It's okay to be

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.