Grief

This past year has been a whirlwind of difficult experiences for me primarily revolving around death, grief, and personal health problems. Five of my family members have passed away in the last 14 months. My dog, Morgan; then, my grandfather; my other dog, Baxter; my cat, Jelly; and just last week, my grandma also died. I've been through some horrible experiences in my life and encountered death and loss before, but I have never gone through such a string of tragedies in such a short period of time. I feel like I've been thrust into a Poe story against my will.

I've had little time to process my grief this year. I have to pretend I'm a fully functioning adult who has to go to university and interact with strangers all day. My internal meter for caring about anything has definitely been skewed and I feel utterly exhausted. I am tired and sad and find my wellbeing breaking as I try to mask these intense feelings constantly.

Art has become nearly impossible for me to make recently. I think art can be a great way for people to process and heal, but I find it difficult to create anything at all being fully immersed deep in the trenches of loss. I feel like I'm in an all-pervasive cloud with no foreseeable beginning or end. That makes art difficult to focus on and envision in the first place.

I had certain projects in mind for this fall but I am not sure if I'll get to most of them, or any at all. I love autumn and today is October 1st, a time that is normally special to me. Halloween has possessed a different air to it since last year and I believe I'm on track to celebrate more of a traditional Samhain than a jubilant Halloween. Perhaps I'll celebrate Halloween sometime next spring like I did this last year when I felt alright enough to do something that I knew would improve my quality of life.

After all that I've said today, I am not sure when I'll be posting more art. I hope I get up to some marvelous things but planning is not possible when life already feels so far out of my control. Every ounce of my energy is going towards helping family and going to school. The crumbs of that energy I'm allocating to taking care of myself and doing things I enjoy. Some art may come out of it but it's hard to say when and how much.

Thank you for listening to me share my thoughts on this difficult period of time in my personal life. I have no idea what the future holds for me but I hope better things are waiting just beyond this stormy horizon I'm sailing through.

I'll leave this post with one of my favorite quotes from The Lord of the Rings that I've often reminded myself of in many different circumstances. It helps me when I need to find my inner strength again and search for that sliver of hope to cling onto when everything is falling apart.

Thank you for your support.

I hope to report better and happier things the next time I write.

~Nikolai Sergei Razumov

Frodo: "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened."

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."