We Persist

I had the chance to talk about art as therapy, Cory's illness, and losing a child at the local college the other night.  I've done this a few times, and it's always interesting to see how long I can hold out before I start crying, and what questions people ask.

I could really only share my experience using art to cope, I have no schooling or training in this area.  The thing that popped into my head driving home was this:  writing and drawing has kept me out of the psych ward more than once.  When I feel completely depleted, and just want to collapse somewhere and be fed and watered like a fern, sitting silently at the required therapy groups, I remind myself that I won't be able to have my journaling items with me on the ward, and that usually curtails any fantasies I'm currently nursing about running away to the hospital for awhile.

I still don't consider my doodles art.  They keep me busy, but they aren't as good as real artists produce.  I do enjoy going through them, though, months or years later, and being transported back to an exact moment where a woman even more lost than I am now, used color and line to communicate her horror and despair to others around her.

I meander through these pages that are smudged and sometimes crackle when you peel them apart, and I can see my progress, my winding, two steps forward- three steps back, unwilling, angry, protesting progress.

Cory is never coming back.  I will not run into her at Barnes and Noble.  Of that much, I'm sure.  The rest of the stages are sketched and doodled, painted and drawn...they run off the page; they return when I thought I'd seen the last of their ugly faces.  They persist.  And so do I.

So do I.