On Being Creative

It’s my belief we are all born creatives. As soon as I remember being a child, I felt strong stirrings of creativity. It was constant. I was always colouring and drawing, exploring the many uses of construction paper. My favourite colour was blue. 

I was excited to start Grade 9 because high school, as I saw it then, was going to be a wonderful new world full of neat stuff, a time to tend and grow the teen creative. But it was all squashed by him. Yeah, that guy, the abuser.  He saw me as something to be used and controlled.  I wasn’t allowed to take art, pottery, or painting classes, or God forbid, shop classes. I was to take typing and shorthand, business correspondence and home economics. Even now as I type these words I feel a sense of loss, a grief that brings tears to what could have been.  

And, as far as writing goes, it was never in my mind that I would be a writer.  Outer space talk. Way beyond my imagining, writing was for the kids who sat in the front of class and answered all the questions I couldn’t wrap my head around, or care to after being laughed at.  The embarrassment came when I gave a literal answer, which was obvious to me, to a question that was seeking the deeper, underlying meaning to some poem or Shakespeare verse.  I can’t remember. The humiliation drove me to the back row where I sulked among the other shunned souls, the ‘losers.’

In a moment of defiance, I went to my Guidance counsellor to move from the five-year University program to the four-year work, College path.  The answer was no.  Not surprising, because I needed his permission. And, convenient for him, the counsellor was his motorcycle riding buddy. It meant five years in high school.  Five years at home with him.  I rebelled the only way I knew. I shut down. I failed English. I failed Math.

But I didn’t fail typing or shorthand or business.  I even passed home economics because I somehow knew, deep in my gut that I needed to graduate high school.  In my fourth year I worked out a plan where I could still fail AND graduate at the end of year.  I’d be able to get out of town, say goodbye to home, to him.  It worked.  I left with $20.00 and a suitcase and got my first job in Ottawa as a secretary within a month of leaving.

My leaving town was 45 years ago.  Picture the measuring tape of life, the lengthy space between 17 and 62.  Sure there were tough times, like rehab and hospitals, depression. But good things happened too. I got sober, married Paula, went back to school several times, got educated, travelled, built a house, became a tradeswoman, teacher, artist, writer, and volunteer. And if you believe, as I do, that being born creatives also makes us the artists of our own lives, then my life has been full, a piece of art, a body of work to be cherished and further nourished.  So, when I look at the inches left, I feel the excitement of my teenage creative. There are writing projects to complete, more fields to search for rusted inspiration.  I want to learn how to bead, and I have this idea of re-shaping the sturdy tines of a hay rake into a basket.

It’s a good life.

With blessings, love and light,

Lorrie xo