No and Yes

A story about rejection

I had one of those moments the other day that felt like music changing.

I had gone to sit in the garden. I hadn’t wanted to at all, but I made myself do it. The sky was grey, uninviting. I clutched an armful of art supplies to my chest, my sketchbook and paints, moving stiffly, trying to stay steady as the drooping, brassy November mess swiped at my legs, my face. I hadn’t touched the garden in months. My sitting spot was lost under masses of dead verbena and tumbling, mildewed nasturtiums and so I had to pile all the art stuff on the damp ground and fetch rusty shears to try to clear a space. I stumbled, hurt, had to stop, gave in and squeezed into the gap, scooped up my supplies and sat there, clutching them, miserable.

I’d come outside because I wanted to make something beautiful. I thought that I should. I’m supposed to be good at making the best out of what I have. All I could think as I sat there was no. No. My heart closed up like stone. I didn’t want any of this.

The starlings didn’t move me, whistling from the roofs. The gravel was littered with curled brown leaves and I didn’t want those either. I poked at the skeletons, my disappointment like steady rain. I didn’t want to draw that blackened, bent seedpod and I certainly didn’t want to draw the plants or the view, dead, brown and boring. I sat still, my hands resistant, eyes cold, scanning, frowning. No, not that. No, not good enough. No, I couldn’t make that go right. Those lines would lead nowhere. That colour... what’s the point. I want to make something else. I want a different picture, a different story. This isn’t going to work.

I have been hard like this for a while - that was the worst part: realising that. I could feel it around me like new skin. My body is unwell in some new ways. Some things I could do, I can’t do anymore. There are a lot of unchangeable things about my life that I deeply dislike. There are a lot of things about myself. There is the feeling inside like a shove inside me. I don’t want.

This is what I noticed in the garden. This was the shift. I sat there, quiet, refusing to do anything, refusing everything, thinking and thinking and I realised, I am rejecting 90% of my life right now; most of the minutes and moments of each day. When the good things come, I turn to them, crooning. I turn a impatient, sighing shoulder to the rest. I resent almost everything for not being different. I resent my life for getting in the way.

I had to laugh at that, horrified, seeing. Getting in the way of what? This is my life! All of it is! And it’s the only one I’m getting! Am I really going to say no to that? No to this unique arrangement of circumstance and experience and things that are mine alone? Am I really going to keep saying, nope, nope, boring, not good enough? Do I really want that to be who I am?

I’d like to say that I softened right there on the spot, all hardness gone again, repentant, newly welcoming of everything. I didn’t though. I gave up on outside and drawing, went to lie down and cried, angry with myself.

I can’t wish myself into a different life and I know this: I don’t want to reject everything that’s left. Doing the work I want to do takes such an open, generous heart - the ability to turn towards things rather than just sulk. And there is so little love in this rejection. I can feel that.

I think the only answer is to say yes. To start saying yes more. Not yes like ‘yeah whatever’, not a lazy yes or a resigned yes. Yes like love. Yes like ‘welcome’. Yes like looking someone straight in the eye with sad kindness, like shaking your head, smiling, your eyes wet, a lightness in your voice. Yes like dark laughter. Yes like “oh mate.” Yes like an acknowledgement, like turning towards. The hardest yes in the world: the one that say yes, yes here we are. Yes, this is happening. Yes, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do it the very best we can.

That’s why I took my art supplies back out a couple of days later and tried again. Nothing in my life had changed but I painted the cotoneaster. Yesterday I painted the rain that soaked me as I went back and forth to the new medical appointments I don’t want to go to. Today I drew leaves, spotted and nearly spent. Making art from your surroundings is a good way of saying yes to your life. It feels like a good way of showing gratitude, too.

Later, calmer, I found myself thinking about the time when the drought came and all the plants withered in their pots, their soil hard, shrunk and cracked because I hadn’t been able to water them. I remembered trying to give them an overdue drink, my hosepipe fierce and determined, and mum saying, “it’s no good, it’'ll just run right through and out again. You need to sit them in water. Let it soak up slowly. It’ll take time.” I think about that image a lot.

Here’s to softening then. And patience. To more yes, not no. To figuring out how to do that.

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