I find it fascinating how a single word can have two completely opposing meanings, for instance, the word ‘bolted’. According to one dictionary, it means, “run away suddenly, typically from fear (as in the case of a horse or animal)”. But it can also mean “fastened” having some interesting synonyms like shackled, kidnapped, caught, anchored, manacled, caged, imprisoned, restrained, confined and unfree. All of these express how it feels to be ‘bolted’ but the fact that the act of having escaped from this state also means to have ‘bolted’ is quite something else entirely.

I can relate to this word on so many levels. In my past I have bolted many times due to anxiety and fear, and it’s a feeling that arises still when that all too familiar restlessness bubbles uncomfortably to the surface. Sometimes I just need to drive, far away, to soothe this incurable urge. So the thought of a rusty bolt having been imprisoned in a post for many, many decades, unable to move, or budge, waiting for the rust to eat it away or the post to weather and rot to enable its freedom, is unfathomable and torturous to me. It touches something deep inside, some sort of ancient pain, possibly from another lifetime, but none the less, unbearable.

Maybe I was a gypsy in a past life, constantly on the move, running for my life, but I find it very hard to stay still let alone in the same place for too long. The grass has always seemed greener on the other side. So I drive, and I write and I paint expressively to release this deep yearning to be free. Even now as I write about it, I can feel it rising inside but fortunately for now, it flows out through my arms and fingertips as words pouring onto the page. It is a deep darkness that has always been there, writhing in sadness that has no explanation, it just is.

At this point in my life I have finally found true happiness and am able to fully feel alive, but it hasn’t always been that way. For most of my life the darkness held me down, bolted, in fear, and it stopped me from living my life to its full. Creativity was my only vice (and still is) and has been my life saver, keeping me alive for as long as I can remember. I have always ‘had to create’ something, anything, just to release the unbearableness of being. I could quite happily spend all day, every day, thinking, writing and sketching. The ideas and visions never stop, even when I’m doing other more important things (like work!) I am constantly distracted and somewhere else mentally. This has incurred many insulting names and labels over the years like ‘airhead’, ‘airy fairy’ and ‘space cadet’ but let me tell you, there is sooo much going on in my head all the time that there’s no space for air! I have so many questions about everything… especially all the stuff we don’t get taught in school.

To fully live, we must be constantly curious… xo