I live in a 400 square-foot house that is a mashup between the world’s biggest dog crate, a Montessori School for the AARP set, and the art wing of a psych ward. From my bed—where I do my writing—I can look out and see the Stations of the Uncross, areas I have set up to keep my body occupied so that my mind can get a break.
Because I have not yet mastered time travel, I can not return to my childhood and attempt to undo the severe damage done to my mind and brain courtesy of violent abuse every day of the first eighteen years and eleven months of my life. (I ran away at that point.) I don’t dwell on this damage as a means of slurping from the Chalice of Disaster hoping for perverse dopamine hits in the remembering of traumatic events. My problem is, I can’t not remember it and, having a steel trap memory means the unbidden mind movies play on loops.
But I’m not here today to give a long lesson in the PTSD mind, the chemical wackery, the difficulties in navigating the “normal” world. Instead, I share with you my cheapest solution to date for dealing with the demons. Very simple, fully accessible to me at all times, doesn’t cost a cent.
The cure of which I speak is this: Fucking Up on a Regular Basis.
I’m not sure when I crossed the border from self-flagellation to nonstop giggling whenever I make a mistake. But I can report with authority, the weather here in Fuck Up Land is far more clement these days.
When I was a child, I was taught that all things are to be given equal weight. So, for (real life) instance, if a soda can exploded randomly, my “father”—I call him Dutchie—would act as if one of his nine kids just wrecked the only running car, while two others connived to overthrow his evil reign, and the other half-dozen no doubt were somehow in on it. Nothing was a minor event in Dutchie’s eyes and everything, everything that he did not like was labeled as a personal affront. He took this POV to such extremes that once, instead of simply moving his parked truck to another spot in the yard, he cut down the one tree he had, because, he said, the squirrels perched in it and spit walnut juice on him. (As he told this story, a squirrel indeed spit a wad of juice, which hit his hat brim, breached the edge, and rolled down one of the lenses in his glasses, while he, not moving, simply said, “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”)
I have worked really hard in therapy and through meditation and self-help studies to unlearn that shit. Most days, unless I am completely triggered, I can easily see the difference between a grazed knee and Stage 17 cancer. Still, I can slip back into catastrophizing with relative easy, so I must practice to fight this off.
As it turns out, through pure stumbling, I discovered that the more I fucked up—within certain parameters—the better I began to feel. This bit about parameters is very important to remember—for me more than you. Because in the past when I fucked up—say, marrying a stranger, an activity which I participated in not once but twice—the repercussions were disastrous, protracted, and gravely impacted others, namely my son, a minor at the time with no choice but to go along with my impulsivity.
Those fuck ups sucked and, too, I’m sure now they fed my subconscious need for chaos, fear, and the attendant steady hits of adrenaline and cortisol. I’ll spare showing you the math on this. Suffice it to say, getting from the starting gate of the birth canal to where I am now took very nearly every second of my fifty-eight years on the planet.
For me, the majority of my healing work these days comes not from sitting in a therapist’s office, but getting out a hammer, mysterious chemicals, magical stones, fire, controlled light and other elements. Depending on which Station of the Uncross I am occupying—the wool processing table, the spinning wheel, the huge professional easel, or my silversmithing table—my opportunities to fuck up are both abundant and unique to the particular craft I am pursuing that day, with the enthusiasm of a kindergartner and the skill set of same.
My nickname for myself is Bezel Wrecker. When I am soldering, no matter how vigilant I am when going for the flow, almost always I fuck something up. Melting bezels—those little cups that hold gemstones—is my specialty. This presents real problems when I am directly fusing a bezel to, say, a $70 sheet of sterling silver in the hopes of creating a cuff bracelet.
The younger me would have probably gotten very angry and frustrated at an inability to learn everything all at once. As a Crone, with rare exception, these fuck ups amuse me. Because now I have a problem to solve. Sometimes I solve it the “correct” way, which might involve re-soldering and re-setting everything. Almost always though, I seek workarounds and, as with IKEA furniture, I am never afraid to use a hammer even when one is not called for.
