Whenever I get a new set of paints, I take the time to fill a page just playing with the colours and trying all the possible combinations and gradients- getting to know the paints. To be fair, this is mostly how I paint anyway- playing with colour and shapes, just making things that I enjoy looking at. But this first page is special.
This page was done in a hospital waiting room, while I was on a stretcher, waiting to be wheeled in for a second surgery, two years after the surgery that dealt with the cancer. Hernias are a post-surgery complication I was told to look out for. In retrospect, I should have paid attention to the detail that I wasn’t being told how to avoid hernias. Just look out for them. There’s a lot about recovery that you aren’t told, and, I suppose, a lot that they can’t know to tell you.
With chemotherapy, they can tell you how soon you can feel safe about eating food that wasn’t cooked in a kitchen at home. They can’t know how long it’ll take before you can handle anything more spicy than garlic. They can assure you that your body is inclined to heal, but they can’t tell you how long it will be before your body actually stops hurting. I don’t honestly remember what it feels like for my body to truly feel good. There are moments when it has felt better, but that’s about it.
I don’t yet know what good water colours would feel like, but until this set of paints, I didn’t think water colours could be bad. If it mixed with water to make paint, I only had myself to blame for anything bad about the painting. Even when I bought it, I knew I didn’t want it, but I needed the paint. The night before the hernia surgery I’d realized that my paint set was in a town 6 hours away. It was either this, or not having paint while waiting potential hours to be operated on.
Today, I’m grateful for mediocrity. I have been learning that I don’t need things to be particularly great to be alright. I’m learning the value of sharing writing even when it is (largely) unedited, and sketches even when the colours are all wrong, and the pigments bled. And I’m grateful that I can be content with bad paint, and painting that can’t be considered good. I’m learning to laugh about how broken my body feels and I’m learning that I can be kind to my body even if I sometimes want to cry when l see it in the mirror.
