Journal Entry 9.19.23

This project seems to already be working. My depression has lifted, my suicidal thoughts relinquished their hold, grief has been replaced by sadness, but sadness with a purpose, with hope in the distance. I have shared the project with friends, gradually, terrifyingly. Instead of turning people away it has been connecting.

I showed my son the project. He was proud of me. He was proud that I was doing something productive with my pain. He was proud that I was doing it in art form. He was proud I was doing it publicly. He carefully, bravely told me that he was grateful I was doing this project because, in publicly sharing my grief, and that my grief had driven me to suicide, I was releasing him from the bonds of the obligation to keep me alive. He is proud that I have found a form that allows me to process my feelings with out him being present, that allows me to develop a new art form that I can adapt to more and different ideas. He is proud I have found Ariadne’s thread out of the labyrinth of grief.

And so I have unbound my son. I have achieved one thing already in unbinding myself from my grief. My son and I clung to each other as our families collapsed around us, he graduated college and we had to find a new home. We needed to have some sort of ties. We needed connections, threads that tied us to a past and a future. We needed to process the shock and horror of what happened to us.

But that time has passed. Hawk has bought a house of his own, is moving out, moving on and yet remaining connected to me, the moat of Penobscot Bay in between us, the representation of self created by land and the water between.