Processing Your Remains

A year ago I was in a DARK place contemplating suicide and feeling hopeless. When I decided to keep living and not kill myself, I did what I always do and started taking the steps I needed to fix my problems. I started EMDR to deal with the trauma of losing you the way I did. What resulted was remarkable. I was able to separate the person you were before the mugging, addiction and head injury with the person that remained afterwards. I held a funeral to honor the memory of the partner and friend I lost. I buried pictures of you under a tree next to the ocean and sunk momentos from our wedding im a chest that now inhabits the bottom of Burrard Inlet. As I threw that treasure chest off the side of the cliff a weight lifted. I was finally able to say goodbye to the love that I lost as I watched it disappear into the depths of the sea. I felt free to move forward without guilt of a sense if obligation to a ghost. The people that we once were when we were together can spend eternity in the ocean together. I finally let you go and let the idea of us go.

Now comes the hard part...processing the remains. The years of trauma and verbal abuse took their toll. I'm slowly deconstructing the narrative that I'm selfish, don't care and just use people to get ahead. The truth is, people like me, people like working with mr and I bring creatives together. Me, just creating art and including others in process inspires people to use their creative gifts and talents that would otherwise lie dormant because "life got in the way." I pull creative people around me out of pits, help them break out of ruts and let them be their authentic selves. If that is my contribution to the bigger picture then I'm happy with it. I'm not selfish. I just exist as my authentic self and refuse to compromise on that point.