26th Sept 2024

Cloud Study with Mountain Peak by Albert Bierstadt, 19th Century

There’s a vivid memory that still sits with me from when I was about eight years old. A vision of myself as a little twig-legged girl walking down the street on a sunny day, in my beaded platform sandals and my favourite green corduroy skirt (an outfit that sounds horrendous even now; and was in fact confirmed to be horrendous by my best friend after I’d proudly walked up to her on the dancefloor of our school disco). As I walked down the road, the back of my neck ached whilst my head craned up towards the sky. I was mesmerised by the vivacious blue canvas, decorated by a myriad of white distorted cotton balls. They looked like they had been pulled across the sky during an arts and crafts session at school. All it needed now was the finessing touches of sprinkled glitter, PVA glue splodges and pasta shapes stuck around the border. 

No, that was far too infantile for my imagination, I thought to myself.

I’m eight and a half years old now, I can materialise a more mature picture than that. How about a strip of deeper blue lashed across the bottom with dashes of white, layered over the top for the splashing waves? And a teeny tiny little red boat bobbing on top of the water, sailing under a rich, peaceful, summer sky. 

These shapes would move and shift into place in front of my very eyes and a running commentary in my head would accompany it, deciding where everything should go, and which imagery and colours would look better. As I was just shifting a city skyline down into place under the clouds, a chorus of dramatic screams crashed through my bubble from behind me. 

​

‘NO RACHAEL STOOOOOPPPP!!!!’

Everything snapped back into real-world vision. A blur of metal and the aggressive sound of a motor and horn flashed by me. I looked down at my left foot, poised at a 45-degree angle on the tarmac of the road in front of me, sandal beads shaking, perhaps in an attempt to wake me up too. To everyone else my face would have seemingly looked gormless, but to me, I had been viciously torn away from my peaceful Mind Paradise and transported back into an overstimulating, yet boring land that simply just wasn’t as interesting, and seemed to constantly attack all of my senses.

I looked back at my mum and dad, absorbing the concern and frustration painted across their faces.

‘LOOK where you are going!’ one of them scolded. ‘STOP daydreaming!’

Now, you and I both know they completely had a point. I mean, I nearly collided with a car because I was creating an imaginary sky masterpiece with my brain. I literally had my head in the clouds. But I needed to draw the line somewhere; so, I did. I spent the rest of my life trying to pull myself away from my Mind Paradise as much as I possibly could. But it meant that dealing with daily life became even more of a struggle. I felt exhausted by having to consciously pull myself in and out of two worlds to participate in what other’s wanted me to do, and by taking part in the tiring dance of trying to please others. However, I still got scolded often by my parents for being messy and absent minded. I still found mathematical numbers completely uninteresting, no matter how hard I tried to focus on the equations on the school board. Teachers still got frustrated with me for staring out of the window, or for losing my schoolbooks, or for getting distracted when a topic didn’t interest me. Perhaps I looked like a clumsy, unorganised, ditsy little girl at times; albeit, still relatively quiet and well-behaved. Even right up until becoming a young adult I would have friends and boyfriends around me frequently implying that I was lazy, dumb, and stupid. (Don’t worry, they’re not in my life anymore!) It’s taken me years to filter out the bad eggs, to build back my confidence, and to carefully craft a wonderful, supportive network of people around me who I love with all my heart.

Although I may have lacked in many areas, (and still do) I did notice that I would always get praised in art class. My work would be sometimes be shown to the class as an example to follow, and other times children would even copy my drawings (which I was furious about at the time!). I was actually quite a defensive little artist. How dare you steal the original idea I created within my Mind Paradise! Fraud! Copycat! I'd think to myself. I would sit there sulking and covering my work with my hand if it ever happened. Maybe if you had walked into my class at that moment, you would look over and perceive a childish little girl being incredibly petty about her drawings. But in my mind, art was my special power, and seemingly the only thing that I was really good at during that time. It was the only thing which made sense to me in a very confusing world. Perhaps I lived in fear that it would be taken away from me? And with parents whose marriage was deteriorating before mine and my sister’s eyes at the time, perhaps one can now understand why. Nevertheless, it was clear to me that creativity was my calling, and I knew it was going to be a constant battle trying to balance this against the ‘real’ world. Y’know, the world where you are expected to make small talk, constantly do monotonous chores, and just generally fit into societal norms?

A young Rachael frolicking amongst Grandma Dorothy's rose bushes, 1999