15.

So far, it has become more clear to me the depths of my emotions. I know them because I have felt and am feeling them. But to write and make art about it has been to learn about it more. I'm learning who I am, after. Learning more about who I was, before. I've learned how strongly I can feel emotions. Who knew you could feel sadness so potently? To experience it so strongly at a cellular level, that you just know the entire make up of who you are is forever altered. I didn't know that I could feel such a sense of yearning. Sure I've wished and dreamed for things before, but to yearn, from my soul, I did not know this feeling. To yearn so deeply for a presence of another person while knowing you will never have it. Such a potent experience. Meghan O'Rourke writes in her book The Long Goodbye, "I am becoming someone whose mother is dead." I felt this resonate so strongly. On top of the loss, I am now having to navigate a completely new identity. I am becoming someone whose mother is dead. I am a new person. And this new sense of self is birthed from a tragedy. Accepting this identity is to accept the tragedy, and that's hard to do. My body feels like uncharted territory - new feelings, aches, and pains. I know it's my own body but it's completely foreign. I am learning how to settle into this new reality, this new being, all while being unsettled and devastated at the tragedy that formed this new sense of identity. I will have to become that person, fully, one day. But I don't want to because what that means is that she is gone forever. But I'm here, it happened - so what am I supposed to do? I didn't know that I'd have to adjust to this new skin, this new way of being, this new identity I have, that has been thrust upon me so harshly.