Breakable

I remember waking up that day desperate not to exist.

It was beautiful outside; sunny, warm, the birds were singing, a breeze was blowing, and yet my world was crashing down around me. I don’t even remember why.

Like most of my anxiety-lead depression, it was probably a combination of things all coming to a head at once. Maybe it was the lack of work and resulting financial strain. Maybe it was an important relationship crumbling due to factors I couldn’t control. Maybe it was my artistic identity crisis and my belief that nothing I made mattered.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t function, and I didn’t want to exist.

I could feel the pressure mounting. The noise in my head was growing louder, the screams were becoming more and more unhinged, and I could see the end coming for me.

…and then a spark.

“Do something. Save yourself. It doesn’t have to be this way. Reroute the pain into something else.”

I started to imagine: What does this pain look like? What does the desperation look like? What do the numbness and the exhaustion, and the surrender look like?

Suddenly I had a purpose, if only for that day. I had to take what was happening to me and create. I had to make it into something. It was the only way to survive, and I did want to survive.

The images from this day saved me. They allowed me to focus my anguish on manifesting creativity and making something that connected with others who recognized my experience.

At one point, self-doubt began to creep back in. “Are the images too dark? Are they too cliché? What will my peers think?” But in the end, it’s the accessibility to the experience that I love most about them. I heard from people I didn’t even know would understand, and at that point, I knew none of my doubts mattered. Only the human connection I gained with others through the images mattered.