4. Would I have let go of so much if we had been more secure?
Part 4 of the “Therapeutic” series of essays
“Would I have let go of so much if we had been more secure?”, part of the Therapeutic series 2022, UV printed on foamex, 60cm x 90cm x 0.3cm
Before my stepfather gathered us in his embrace and rescued us from the bad things, my mother worked two, sometimes three jobs. A machinist in a textile factory, a server in a chip shop, a barmaid. All her money went into the small, terraced house she purchased with my father who spent the money he sporadically earned on drink and drugs. She signed it over to him when she finally escaped. He had held hostage his parental rights over me, a commodity he was willing to bargain with. It was a gross introduction to capitalism. Everything has a price.
She was from a poor family, her own father a dustman, her mother a factory girl. She and I lived with them on and off, a council house in the north of England, shared with her sisters and their children. It was a place of noise and chaos and unconditional love. But my mother wanted a different life for herself, and for me. And so, her tiger love praised and encouraged any academic ability. She saw it as a way out and drilled it into me to seek financial stability in my adulthood. Creativity was a hobby, a pastime. I was to pursue a career with which I could buy a home, travel, pay my bills.
And I did well, I followed the path. I let ambition shape my personality - I was brazen in my grasping. But that life made me sick, I had panic attacks, my head buzzed and hummed, and I had no peace. Until you came along, and I had to reorient my will to your needs. I knew then that I couldn’t return. I needed more meaning, and being your mother helped me find it. I wanted to know more about you, about people, about life. I wanted to create. I wanted you to understand me.
I follow a path now that has no stability, and it terrified me at first to rely on your father to provide where I cannot provide for you, or myself. But I trust him. I am beyond lucky. And my heart became peaceful when I closed the door on that fear. It’s still there - perhaps one day it will live on my shoulder again. But for now, I wash it clean and fold it thinking of the question it holds: if the ground beneath me had been solid all along, would I have compromised so early? Perhaps I would not be me at all, and perhaps you would not be you.
Why do I make? Why does it bring me peace? I am blessed, I know, to have the time to think, to try, to learn, to explore, to create. It is a privilege I wrestle with. How to acknowledge it? As I sew the handkerchief, as I pin it to the mount, I think of the final object’s uselessness. All those hours of research to make something with no function beyond provocation. Is provocation a use? Is it the pivot turning privilege into statement, into action, however quiet? Will my own exposure help others to shed the questions they hold? The questions they have caused in others?
According to Foucault, a spiritual pursuit for the truth requires either a conversion movement or a form of work of self upon the self to make the subject capable of truth. Having completed this work and gaining access to the truth the subject is transformed again by it – they are enlightened, their soul tranquil. Perhaps this is why I make - I think of my work as a form of work upon myself, a labour of ascesis. It will take all the time I have left. There is not enough.
