(Content Warning: mental illness, grief, death, cancer)
I’m not sure if others are also feeling this way but the present and future, at the moment, feel bleak. Times have been difficult for everyone for various reasons (in these currently oppressive social and political landscapes). For myself, things feel increasingly difficult as I don’t have much in terms of art community to commune over ideas and I feel set back due to trauma related to community and being vulnerable.
I’ve also been having an especially difficult time due to my mother passing away less than a year ago from stage 4 metastatic bladder cancer. The whole ordeal feels surreal. I was her main caregiver for about a year and was with her when she passed. There is a before and after my mom’s existence and I am currently dealing with the after… which feels isolating and hopeless. I was told grief will come in waves. I was told by a social worker: there will be a time when you feel okay and a time when you wonder whether you’ve been grieving all wrong as the chaos returns unchanged. I currently feel as if I’m huddled in a glass house in a typhoon. (Although I think I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself).
As someone with anxiety and depression, my mother was my best friend and my lifeline, especially when my mental health spiralled. And without her, I feel confused and clueless on how to proceed with anything. It’s difficult to clasp onto art making or being productive when this thing has happened. Someone who I assumed would always be there and who I could share my joys and experiences with forever is gone. From a young age, many of us are aware of death as a concept. But experiencing it firsthand was shocking and extremely confusing. The line between life and death is very fine, I realized.
Art making as an adult is a gift in many ways – to learn, to resist and endure, to understand suffering and witness joy, to build resilience and strength… My journey in this program is to experiment with the sparks of joy, comfort and pleasure that art provides. Art and life feel inseparable to me. I wanted to share a little bit of my reality at the moment.
