"I am not sick. I am broken..."

"...But I am happy as long as I can paint."

I would have loved to meet Frida Kahlo. She, along with Audre Lorde, Georgia O'Keefe and a few others, are my heroines. They have said things, made things, and written things that felt to me like they spoke my heart with their words and images, so deeply did they resonate and reverberate within me.

I do realize that I am broken. Most of the time, I feel like my mind has jagged outer edges that are ready to cut me if I think or feel too far in any one direction. Again and again, I run into those foggy glass walls. I don't know what lies beyond them, but I know that I've spent so long yearning for more that the wanting seems like a part of me. The walls shatter a bit more, creating small holes that let me glimpse into those corners of mind that I dare not enter, where there is fear and thoughts I dare not think. There is also hope lying in those shrouded corners. I feel it and try to have faith in it and all who placed it there. When those walls shatter, even the tiniest bit, more jagged shards are created. They plunge into the soft flesh of my arms, chest, legs, and face to serve as a reminder not to dream or hope or think or believe too much. I must not think or feel beyond the walls of what is deemed "safe". I need not know what lies beyond.

But I do.

I need to know what lies beyond in much the same way that I need to draw breaths into my body and pictures on the page.

I am thankful for even the tiniest increases in the space in which I feel safe.

"I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint."