Lilith

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“Lilith” by Mia Makila, 2015 (digital) – click to enlarge!

I created this portrait of my little niece Lilith who had her first birthday this week.

I based my work on these two photographs of her.

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Too hot to work

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I am in a bad mood. It’s so hot outside and my apartment feels like a sauna. I can’t work when it’s too hot. And I want to work! I have so many ideas that I want to explore on a piece of canvas  – and I have bought some tubes of paint that I’ve never used before, I want to try them out! New pink shades that will make amazing skin textures for my demonic Lolitas, and something called “deep turquoise” for their eyes. I have so many new paintings being born in my head every week.

I can’t wait for autumn to come and rescue me from this persistent heat wave. I need to feel the wind in my hair, to wake up to a grey day that plays shadow games with me and to breathe without feeling like the air is already used up, spit out and all consumed.

When love is a crime scene

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Yesterday feels like a black hole in my mind. I feel emotionally hungover. Something happened and triggered my PTSD symptoms and I was sucked back into the trauma again. Starting over with an new love, in a new relationship is hard for me. Trust is so very difficult, and accepting real love and to be loved without waiting for a betrayal or to be prepared to be humiliated, is even harder.

My trauma didn’t happen in a dark alley somewhere downtown, or in a park at night. My trauma happened right in the trust and in the love I thought I shared with the man I had let inside my heart. Love was the scene of the crime.

And now, when I have overcome the PTSD and the person I’d become because of the fear and the constant humiliation, I choose to love again, whole heartily and totally, and for the first time I am willing to accept the unconditionally love from another man – even though I am more used to neglect or aggressiveness than love. I feel more at home in humiliation than in tenderness. I feel more comfortable with waiting for the disrespect than to feel respected. And I don’t understand the concept of love as it is supposed to feel – warm, sensual, naked and intimate. It’s all I ever wanted – but I don’t speak the language of accepting it.

Now, I am forced to revisit my crime scene, not in the dark alley or in the park at night, but in trusting love again. It is hard and excruciatingly painful at times. In situations where I am so used to being ridiculed or ignored, I have to accept to just be seen – as I really am, and accepted and loved. It’s like preparing yourself to be hit by a train that’s coming right at you, but instead of the crash, somebody is holding you, and won’t let go until you understand that you are completely safe and there’s no train in sight.

To be safe to feel vulnerable – is the most beautiful thing I have experienced but it is also the scariest thing you could do after a trauma (or in my case, two). I am scared to death of being betrayed, but I am brave enough to risk it. I am doing it. I am going against my fear, I am ignoring the PTSD and the old behavioral patterns I repeated in my past – I am letting go – and starting over.

It’s so fucking scary.

And so incredibly wonderful.

Days with a core

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Some days are a solid and real world of their own. Days with their own core, with their own sense of space and time, and where there’s room for details that other days are hiding in their speed or the lack of it.

I woke up this morning and found the most beautiful love letter waiting for me. I stayed in my bed for a long time, just feeling the words melt into my reality as I was waking up. I realized how being truly loved has opened up something inside me, perhaps every closed door. I even feel closer to myself. Like I am celebrating my freedom with a new self-intimacy that I’ve never experienced before. And now I can see how vital that intimacy is for me and for my art. I need it to be able to express whatever is stored inside my hidden places and I don’t have access to those places without it. Now, I can see how I lost the intimacy to myself, so many times in my past. It happened every time I sacrificed my self-intimacy when I was hunting for love, or chasing something impossible while losing myself in the chase. No wonder that I couldn’t create art for all those years.

It’s the first time I’m not chasing anyone or anything, but instead love has found me and I’m enjoying the present moment, myself and what I actually do have in my life right at this moment. Perhaps losing everything in life makes you appriciate everything more – and you also learn about what you don’t need. I don’t need that much really. Just the man I love, my art, my connection and intimacy with myself, to be able to live without feeling guilt, shame or looking for appropriate punishments – and some books and movies.

Life is amazing and some days are a great testament to that. Like this day.

Avoiding the sun

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I haven’t been able to paint for a week now. It’s just too hot outside and the sun is blasting in from the windows and even if I try to block it out with my curtains, my apartment feels like an oven. I wish it would rain. I wish there could be a storm passing through. Anything cool and windy. That’s when I feel the most creative and inspired. I miss painting. I was in a flow before the heat came. I have always disliked August and its unbearable heat. But it’s a new month in only two weeks. I guess I can wait for two more weeks. I’ve been busy with some digital projects anyway. And I feel like I’ve reached a new level of knowledge and new techniques in Photoshop. I am better than ever and it makes me feel happy and excited. I want to be even better, so I’ll just go on exploring techniques and ideas.

Today I’m resting and watching THE AFFAIR on HBO, just trying to avoid the sun and the heat as much as I can.

But I feel so inspired. I want to do so many things! I have so many visions inside my head and so much passion in my heart – sometimes it’s all so overwhelming. Can an inner overflow of inspiration kill you if you don’t use it in the right way?