In May we discussed forgiveness. It wasn’t about forgiving other people, though others – everyone – was given as a point of reference. Our talk was about forgiving ourselves.
“Unprecedented times” has been the tagline for the year. As an artist this phrase was used time and again by those around me to excuse my lack of productivity. Originally, I had intended to make this a year for “finding myself”. I had just left a half-baked degree at my hometown university and was spending my days working part time and trying desperately to immerse myself in my art. For a bit of context, I’ve always been pretty hard on myself, coming from a family of over achievers, and for the greater part of my life my mental health has reflected that. I just can’t help it. While this trait has afforded me plenty of great opportunities in life it certainly makes enjoying them just as difficult. In terms of headspace, quarantine was no different. When the lockdown began here in Kamloops I was determined that my artistic side should be thriving. I was living alone and my work had put me on an indeterminate leave. Utter solitude followed. It was an entirely freeing and terrifying feeling that permeated my daily life at that point. I spent the first weeks of lockdown at my computer drawing nothing and everything. I played music constantly to fill the silence. I ordered in food whenever I remembered to be hungry. Occasionally my mother or my sister would call or text and I would clear my hoarse voice to sound energetic and optimistic. I’m making so much progress with drawing. Of course, I’m eating. Yes, I’ve been on a walk recently. And they would play along with only minute hesitation. It was entirely unhealthy.
Ridiculously, I couldn’t understand why I was starting to hate everything I drew. In retrospect it seems so obvious – why in the world did I think that sort of lifestyle could be productive? But of course, when you’re in it, it seems to make so much sense. I could commit all my time to my passion, what could be wrong with that? But 2020 vision doesn’t help much in retrospect.
In April I stopped drawing. For all my intents and optimism, I had bludgeoned my passion for art into something almost unrecognizable. I excused this sick feeling in my gut with the busyness that came from a newly re-established work schedule that now had me compensating for a lack of manpower. I was just tired. Exhausted. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to draw, I just didn’t have the energy to commit to it. I tunnel-visioned, explaining my condition away with the looming state of the world. No one around me would question it. We all felt it. Still feel it. Unprecedented times.
For so long I refused to look at the situation as it was. I had been so determined to hold myself to a standard of productivity when all I was achieving was burning myself out, and I just couldn’t let it go. I had been so restless to do well when there was nothing for me to do. I can look back on things and see some humour in my efforts, even if that’s a little absurd, but I know at least I’ve adjusted to things a little more. Progress, right?
It was in May that we talked about forgiveness. My mother was finished playing along with my feigned optimism and insisted I talk to a professional. So I talked. I talked about nothing and everything, about what my life had been and what it wasn’t. I talked about loving art and hating it. On a bright, warm day in May we talked about unprecedented times and forgiving ourselves. Initially I had recoiled at the idea. I didn’t want an excuse for the way I was. But she returned to me with a question: If my best friend or my younger sibling or a coworker or a stranger even confided in me tomorrow that they just couldn’t enjoy things like they used to, that they were struggling to get things done, that the pandemic had gotten to them in way that affected them profoundly, would I blame them? Would I question their character, think of them as weak willed? I told her of course not, how could I, with the state the world was in. She smiled at me and told me I wasn’t to blame, I wasn’t weak willed, that she could never think as such when the world was in the state it was. She asked me if I was willing to forgive myself for doubting my own character. I was taken aback – it felt like such an obvious reversal – and suddenly things felt a little easier to grasp. She instructed me to rest and try again. Before, what had felt like giving up, now looked to tired eyes like starting new. I told her that I could do that. I would.
And I did. Unprecedented times – a phrase I had so despised now gave me a way to reassure my best friend, my younger sibling, a coworker. It’s been hard for everyone, in different, varying ways, but we share in the novelty of it. Changing, adapting, grieving, or celebrating, the ways in which we do so have transformed with us. My art and I healed together, over time. I don’t approach it like how I used to – I don’t force it, I let it come and go with freedom. Over time it comes more easily, pulled into reality more readily. Times are still hard, still unprecedented, but a sense of ease and forgiveness has permeated my life since. I’m still hard on myself, of course, I want to do well. I know this about myself and yet, with everything that has happened this year, I also know that I am never alone in it. If this sentiment can offer some ease on a particularly hard day than that is plenty to hope for.