The Thesis
Ever since I was a teenager, my emotions have been a crucial part of my identity and the way I understand the world. I was taught by my Christian parents I was a “burden bearer”, which I would say set me on my path in life to become a mental health therapist.
When I started making art, emotional pieces would always crop up at critical parts of my development.
In my early twenties, I started a series that would inadvertently carry on for what’s now over a decade. Although it’s just been across my young adulthood, the milestones and emotional landmarks represented with each one have continued to offer me a vivid glimpse back at these times in my life.
This Page
After trying obsessively to compile each Emotia each time I add a new one, I’ve finally decided to make a webpage that shows them all so the process makes me less furious lol.
The Timeline
2014
e x h u m e
It represents “Feeling What You Don’t Want” as in those moments when you’re gripped with jealousy or rage or disappointment and you desperately want to dispel every scrap of it from your body but it just won’t get out. And you hate yourself for it and you want to break yourself to get rid of it but your heart’s still whole and as long as it’s there then the feeling won’t leave you till it chooses. You’re not about to cry and you’re not about to scream you’re just so concentrated, fruitlessly, on crushing that feeling.
it will work out (i hope)
Okay so this second completed member of Emotia is “Things Will Work Out (I Hope), but it ended up being a lot more narrative than conceptual – not that that takes anything away from it. Her pose, for once in my life, came quickly and naturally and this final draft of her pose actually came without any revising except in the initial phase. Not gonna lie though – I may only have given her those combat boots because I’m so excited that they’re back in style so I can wear my Doc Martens this fall! Okay but anyway, I don’t actually remember where the light bulbs idea came from. I think I knew I wanted that hopeful aspect in the piece so I knew she needed a physical light source. OH NO, I was watching Being Human (the UK version) and a vampire was touching an old yellow light bulb riiiight when I must have been starting this.
2015
(rise again, fighting)
Everything fell apart. I made a giant mistake which financially cost me and shattered any trust I had in myself and my decision-making abilities. I had fallen closer to rock bottom than I ever had, and it killed me knowing it was a series of impulsive life choices I made that landed me right where I was. (As a side note, I didn’t do anything illegal; I didn’t get fired from any jobs; I didn’t cause anybody bodily harm, including myself) I didn’t feel like myself anymore but the line of decisions and experiences between me and who I wished I still was was getting longer and longer. It took me forever to come to rational solutions for my situation. But I did. Finally.
This included taking on art classes through a community art program for the first time. Right now I’m halfway through a Saturday class talking to three teenagers about comics and drawing. It legitimizes my skill in it and gives me a chance to talk to some kids who are where I used to be.
It included deciding to put the possibility of graduate school back on the table. (Appropriately, my chosen grad program is ART THERAPY…wish me luck) It included smoothing out the wild wrinkles in my living situation, and suddenly cleaving to circumstances I’d jilted before but come to realize were exactly what I currently needed. I also got back all of my financial losses, after honestly accepting the possibility that the loss had ended but may have never been replaced. All these things lined up again in the matter of weeks since the beginning of the new year. This new year has been metaphorical and temporal. I realized this morning, amusing as it may sound, that I haven’t cried in January. I can’t tell you how cool that is, considering the months I was climbing out of.
Visually, OH MY GOD, like I just realized that the COLOR PALETTES are appropriate! LOOK how dull and drained Exhume’s colors were. It Will Work Out, I Hope shows a subdued but warm color palette, followed by Rise Again, Fighting’s EXPLOSIVELY HOT COLORS.
The movement of the three paintings goes from extremely static to fiercely dynamic, too. Exhume is frozen, CLENCHED even. It Will Work Out has her footing back – she’s just done something, but she’s not doing anything more, yet. And finally, Rise Again bursts forth, taking “matter” into her own hands, hair streaming, eyes lit up, hand outstretched.
2016
e n d u r e
So I realized that I needed to make a new Emotia painting. I wanted to express the beautiful, grind my teeth anger involved in just….enduring. In knowing that there will be a payoff, somewhere.
