I don’t know how to explain that I feel too much. I’ve learned recently that feeling too much is not something the average person experiences. How strange to realize, at this age, that your lived experience is not like most people.
Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland | Mamiya 7 | Kodak Portra 400 converted to bw
Sometimes I try my best to feel nothing. Not in a negative way. In fact, my best days are the ones with the least amount of feeling. Actively not-feeling is an emotional space I have curated over time. Learning to round off the hard edges of my brain, so to speak, to be “normal.” As Matt Berninger of The National wryly puts it:
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your mind is not your friend.
And when I am feeling too, too, much I must make things to expend that energy I can’t hold inside. I think that fixing my mental health made it harder to make art. I dunno, maybe that is a good tradeoff. Peace instead of darkness so dark you feel you will never escape.
My mother, she and I shared this darkness. It was one of the few things we had in common. I always wanted to know my mom, I wanted to know who she was. I tried. Now, I’m not sure if I ever did. As I go through her picture books, seeing the bits of her life she didn’t talk about, seeing the ghosts of my childhood, her collections, her thoughts on being a new mother - words of love written down that I can say I rarely heard, I create the best narrative I can.
I can think of all the things I am mad about. The atom bomb this set off in my life. Maybe to you a stranger this feels insensitive. I understand. Our relationship was not like most, I guess. How do I explain that someone with so much darkness can not give any light to others? I understand this in the very soul of me but - the pain, the resentment is still there.
I have spent half of my life learning how to stand up right. With my shoulders tall. To learn to love myself the way I was created. I ask myself, was it you or I who was wrong?
And now you are gone.
