My Turning Point

The art journal challenge for this week is by Trish (Artcmom), and I decided to try it. The theme is about a turning point, but I can't decide what my turning point is. Because writing is my thing, I decided to try to write through it and see what I come up with.

My very first thought was that my turning point was when my father died, or rather when he was sick and how the entire ordeal changed me...this event changed my hopes, dreams, and priorities. I think before he died, I was so naive. I was an only child who, despite all the rampant disfunction around me, had been told and taught that I was special. I wanted to act and sing and was such a dreamer before he died. I was passionate and poetic and, well, a lot more free than I am now. After he died, I went crazy for a while. I was a sophomore in college, and I did what college kids do. I drank way too much and I smoked way too much and I drowned myself in all the excess. And when I was done with that, I sat and stared at walls for a while. Then I did what he always taught me to do. I "bucked up" and got on with my life. I did what I was supposed to do. I made good grades; I calmed down; I became dependable again. But I think something in me was broken, or at least forever tamed. I didn't want to run off to New York and be in musicals anymore. Hell, it was years before I even wanted to sing again, really. Music was too much a part of my spirit, and if I tapped into that, I would have to tap into the pain, which I did not want to do. The point is this: The dreamer in me died when he died. What little bit of vagabond, free spirit I had in me was buried when he was buried...and I will never, ever be able to recover the bit of me that was lost--the naive view of the world. So, what I went after was stability, predictability, safety, and I found it.

Other turning points:

*You don't bring me flowers (age 4)
*Birth of son
*YaYas
*Natural childbirth