But what emerged from the painting is an expression of how well I ended up being able to endure after all. In a way, since it was completed some 5 hours before my breaking point, it was a harbinger for ripping out that handful of feathers, the beautiful but challenging parts of my life I realized needed to be purged for now. The piece is pretty dark – strong, but dark. Because when I realized that I didn’t want to endure anymore, I kind of broke. Kind of in the same way as the girl in this painting. She’s not broken, but she was definitely falling apart. I see the feathers she’s clutching in her fists and I see how I realized that something had to give.
2017
I Do Believe In New Beginnings
In “I Do Believe in New Beginnings,” I feel like I have unified myself. That’s why an element or more from each of the previous Emotia paintings are all represented. The feathers from “Endure,” the heart (on her shirt) from “Feelings I Don’t Want”, the light bulb from “Things Will Work Out (I Hope)”, and the fire from “Rise Again, Fighting.” I’ve still got tears and loose ends, but it all comes together now. Obviously, the giant white foof skirt is a nod to my recent marriage, which has really helped make me feel like I’ve accomplished something as a person and I’ve come together with someone who will protect me, encourage me, and strive to understand me for my whole life.
This piece then is pretty exciting in that way. I really feel like I’ve been waiting for 2017 since at least 2015, if not honestly for most of my adolescent and adult life. I have never, ever felt this whole. I feel perfectly in touch with myself. My art is thriving, my writing is thriving, my love is stable and huge and wholesome, I’ve taken control of my anxiety, and professionally, I am somewhere I’m proud to have survived – and heading somewhere I can’t believe wanted me. But they wanted me because of all this dedication I’ve put into my achievements. They saw it. They honored it.
2018
Even Though I Still Feel Broken
It’s been about a full year since “i do believe in new beginnings,” and my emotional landscape has gone through a lot this year. I have begun to manage my anxiety symptoms and spent the year on medications that greatly reduced my daily experience with anxiety and almost eliminated all but maybe five panic attacks for all of 2017. I think that’s what the stitch in her head is for. The worst wounds in my brain were kind of fixed, but my feeling of my brain being broken is definitely still there.
I also got the best job I’ve ever had, where every day I put on a smile and bring light, safety, and comfort to kids who are further in that maddening darkness than I’ve ever been. And while it has given me a safe space to talk about how yes, anxiety affects me too, it’s often been undercut by my own feelings of anxiety and insecurity that make it hard for my joy and satisfaction at work to be authentic. I have told many coworkers I become a different person at work, and nobody would believe how socially anxious I am, or how mean or cynical I am, in my real everyday life. So the mask I put on for work is there, and its strings are navy because that’s what I wear to work, disgustingly, haha. I struggled with how I incorporated work because it really has been a huge part of my life this last year, and I really thrived there and got a promotion and everything, but…I don’t know, last summer I told a patient I really liked that believe it or not I get told on a daily basis I’m someone’s favorite tech, but that approval, that validation, just kind of hits a wall in my heart where compliments don’t get through. I know what I’m capable of at work and I know my strengths, but I still suffer from a heavy, overwhelming belief that I am worthless and incompetent. It’s really sad, and it’s the one thing I am setting into 2018 trying to change.
The eyes battle with each other because of a deep and intense anger that I had for most of 2017. It was all because of the blood on my hands, the loss I suffered, the mistake I made, the people I hurt. It was a deep and hollow anger and hurt that I knew all that could be done about is to get through it.
The anger became something of a coldness in me as the year wrapped up. I have snowflakes on my shoulder for two reasons: the holidays were one of the emotionally hardest part of my year, and all my anger and disappointment in myself made me feel cold and numb. Work was awful, and I just really struggled feeling wanted or a sense of belonging. And the frustrating part of that is that there’s no good reason for it. I have not one but two families who have loved and accepted me. But I was wildly PMSing on Christmas and that did a lot of emotional damage to me. So, holiday snowflakes, internal numbness.
The shattered chest is a throwback to my original Emotia drawing, “feelings I don’t want.” I still have feelings I don’t want. I did things I shouldn’t have done this year. But again, a lot of this painting circles back to how poorly I feel about myself. That’s why she’s the first Emotia girl with my body type. Except her tit’s a bit perkier. I did gain weight throughout my first year of marriage, and that’s always just felt like something that is completely out of control and yet is still something I feel extraordinarily guilty for.
Still have my foofy wedding dress on. My relationship has been one of the only things unaffected by my emotional turmoil. Only one of my panic attacks last year was about us. We are growing, we are coming together, we are passionately committed to each other, and being married has just given us something unifying, something that keeps us close and alive and intense, even when everything else in our lives is pretty much routine.
2019
I Am Growing But Please Let Me Be
2020
2021
what little hope i have i hold for you
I’ve thought about this poem a lot since we analyzed it back in high school because we talked about how delicate and easily crushed it makes hope sound. But I’ve never understood that better than now as it seems my family is in a period where every time a new hope is born it gets blown away in a Gale.
So I’ve had to put it in a cage, and it makes it harder to reach, but it’s still there glowing softly in my chest.
I’m also a therapist now, and it’s been an interesting time to be holding brand new and grown up wounds for my clients in a period when a lot of new wounds have been cut in my family.
The other “interesting” dynamic to everything has been that honestly at least recently, the misfortune hasn’t been strictly my own but that of my loved one so I’ve had to explore to what extent I hold their pain as my own and how to navigate that space while establishing myself as a professional. FINALLY.
I am at my second job since graduating in May but it’s been feeling really good and hopeful at Oak Ridge as a straight-up therapist. Someone said something to Ryan about friends from work for me and I was like ah no, I have neither friends nor enemies at work and it’s great. I show up, work, and go home. And the work is helping people navigate their own labyrinths and that feels great as well. I have some really wonderful clients who have really connected with me.
Anyway, as for the other imagery in the new Emotia, the Ronan tattoo is pretty self explanatory. I wanted to incorporate him in this painting since for Ryan and I both, he’s been a steady source of joy and togetherness. He had some bad Two weeks when he got sick for the first time after starting daycare, but aside from that it’s been a true privilege to watch him grow and learn.
Ah yes, and my leg. After a year and a month I still have nerve damage and regular nerve pain as well as chronic back pain from my herniated disc. Yes the cyst was traumatizing and Ronan’s birth with the C-section were traumatizing but not anywhere near how devastating my back injury was. Not only in its effect on my day to day life, but its lasting impact and to what extent it made me question my own strength and my body’s ability to carry on. The lightning looks pretty dope though huh.
Honestly this Emotia kind of created itself. The idea came about yesterday and I worked on it throughout the day and into today without much hesitation. I’m not sure it’s necessarily quite as refined as some of the otehrs but the symbolism is all there and the art is the quality I wanted it to be.
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
i carry a light within me but i have plenty to spare
Looking back at What Little Hope I Have I Hold For You, it’s hard to think about how challenging the last five or ten years have been as far as managing finances, getting through school, surviving a pandemic, becoming a parent, breaking my back, losing an ovary… Yeah, things were rough hahah.
It’s hard to believe that, the last time I did one of these, I wasn’t even a published author. I hadn’t even written Deny Me.
Becoming an author has been a huge shift, in ways that have been both beautiful and devastating. Putting my words out there for all to see and absorb and criticize has been at times a source of regret and uncertainty, but also, so often, inspiration and joy. It’s been strange that, not only have I left my mark on many patients who have come through my therapy office, but folks have fallen in love with my imaginary worlds. To the point that they appear in front of me holding my books in their hands to tell me how much they loved it, to ask for my goddamn signature, to squeal out and exclaim when I give them stupid little freebies that I never thought were much of a big deal at all. To the point that I have been asked to moderate not one but two events for authors at a bookstore that has had my back since the day that Deny Me came out and I did my first reading wearing a mask because I had gotten covid for the first time and didn’t know it bahahah.
Being five years into my post-grad career has brought a lot of ups and downs but generally a lot of good. A lot of steady, thoughtful growth that hasn’t been rushed. Many folks have trusted me with their stories in session with me, whether they have become my diehard group who has been with me since day one, or whether their time with me was more like a firework.
I have applied for and gotten rejected from a doctoral program, which completely shifted my short-term career goals while setting me on a path to try again over the next five or ten years knowing that that’s still a skill set I want to add to my life. I also think it allowed me to veer off onto a path I’ve been dreaming about since before grad school, and that’s starting to come to fruition.