28

Mood warning: reflective, hopeful, a little melancholy

Content warning: Some discussion of depression and suicide.  

Well, it happened again.  I had a birthday.  And I've made a habit of making a little birthday blog post every year.  Well, every other year.  I don't think it's exactly an overstatement to say that the past year and a half wasn't necessarily something I wanted to talk about or remember or reflect on.  I got dragged down in a lot of ways that I am still trying to parse and find the best way to share and write about.  But I wanted to make sure that I made one for 28.

I love art.  I've always loved it.  In the past couple of years, I've really leaned into it.  Following artists on Instagram, looking up new poetry, listening to those random Spotify playlists that get compiled into that little Made for You tab.  It's been an outlet.  A chance to see brightness and creativity when I felt the worst I've ever felt.  It's hard to contribute to anything when you feel that way, let alone create art.

I went to the Van Gogh exhibit at the IMA today.  I think so often about him.  And Friday Kahlo.  Two artists renowned for their incredible use of color, their themes of nature, and their wide portfolio of self-referential works.  Two artists whose pain was constant.  Frida Kahlo was in a terrible bus accident as a college student, and turned to painting because she couldn't leave her bed for a long time.  And Vincent Van Gogh, whose short life was punctuated by stays in mental hospitals.  Portrait of Dr. Gachet, the most expensive Van Gogh work ever sold at auction, is the portrait of a doctor whose home he stayed at after a year in treatment.  They're so often on my mind because of that context.  Did that pain better allow them to see beauty in things around them?  Or did they create beautiful things in spite of it?  They couldn't know their impact that's still being felt and will be felt far into the future, and yet they still created and formed.  

It's certainly not lost on me that both of those artists also succumbed to their illness.  The joy of being human comes in not just surviving, but living, maybe even thriving.  And a lot of days of 27 were centered on surviving, of pushing my body across the finish line of each day.  For 28, I hope I can do a lot more of the living.  I've been trying recently to remind myself that living each day is not only a gift, but for me, an accomplishment.  

I don't know what I'm creating yet, if anything at all.  But I was comforted by the entry that some unnamed curator wrote at the beginning of the Van Gogh exhibit, maybe without even really thinking about it,

"Vincent's early 20s were a time of great uncertainty as he tried to define a career path for himself. [...] In 1880, [at age 27,] Vincent finally turned to art."

It is a gift and accomplishment to be 28.  In other words, I'm just happy to be here.  Thank you for being here with me.