I remember the exact moment. I was just freshly in high school, a really young looking and feeling freshmen. Completely fresh. I remember looking around as people were developing personalities, opinions, strengths. Some people were good at math, others artists. But the ones that really stuck out to me the ones I envied the ones I would study and long for what they had were the girls that could lure in a boy, the girls that could own the room just by walking into it, the ones the guys would pine over, fight over. It became an obsession. No one knew but me I wouldn’t even write about it because then someone could see it, then I could see it.
Have you ever been so obsessed so possessed by something that you literally create an entire identity around it?
Me, have to work for it? Never. Except in the background, I was crafting every scene, every look, absolutely every moment to be perfect. The first drop of alcohol I had did not spark a light of substance addiction, it did not bring me to the back alleys, or leave me strung out in a ditch. What it did was open the door to what I knew I wanted. Status. I became the artist, and my own work of art. In middle school I kept a photograph of my crush in the pocket of my white-collared shirt of the plaid-skirted uniform we wore. John. I would look at it longingly when no one was looking. I would tell everyone I did not like boys. Tear those women down and take what they had. Only in my imagination at that point.
I never spoke to him. At least not in that uniform. 10 years later, an entirely different uniform, and he was flying to see me in Spain. Halfway around the world and he was coming to see me. This was just the beginning.
I married a Spaniard to make my friends jealous. Learned Spanish to have my own language. Married again for money and a title.
I was a sculptor, at times adding more clay, at times stripping away, whatever was needed to get the power I so obsessively sought.
It wasn’t about the men, it wasn’t about women. There was a throne I would see in every room and I would do anything to get my seat in that chair. I would renounce, sell myself, I would say whatever I needed to say, I would act nice on the surface, I would plan in the background, I would observe every move from those who appeared to be in higher status than me. And I would make it look like I had it too, effortlessly.
Addiction comes in many forms. Mine has always been an addiction to status and prestige. Once I saw it I could use it for benefit, I realized that I could use that impulse and exploit it, my life shifted. I could take the drive that was unconsciously consuming my life - the hours of obsession and longing. It wasn’t just a full-time job, it was my lifestyle. One I saw the way that I was so meticulous and calculating under the radar, I saw the depth of my genius.
Slowly over the last 9 years, rather than study how to get the status, I have studied the patterns and behaviors of my own addiction. Learned to see it as my power. And from there, from the place of power I can reveal my art.
