Interviews with Escapists
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Rochelle got married when she was in her early 20’s, still naïve, still practically a child in her eyes. “I should have listened to my mother”, she says. “I remember my mother had told me don’t get married in your 20’s because people change, I later found out she was right. I had changed and my husband had changed, and I didn’t want to be in that life anymore”. Rochelle would often think about what life would be like if she left her
Husband. She wanted to escape from her relationship and her marriage, she wanted freedom again. “When I told my husband I wanted to leave, I completely shut down from him. I wouldn’t talk about why, I didn’t want to discuss it. I felt really awful that I was leaving him, but I knew it was the right thing to do”.
During Rochelle’s marriage, her escapism was watching television and going shopping. She would be glued to the TV watching mindless programs to fill the time. It became addictive and a mechanism to help her get to sleep. “It took me a while to stop
watching TV, when you have been addicted to it for such a long time it’s a hard habit to break. Now I generally only watch TV if I am renting a DVD. Now conversations don’t revolve around talking about what you watched on TV last night”.
Rochelle’s marriage was not a bad one, she had just realised her path in life was taking a different route than her husband’s and she had to follow her heart. “I felt like I was dying inside, my creative soul was lost and I had to get it back. My husband was an
alcoholic and addicted to computer games - his forms of escapism. He would come home from work, have a 5 minute conversation with me and then go play games on the computer. He would stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning most days, and would come to bed smelling of stale alcohol”. I guess you could say Rochelle “escaped” her marriage and her addiction to television.
Rochelle describes herself as loyal, easy-going and generally a happy person. She is very much in-tune with herself and in control of her life. “Art for me initially was an
escape mechanism. Getting back in to painting was a way for me to express how I was feeling at the time. Now making art is part of my being, it is what I have become and what I dream of.”