The Femquarters

White noise and static has always been on my 'inner TV screen'. It's like a fog that won't go away...frenetically trying to keep up during conversation and losing train of thought half way through, struggling to follow instructions. Reading the same paragraph over and over until the letters and words don't have meaning anymore. The social anxiety that comes with it all. Am I going to look stupid if I do this wrong? Why does everyone else seem to understand what's going on? Gaaaaah I've checked out again, why can't I read this anymore?!? My only reprieve from the fog and the static: art. I am nearly 30 years old, and still I find myself in an almost meditative, hyper-focused, super-trance sitting on the floor in my studio with my scissors and my tulle and my glitter. Only then does the static seem to dissipate, and I am one with my creations.

As a female child with undiagnosed learning disabilities, I fell into a trap that actually many female children with undiagnosed learning disabilities fall into: I got really good at the art of 'masking'. 'Masking' is a super convenient way of hiding neurodiverse behaviors by presenting more 'socially acceptable' behaviors to make 'normal' people feel more comfortable. In my case, I gladly embraced 'The Air Head' stereotype. At the time (you know, during those super easy and not at all traumatizing middle school years), it was easier to play dumb and ditzy and cute and gets some laughs instead of being laughed AT. That was the subset for my personality. Let me dumb myself down so that I don't inconvenience anyone else with my socially awkward behaviors. Let me shrink myself. Let me be small for someone else's comfort. Let me self-deprecate so that someone else can't do it first. Let me self-hate. Self-harm. Self-sabotage.

At 30 with 5 kids from 4 different men, I can sit here and write about how badly masking has damaged me, how detrimental it was too my self-esteem. I can tell you about the sex I traded for personality, I can tell you about the loneliness and abandonment and the self-destruction. The self-hate and the self-harm. But. I'm not. I'm going to instead write about what I did about it, because this life that I've created, out of scissors and paper and glitter and fabric and glue, has empowered me to empower other women, because I know that I am not alone.

I dropped out of high school when I was 16. This sounds absolutely crazy but I planned my next move like this: *me watching Closer one weekend* "Julia Roberts is a photographer, maybe I should be a photographer!".... *Me watching Catch and Release that same weekend*... "Colorado sounds cool, I should move to Colorado!" So a few months later, I somehow found myself 16 years old, in Colorado (I'm from Phoenix), going to art school for photography. And I failed. Hard. Like epically hard, this type of failure was the kind of heartbreaking and unjust failure that crushed my soul and shattered my dreams. How could I fail ART SCHOOL??? Art was the only thing I was ever GOOD at, how could I have failed so badly?? I felt betrayed by art, I felt humiliated that I even tried to chase a dream, I felt rejected by the world that had ever truly felt like home to me. I came home with my tail between my legs. At 16 I was on my way to art school, 17 I became a failure, 18 entered into a domestically violent relationship, and a week after I turned 19, I became a mother.

I bring up domestic violence to demonstrate a point about cause and effect. I had allowed myself since my early pre-teen years to be "not good enough", again, adopting the role of The Air Head to mask that hey, I just needed some extra help. I needed someone to help me, as a kid, as a young impressionable girl, to help me identify my strengths instead of constantly subjecting me to my own weaknesses. I needed someone to teach me the way I needed to learn. I needed someone to tell me that, you know what, it IS okay to cut paper dolls out of magazines, it IS okay to paint on the walls, it IS okay to create beautiful things because art IS valid and important. My strengths were not valued in a neurotypical environment. As such, it was easy for me to become a victim of domestic violence.

I ended up working as a waitress at Denny's down the street from what would turn out to be my new school. That's where I met Jimmy. Jimmy was one of my customers one night. "Birds of a feather flock together" or however the saying goes. Jimmy had and still has such a beautiful light. He was truly my beacon during that time. As it turned out, Jimmy was an anatomy instructor at a massage therapy school! I will forever be grateful for Jimmy. So many times I almost dropped out. Jimmy took the time to teach me how to learn... he let me draw in class, he compared muscle fibers to bags of spaghetti noodles, he brought in artificial bones and let us learn through touch. Through massage therapy, I gained self-esteem for the first time. I WAS smart. I WAS good at something, I wasn't stupid, I wasn't an air head. I just needed to learn how to learn.

So, through self-esteem I secured my emotional distance from my abusive partner. Through massage therapy I secured my financial distance. And yet it wasn't until the first and only time that he laid hands on my 3 year old son that I finally found the courage the leave and force myself to find physical distance. I joined the Air Force Reserves, became a sheet metal mechanic, and moved to Michigan.

So. What? Wait, what? Yeah. What happened to my art and my massage therapy??? I'm getting there. I am still a sheet metal mechanic, and have been for the last 8 years, 6 here in Michigan. And I struggle every. Single. Day. with reading, comprehension, attention deficiency, and the impulse to make myself small and ditzy when I'm not tracking. The stakes are higher now. Read this drawing right or make the airplane fall out of the sky, your choice. I found myself masking again, but this time masking in a different way. I was pretending to always know what I was doing and I was pretending to be one of the guys and I was pretending that I was way more qualified than I felt because I couldn't fail this time, I couldn't. But I was miserable and I was so burnt out trying to fake it all the time. The fog pervaded my brain, I existed. I was on autopilot. I was self-destructing to wake myself out of the fog just because maybe I was bored or just plain tired of the monotony of living as someone who I was not.

Serendipity intervened and I met this edgy, cool, quirky chick named Michele. She's now my business partner. I met her as her client; she at the time was a boudoir photographer, shooting out of her dingy and poorly lit garage. I don't know if it was just the confidence that exuded out of her or her edginess or what it was about her, but she taught me to "believe in your own bullshit". Two years later, we own our own studio, where Michele shoots boudoir and I take them back for a massage after their shoot. I have a retail space full of my art and props for photoshoots. I don't have to mask anymore. I can sit on the floor of my studio, with my scissors and my tulle and my glitter and fabric and glue, and I am VALID. I am ENOUGH.