Just Put Yourself Out There

So these past four months have been a little difficult for me health wise.  I have been taking a lot of steroids.  I have been pretty much homebound with my only outings being the local emergency rooms and dr. appts.  

We have gone to two funerals in the past three weeks and at each, we ran into old friends we hadn't seen in a few years.  Comments were made about how I looked 'so different' or ' oh my, I didn't recognize you."  OUCH....One friend, upon hearing I had been sick, pointed and even said.
"prednisone cheeks, how ugly."

I felt like she had slapped me and I know that sounds trite.  I usually am the first one to not care but I have been looking at me in the mirror several times a day and even I can see the real me is NOT there.  The fat cheeks bother me even though I know I am weaning off the dreaded drug.

I came home and told John I did NOT want to go ANYWHERE at all.  NO WHERE you here?
He tells me every day how beautiful I am.  Our dog and cats still love me and when our kids and kidlets call from far away I know they love me too.  But still..........that nagging little ugly voice that gets in our head sometimes....no matter what you do you can't push it entirely out the door and throw the key away.

I kept telling myself....it is not healthy to hole up in the house because you might run  into someone you know........

And then, there in my email came an invitation to take one of those VanGogh/Merlot painting classes at my favorite Nursery a few blocks away.  I usually take some kind of planting/potting class there so this is different.  I don't know how to paint actually.  I do other media.   But I WANT to paint.

I hesitated.......thought ' what about my face'?............WHAT ABOUT IT?  So before I could start arguing with myself I hit reply and accept and paid for it online and it was done in less than two minutes.

I showed up for the class yesterday not knowing what to expect.  There were 19 women and 1 husband.

 

                            The instructor told us we were painting this picture.   Sure we are.

 

 She talked  about priming the canvas and outlining where the flowers go. That was easy.

 

 I found myself starting to relax.  I met lots of new people and not one said anything about my fat cheeks.  We all just painted and laughed a lot with tea and appetizers.

 

 I learned about blending wet on wet paint and waiting for other paint to dry.  This is acrylics.

 

This is my final picture.  I spent three hours learning paint techniques I knew nothing about before.
I laughed and talked.  I made new acquaintances.  It was EASY it was FUN.  I got out of my own way and got out of the house.  I Want to paint MORE.