Starting Over

I unexpectedly lost my dad in May. When does anyone ever expect it though? Death can be staring you right in the eye and it'll still feel like a theory. We grow up with the idea that there's this place in the sky that our loved ones go after they leave us. We imagine it being bright and peaceful - that we can look up into the clouds at any given time, they'll "shine down on us" and everything will be okay. Nobody prepares you for how dark it gets around you. How all of a sudden everything around you feels surreal and unstable. How all you want to do is make sense of something; make something tangible, make something clear, make something feel real. But it all feels like a blur. It feels like you're living in limbo.

I've had creative blocks before, but ever since he's been gone I realized I couldn't create anything that excited me anymore. I didn't want to. I didn't care to. I didn't want to face what happened: in my head or in my work. So, I kept avoiding it. I wanted to fix things before I continued creating. I was thinking it would be a domino effect: when I fixed what happened, everything else in my life would fall into place. The problem is, I can't fix what happened. It already happened. There's no going back.

Nothing will ever heal the emptiness I feel in my life without him here. I can't continue living my life as it was before or creating how I was before, but he wouldn't want me to just stop. He'd want me to grow and thrive: in my art, in my career, and in my personal life. So if I can't continue, all I can do is start over. All I can do is be who I am now, follow my instincts to create and make him proud. 

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.” - Pablo Picasso
"I like to re-invent myself. It's a part of my job" - Karl Lagerfeld
"I will make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life." - Elsie de Wolfe