Does he know? About the whole thing, you
know. About my parents getting a divorce, about me not being the big sister I
always tried to, about my brother acting as if nothing ever happened and not
seeing my dad in weeks, about my mum using me as a therapist when I have enough
on my fucking plate as it is. Does he know? Or does he think about it? Does he
wonder? What has happened now? Does he think I’m
different?
Because I know I am. I can feel it; in the
way I see things, in the way I look at them. I know I have changed and that I’m
different now and for that I have realized two things. The first one, people do
change. It doesn’t matter what they say in movies, it doesn’t matter that old
well-trodden cliche, as if people were just one thing and that’s all they were
and nothing will change that; even though everything that surrounds them
changes and even though everything moves and nothing stays the same for one
minute. One minute things are not the same they were before. And yet people
never change they say; but they do, for they are like the water of a
river which is always water and yet never quite the same for it moves down the
mountain, and you couldn’t touch twice the exact same water even if you tried,
all the way down towars the sea where it eventually dies, in a messy, confusing
whirlpool that brings food for sea animals so life itself begins again. And the
second one, that there are people who try to make you feel guilty because you
have changed, who try to make you feel as if changing was a bad thing, like now
you’re not the same you used to be and that it isn’t right because you’re not as
clueless anymore. Well I don’t care, I don’t give a damn about your
idea of cute. That was me then and this is me now and you can either accept
that and stay or move on and leave the new me the hell alone.
I think it was all about being in Australia
or rather leaving Spain. And when I think about that I’m not so sure I changed
but rather I started being me for the first time and so I think yeah,
yeah, that makes sense and that would be the reason why it bothers me so
furiously when he says he used to like it better before because before wasn’t
true and before wasn’t right and this and all the changes,
this is what I am, this is who I’ve always been.
And so yes, I like to be alone. Let me
rephrase that. I need to be alone, at times, even though I sure like somebody
on the kitchen or on the living room while I just sit in my room and paint and
not think for a moment and I’m not bothered and I don’t have to care. And I
don’t really like going out half the time and now I think it is because for
years I’ve been doing it as an obligation, as something I had to
do for people to like me, for my mum to be okay, for the rest to
think I’mnormal or getting some sort of stupid validation. The
thing is, well I don’t need your validation anymore. This is what I am, this is
who I’ve always been. What’s being normal anyway?
I like talking to those who listen and
those who care but it’s saddening to think they’re just none. Sometimes I find
some sort of comfort in talking to a stranger and some other times I meet
people whom I don’t know but whom I so desperately want to talk to as if it
would make me feel better for them to listen, for them to know.
I always fall in love for the wrong guy,
man oh man, I always do. If only I got paid each time, I could make a living
out of it, longing eyes for somebody who doesn’t even see me. But that’s the
thing I think I like, not to be seen, to be irrelevant, (immaterial even)
because then I feel free. I feel like nothing really matters, like no one’s
watching because no one cares and that gives me freedom. I think loneliness
is so similar to freedom anyway.
So I think it all happened in Australia, I
think that’s where I changed or where I realized that I didn’t have to be
anybody else, that that was me and that was okay. I think it was because in
Australia there was no expectations, nobody knew me so nobody thought they
could say oh yeah that’s so her, or think they understood.
Nobody really cared either, did they? But that was good too because each
passing day I’m more and more sure that’s how freedom feels like: being able to
just be.
I remember this day, I was sitting on the
beach all by myself (when being alone didn’t make me self-conscious anymore)
and I was looking at the sea and at the surfers and my hair was a mess, I
wasn’t wearing a drop of make up and my jeans were wet and full of sand and I
just sit there and thought I’m an artist, I’m an artist. And
then I thought well this is the only thing I know for sure, that must
mean something. And then well people do change, so have I, but this
hasn’t; what I feel about art hasn’t, the way art makes me feel hasn’t.
And what if… What if some things don’t
change? What if it’s not about people being able to change but people just
simply changing? Not by choice, but by chance, as a consequence of life as a
movement, inevitably. That way, the saying wouldn’t be totally untrue, that
old thing about people never changing, it wouldn’t be so wrong for people
don’t change when they want to, people don’t change what they want to but
rather they just simply change and that’s that. Some day they’re different and
nobody knows how and nobody knows why but they wake up and they have different
fears, they wake up and they don’t feel the same. What if some things don’t
change?
I just don’t think one gets to choose to
be an artist. One is rather damned to be it and it
doesn’t matter how much they change or how many times they think they’re
different as the water on the river moves but it doesn’t get to choose its
channel.
Paola Beato.
