Fun and Games

Week 3 of Photo 52: fun and games

Fun and games... aka the picture I was terrified to post.  The outcome of my week three photo is rather bleak and sad.  It doesn't exactly fit the cheery image conjured up when one thinks of fun and games. This week I struggled not with what to photograph, but with whether or not I should post what I chose.  See, I want to be liked.  I like being liked.  It would be much more likable to post a beautiful and fun photo, right?

Besides, it's not like that would be so out of character for me. After all, as most people who know me know, I do like to laugh and have fun.  A lot, actually!  What most people who know me do not know, however, is that, while my laughter and fun is genuine, so is this incredible depth of sadness and grief.  I am both fun-loving and grief-stricken, lively and despairing, jovial and...  inconsolable.

So while I love fun and games, as I pondered it as a theme, all that came to mind was...  loss.

(Are you tired of hearing me go on about grief and loss yet?  I guess I wouldn't blame you, if you were...)

Well, as a person who loves fun and games, who so very much wants kids, but can't have them... who dreams of family game nights and swinging on swings... and young laughter...  well, that makes the theme of fun and games a rather bitter one, indeed.

Ar has been encouraging me to go out and take pictures even when, and especially when, I'm feeling my worst.  So that's what I did.

Fun and games.

I strongly considered not posting it, in favor perhaps of posting a picture of one of my high points in Words with Friends...  or making Ar suffer through a game of Scrabble with me. I can guarantee I could get some awfully cute shots of Ar making some awfully funny faces, if I'd gone that direction...  Something like that would be cheerier and more relatable, after all.  The only problem would be that I really desire to be genuine in this journey - to grow through it - and what I felt was loss, pure and simple loss....

Besides, when I asked my fellow IF friends what they thought, they encouraged me to post it - and be true. In fact, one of them even informed me that art isn't depressing... it's moody.  Get me, I'm an ar-teest!!