciousness, my resolute belief in my right to be myself, this was the real threat to the status quo, and couldn’t be allowed in any way, shape, or form. And so I was cut.

This story goes on, but now it’s too much, too far away, too painful to remember. I feel this is the work of my life, It’s my work, just as mom had her work, her deep diving, as the hospice nurse explained to me. I am doing this work now, in hopes that I might have a better life while still here on this earth. It doesn’t pay very well, but it is the most important thing, the unpacking, the wondering, the realising. My god, what if this is the only point to being alive at all?

I have never felt the overwhelming drive or desire to be anything until recently, finding my vocation quite late in life, with the help of a spiritual source of sorts. Is this because I felt so overwhelmed, under water and drowning, from simply existing? I think I know the answer to this, and it is yes. Partly due to the emotional neglect of my parents, partly because of my own sense of clarity and sorrow and pointlessness about the world at large. My dreams were covered in the heavy wet blankets of depression from a young age, having also a very real sense of social paradigms, how they all functioned, in a pyramid built on the backs of lies and control, racism, sexism, and power plays. I don’t know how I saw it from such a young age, but it may have had a lot to do with PBS and my mother screaming back at the television a lot, sometimes in agreement, sometimes in argument. At least I had access to this learning, this education, the insular environment that to be quite fairly, moulded me into a thinking, seeing, intellectually aware young person. So I could see things, how they effected others, and also how they effected me. But just because I could see, didn’t mean I knew what to do. I was angry and rebellious, and rightly so, but didn’t know how to channel it. Then, while I was figuring it out, still suffering under it, grappling with it, I was overlooked, ignored, lusted for because I had finally come into my own. What a fucking trap, femininity. Now I know that there is almost no way to win. It’s all stacked against us. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t. We live in a slightly different world now, after Me Too and others pushed the bar forward in some ways for safety. But we have lost the guaranteed right to abortion. This I will not unpack today, because the rage is locked up in me like a tiger in a cage, and I don’t have time or the emotional energy to let him out today. Female rage, and so very much of it, where is its place in this world, in me? How do I expel it without hurting my husband and my children?

This will not be answered today, for now I must go on with my life as though it is normal, ordinary times. When in fact, it is not normal now, not at all, and it may never be normal again. I feel like a cicada pushing out of its shell. I need to make the long, low, aching and sad, melancholy moans of this ancient insect, as it is the end of the long hot summer of my life, and now I must enter this new season by shedding the skin of my past, emerging whatever new creature I will become, to continue on in a world that exists without my mother in it.