The vanishing woman

I believe everyone goes through a period of time when they feel they can no longer handle the challenges in their lives.  A time when they want to run away.  Life can be overwhelming.  Of course as responsible adults we don't run and hide.  We stand tall, face the demons with a smile.  A smile that only we know is a lie.  We must have other people's approval so no one is allowed to see how really scared we are and how close we are to completely losing control. But no one is to ever see us lose control.

The day I created "the vanishing woman" was just such a day.  Les was getting weaker every day.  I had support from his children but they were in denial.  They refused to see their father as a man beaten by this deadly disease, cancer.  They would not allow Hospice to come help us.  The family feared that the presence of Hospice would depress their father further and he would give up his fight for life.  As his main caregiver, I was witness to the increasingly bad times.  The times when the pain was so bad he would beg to die.  And all I could do is hold him close to my heart and hold back the tears.

Stories I had read in the past inspired "the vanishing woman".  Stories about people, mostly women, who simply vanished.  In The Secrets of the Divine Ya Ya Sisters, Vivi would take off and camp out at a motel for a week until she felt strong enough to handle a husband and four children.  She always returned to her loving family until the stress became more than she could handle and she had a nervous breakdown.  Women have a tendency to feel they never do quite enough for their families and friends until there comes a time when they are completely overwhelmed.  They have been super woman for so long, their family cannot comprehend.  So they leave without a word to anyone to start a whole new life.   Why?  Because they fear they'll have a nervous breakdown.

Truth be known we are all ready and able to rise to the challenges in which we find ourselves.  It is not pleasant, but we are quite capable.  It is natural to have the urge to withdraw from life to protect ourselves from personal pain.  So instead of packing my bags and deserting the man I loved, I created "the vanishing woman".  I painted the background with fluid acrylics then glued a picture of a woman cut out from a magazine onto the page.  Next I lightly covered the cutout with fluid acrylics so that the woman's profile could still be seen.  I wanted the image to be a shadow of a woman as if she was vanishing.  The caption is "I understand why women simply disappear".