Rewrite the Kathy

I know how I should feel right now. I’ve written about it before…the joy, the relief of finishing a quilt, of making it through all the hours, the drudgery, the tasks. The deep breath, the sigh of relief. The empty space in your head waiting for another piece to rush in and fill it.

Fuck. I finished two quilts today. I’ve spent the last 6 months working on them (with other stuff in there too), and I feel…what do I feel? A slight release of pressure, of stress, because I made the deadlines…because they will be delivered to the photographer tomorrow and I did what I set out to do. I don’t feel joyous. I don’t feel happy. I acknowledge that it was hard work, that I achieved something, that I was successful, but for what?

I don’t know. I keep doing it because I want that feeling back, I want to feel that rush of good when I finish, when it’s done. I want that right now. I talked to the counselor about that magical step from where you are at the moment to where you want to be, when you are doing everything you are supposed to be doing, and you still can’t manage that step. She says it’s not magic, but she couldn’t produce a list of what to do next. She said to just keep doing, that eventually I would relocate that feeling…that I would allow myself to feel good.

Today? Today I do not feel like I will ever find that feeling. On good days, I persuade myself that if I just keep doing the right things that everything will be OK (fuck, I hate that phrase now, thanks to someone repeatedly lying and saying it over and over to me…bullshit it will be OK). Today was not a good day. It should have been. I was relatively efficient. I did all the things that were expected of me and more. I functioned fairly normally. Crying in the gym and on the walk from the gym to the tire place? Well, it happens…it’s not abnormal, but it’s probably abnormal that I still cry every day. Then again, it’s not abnormal for someone who is depressed to do that, and I have good reason to be depressed, so it’s not abnormal.

I’m not sure if I care whether I am behaving normally or not.

Sigh. Anyway, I spent 4 1/2 hours today sewing bindings on…

I finished Love (not) around 3 PM I think…and then moved on to the Celebrating Silver quilt.

I watched a lot of television today to get me through the sewing. At one point, the boychild came out and I said something about how it looked like I was just relaxing in front of the TV, sewing, and he said, no, he knew I wasn’t relaxing…I wasn’t. I was speed sewing…

Seriously…it was 4 1/2 hours of just poking holes…in fabric and my fingers.

Once they were done, I had to tape all the cat hair off of them…plus find the other one that now needs to be rephotographed for the book it will be in later this year.

It took about an hour to clean them up and iron them and roll them up in a clean sheet to take to the photographer tomorrow.

In between all this, I helped girlchild calculate her grade in biology and figure out what she has to get on the final to keep a decent grade in there, I picked up their dad from the airport returning from the UK for the second time in three weeks, I wrote a grocery list, I listened to the boychild giggling at whatever he was watching on the computer (it was The Daily Show the one time I looked, god forbid he actually study for finals), I went to the gym, and I replaced 4 tires on the kids’ car. Oh, and I graded all the makeup assignments that kids handed me yesterday. I still have to finish all the big projects from before break…they take forever to grade. I’m more than halfway through, but tomorrow is a giant clusterfuck, so who knows if I will get anything useful done then.

And all day, on and off, tears. I finished two quilts? Tears.

And it’s not just because of the holes in my middle finger (see the tip?) where the needle was bumping me all day…it’s sore right now.

What did you do today? I finished two major quilts. One took 48 hours and 39 minutes to complete, and the other one took 95 hours and 2 minutes. I wonder what normal people do with their hours, the hours I spend making art? I know they sleep more. They probably socialize more too. They might even spend more time staring at a television or mowing the lawn or cleaning house. I don’t envy them those. Why aren’t you happy about finishing them? Because the rest of it is empty. It doesn’t make the rest of it feel better. It doesn’t make me happy. I don’t have the magical pill to get to the happy. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck refuse to grab me by the hand and skip over the bridge to happy.

Yeah, I know it’s my job to get to the happy…and I know there’s something in me that’s stopping me from getting there. I just don’t know how to fix it. In talking about meds, the counselor admits to never having taken them herself. I have. It just pushes the emotions away, like over there. She described it as numbing the emotions. How will that help me get to happy? I’m already pretty fucking numb on a regular basis. I don’t see the point.

Anyway. I have a shitload of schoolwork to deal with in the next two days, but expect me to start something new this week. I think I will tape all the smaller drawings together and then pick one or two, plus the breast cancer one. So I should be numbering and tracing this week…knock on wood. I’m scared to death of down time. I don’t want to depend on my job for any level of satisfaction or joy. I can only hope that the art will eventually be my savior. I am so tired of feeling sad and empty. I have to believe that I will not always feel this way. I have to believe in joy and love and that feeling that used to come with finishing something like this, with finishing two in one day? I can go back through my blog and read how light-hearted I used to be, and wish I could be that person, erase the last 6 months, scrub my memories (one of the TV shows I was watching today), selectively pick who I am and how I feel. Rewrite the Kathy.