Assignment 5

 

    

Title: When It Rains

These drawings are vague self-portraits. The first is me, age 6. As a child, I never cut my hair. I was tan, with long blonde hair to the backs of my knees. I loved the color yellow and going to church on Sundays with my granny. I was a social butterfly; a model little country rose who had a big happy family who doted on her. I rarely ever cried. Until the day I had to hand a letter to my mother. We were in Granny’s cute yellow kitchen, with arched windows and dog bowls lining the wall. In the letter, were the final words and the final drawing to my Granny. They were to be burned with her ashes. She would never read them. It was the first time I felt a pain so raw I couldn’t sob. The tears fell without a sound. The flowers in the garden wouldn’t bloom right next year without her. Fast forward to the second portrait, age 19. This is me now. I’ve grown numb to loss. Death after death throughout my childhood has left me the husk of an adult. I only have one surviving person I can truly call my family. Granny (heart failure) Dad (heart attack), Jeanne (disease), Great Grandma (Alzheimer’s), Nikki (surgical accident), Kyle (unknown), Jodie (organ failure), Carol (hit and run), Everett (house fire), Lisa (cancer), Beni (disease), Astrid (disease), all gone in 13 years. I don’t understand the cruelties of life. I don’t know if I ever will. People like to tell me I’m strong, or brave, but that only angers me more. I don’t want to be strong. I want to grieve. I want to live a normal, happy life. My brain has begun to attack itself from the trauma. I now suffer from seizures, heart issues, and severe mental illness. I am not brave, nor a survivor, I am simply suffering under the weight of loss. I am doing all I can to achieve some form of normalcy in my life. Therapy, prescriptions, treatment plans, doctor’s visits, recreational hobbies, volunteering, anything that will give me back the spark for the life I had before the losses began to pile up. Art is one of the few things that helps me cope. My goal with these drawings is to share the weight of my grief and give a small look into how heavy and harsh it feels to have only one person left whom you can call family. The first image is lacking in detail and more "clean", implying my simplicity in life and my youth. The second image is more rugged, showing how hardened and tired I have grown. The backgrounds also show how hard things have been for me. The first image is my first loss, the first shadow to darken the background. In the second image, the entire background is darkened, and the foreground is beginning to darken too, the two wooden doors resemble grief and loss closing me in, but they arent shut yet, showing my hope for a brighter future, and my unwillingness to completely give up just yet.