ouch, it still stings.....

while blog hopping today i came across heidi's blog and read her 'ghosts of the past' entry. boy it brought back memories. i was such a geek as a kid, well, according to the other kids. i was hearing impaired, had undiagnosed learning disabilities, big bucky buck teeth, and due to a hard childhood i learned life was easier if you sat quietly in a corner. i was picked on, teased, and suffered terribly from what i have always called 'rudolph syndrome'. remember the song from the rudolph movie...and all the other reindeer never let rudolph join in the reindeer games.....

well, after reading her blog entry i did some housework, took a shower, and all along kept thinking about it. i could feel her hurt. should i comment on her blog?....should i not since we don't really really know each even though she is in my yahoo group. i know i would love to know there was someone else out there who could share in that feeling.

i have worked so hard over the last couple of years to put the past in the past and lock that door. keep all of the sorted monsters out. as i get older i learn more and more to accept and love who i am, who i am becoming, and who i will be someday. i thought i had so conquered the beast and it would never haunt me or hurt me again.

ok, well, i am human and sometimes the beast is stronger. 2 years ago i came up with an idea to do a CHARM BRACELET round robin. I brought the idea up to several local artists and all of them seemed to love the idea. that november we lost my mother-in-law on the 1st, my dad on the 13th and my husbands uncle on the 14th. the idea was put on hold for a year. last november i started a yahoo group and listed on the groups homepage that we would be having a charm bracelet round robin. many people joined. many expressed a great deal of interest. one artist who loved the idea ended up not joining in and i wondered at first as to why since she was so interested and then let it go.

now i know that we creative types can come up with the same idea and even at the same time, i also know that when an idea is copied it is a form of flattery, i know that if the artist who first put wings and a crown or party hat on a vintage picture of a child ran around and screamed to every other artist who did the same HEY THAT WAS MY IDEA FIRST.....she would be a very busy person...and an attention needy whiny thing! after my yahoo group got the round robin going i came across several other groups who started doing there own.....it made me feel kinda good, even though no one ever said hey this was christine's idea......i thought how cool even if it was just me that knew i was the one who provided the inspiration......even several members of my yahoo group had taken this idea to other groups, and i felt a little like....hey why didn't i get asked to play....but that was that little hurt child who whispered that i think. i am ok with that now. but...........................................

what cut to the bone and will sting for a very long time was the artist who loved, loved, loved my idea of a charm bracelet round robin. she quickly joined my group and listed all of her links on the links section.....hey another place to advertise her artsy-ness for free. then *poof* she disappeared. never participated in anything. turned her emails from the group off. so a few months later i am blog surfing and i come across her entry. she has made oodles of charms for a charm swap. right away i felt like i had been stabbed in the gut. i tracked down the group and joined and then found the post that described how this group was the ONLY group doing such a thing! now, i felt like i had been stabbed in the back. i quickly went to the members list........many people are very well known amongst us in the artist community, and published a bunch.

she took my idea to another group and whether anyone else was aware of it, it was presented as an original idea by the groups moderators.

so my idea was good enough, just not me, or my group! wow that hurt, bad. it still does. so i try not to get angry about it, or feel hurt, but every once in awhile those oh- to -human emotions creep in the back door before i realize it and can shoo them away.

i had a couple of friends who had told me in the past that she very two faced, i refused to believe, she had always been nice to me....i had never seen any evidence of this. they warned watch your back. i did not feel the need. i really thought maybe they were just jealous of her talent, or how many people just loved her. yes, i was naive.

a couple of other artists said they, too, had their ideas swiped by her in similiar fashion.

so, now i learned.

the hard way.

i hurt.

and someday i will get over it.

at least when i lay down at night i can sleep with a clear conscience.

my art is just that MY art.

my art is from my heart

my art is from my soul

maybe this person is missing her heart. her soul. or they are damaged from her own personal issues. sometimes i feel sorry for her. maybe she has needs to be filled so bad that she would do whatever she had to, no matter the cost, just to hear words of praise.

sometimes the monster sneaks in the backdoor and i just think KARMA will bite her in the butt someday.