Sometimes I smash and melt a bezel into the ring or bracelet band and, using a term I learned from some knitting friends, I tell myself that this is an “element of design.” When I post photos of my lumpy jewelry, I sometimes wait to get busted by true silver artists, thinking they will say something like, “Those aren’t polka dots! That’s just sloppy solder work right there.”
No one ever does this, a nice reminder that, in the very best way, other people don’t give a shit about my mistakes, at least if these mistakes do not pertain to them. This allows me to exhale and remember to keep working on the part of not giving a shit what other people think, of instead focusing on the one true reason I am at my bench.
That reason is process. Process is my true addiction. I want to know how things work. I want to learn how to make them work myself. I will sometimes sign up for classes or rabbit hole into YouTube for tutorials. But I have to be beyond frustrated to actively ask someone for their input in fixing my crafting mistakes.
Because a part of my process is to see that mistakes aren’t automatically going to land me in hell (as I was quite literally taught to believe). Another part is to get into Beginner’s Mind and try to work out solutions. Almost always the thing I set out to make is not the thing I wind up with. That’s okay. I find satisfaction in what the results are, and often engage in the delightful mythology that I am not a maker, but that the materials I use simply employ my hands to manifest themselves.
If you’re thinking—Christ, what a luxury to sit around and think about this shit all day, well, yes. And no. It does get pretty exhausting. And yet, unable to turn it off, instead I let my crafting provide a mental magic carpet upon which my thoughts can float freely and exist where I do not judge them (me) or at least judge them (me) far less than I might otherwise have.
A couple of months ago, feeling the urge for a New Craft coming on, I ordered a starter silkscreening kit. I think the last time I silkscreened was in 1978 in the art class of the eccentric and fabulous Cindy Jones. I was in eighth grade. I swear I remember her smoking a pipe in class.
My memory had held onto most of the steps but I read the pamphlet and watched some videos before getting started. I failed. I failed miserably. I bought additional equipment. I consulted my son, who is an excellent screen printer. I tried again. I failed again. So far I remain unable to successfully burn an image onto my screen.
I don’t get angry with myself over these failed missions. I actually laugh. I think either I am going to figure this out on my own, or suck it up and take a class, or simply give up and banish all supplies from the Big Dog Crate of Happy Art. I laugh harder when I imagine myself making a video demonstrating my skills. Because in this imagined video, I start out explaining to my imaginary viewers how easy the process is, and then I go through it, and then it doesn’t work and, in the end of this imaginary video, I pull out a big imaginary Sharpie and a virgin white, crisp new t-shirt and I scrawl across it, EAT ME CHEF, in my bad handwriting. Then I look at the camera, smile, and say, “There you go kids. That’s how we did it in the punk rock ‘80s.”
If I sound crazy, I might be. I am fine with that. Clinically speaking, given the amount of pressure I was under as a child, I actually am crazy. My mind is not neuro-typical. Not even close. My goal is not to figure out how to pass for neuro-typical. My goal is to stay in a place where life feels more enjoyable than not. I’m not even asking for bliss. I’m just asking for a break from the negative voices.
Every time I make a mistake and cut myself slack, I undo a little bit more of the false fear that has dominated my life. It turns out that if a soda can explodes or a bezel melts, this does not spell catastrophe on par with Chernobyl.
While I am pleased with my progress in technique— on my last bracelet I fucked up one bezel very badly, but the other five are pretty good—I am far more pleased with my old-dog-new-tricks newfound ability to go far past the unnecessary “self-forgiveness” part and land squarely in feeling perfectly okay to get things wrong.
I do this through my laugher. I do it through self-assurance. I literally speak out loud to myself with every melted bezel, every dropped stitch, every mis-painted stroke on the canvas. I tell myself the words I didn’t know I was desperate to hear as a child because I did not know such words existed. I tell myself, “It’s fine. You’re doing great.” And I relish the anticipation of figuring out how to adapt my original “artistic vision” into joy at seeing and accepting and appreciating how things actually turn out.
NOTE FROM SPIKE: If you are new to my world, thank you for being here and I have a heads up for you. I am not now nor do I ever anticipate welcoming unsolicited advice. Please do NOT tell me now to burn a screen. I am going to figure that fucker out myself. Because I want to. Thanks.