I wrote this a while back and things were so fresh, I didn’t feel good about publishing it. But 9 months have passed and it feels okay to share now. We’re all friends here. <3
Lately, every day I wake up I have 1 of 3 things on my mind....
1. Mom’s death. It’s been a little more than 2 months since Mom died and I see her face in my mind almost every morning. More than when she was alive, by a long shot. I hear her telling me that I will find love if and when I’m ready for it, I feel the soft skin of her cheek under my fingers, or I remember the horrible shit I did when I was young without ever thinking about what it was doing to her. The subject matter varies but it always slows me down. I’ve never been so mentally slow .. it’s frustrating, but also enlightening in an incredibly painful way. I’m trying to move on, to make sense of my choices and piece together my story so I can turn the page… but I’m just so incredibly… slow. I wonder if I will ever be the same.
2. My stupid broken heart. They say you’re only ever In Love or Recovering from Love. Or maybe only I say that. Having only fallen hard a couple times in my life, those separations have been .. difficult, to put it mildly. I don’t let love in quickly or easily and as an incredibly empathetic person, will go to great lengths to blame myself for failures. I take that blame when I shouldn’t and as I get older (wiser), I realize that taking that on and letting people get away with hurting me is not something I care to continue. I have no interest in having people in my life who not only waste my precious time and energy but do literal damage. So this time, it will not fly. I will forgive because I realize that even the most hurtful people really - at their core - only want to be loved, but I will not forget.
3. The Artists’ Plight. It’s a day to day battle to manage the extreme uncertainty of surviving as an Artist. There is no guidebook. And if there were, it would be bullshit anyway because everyone has a different journey because we’re ARTISTS. There is no help. We’re entrepreneurs in an industry that never gets backed. We starve, we live in squalor, we go without healthcare and without support from our government and if I had a nickel for every time someone told me to get a real job…I’d have a real job.
I wake up every day and battle my demons because that is what we do as humans. We love, we lose, we have joy, we have pain. We are so aware that awareness itself becomes a battle. The thing about myself that I am certain of though …. I only walk in wonderful directions. And even among all the heartache that I am enduring at the moment, I know I will find that joyful path again.