I am a city girl and usually happy with my lot. I like to have the buzz of the city around me, the shops, the services, the ease of life. But today, on my homeschooling quest, I stumbled upon this lovely blog: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Dell/. And I was seized by the desperate need to live in a place like that: where the leaves turn golden and red (and not sickly yellow); where a nature walk means spotting a squirrel on a tree or a fox by the entrance door (and not cockroaches and rats scurrying in the Tube’s tunnels); and where children are so beautiful, well-dressed and even better photographed (and not like some other children I know, who always look like little monkeys).

OK, if I had to settle for just one thing, the pictures would be it. Why do her children look so beautifully elegant and poised in a picture, while mine look like this?

Last Wednesday’s challenge at Wednesday Stamper sounded deceptively simple—anything featuring the first letter of your first name, as well as, of course, a stamp. Something personal, I thought. Except that I hadn’t banked on it being so painful. Perhaps it is because I am going through a difficult period in my life, but I found this extremely hard to do.

Hope this caged spirit will fly free again some time soon

Initially, I wanted to use a picture of myself, but it started cutting too close to the bone. So I chose a picture of one of grandmother’s nieces, a cute smiling girl, and wrote the journal entry to the third person—as if it had all happened to her. It made the piece slightly easier to work on. That said, I kept fiddling and amending, changing and tinkering for nearly a week. I wasn’t sure about the colour scheme, but I wanted to have a bleak black, for how I feel now, and a lively green to symbolise my hope for a better future. And I wanted to use both a bird flying free from the cage, and my son’s artwork, because I need to believe things will improve soon.

I am still not happy with the result, but it is time to let go—before it becomes even more painful.

P.S.: for curious minds, the journal entry reads: Look at her. Sunny, smiling, happy. She believed she could do everything and the world was hers for the taking. But then she changed. Choices and circumstances killed the spark in her eyes. Like a novel Sisiphus, she pushed the boulder up the slope only to see it roll down the other side one time too many. Now she is bitter, lost, adrift. Tired of fighting and of trying to rebuild. But perhaps the little girl is still alive inside her and one day her eyes will sparkle again.