ralfie

A simple collage with text. The background is a solid peachy color with a photo of wildflowers in the center. There is large black text on off-white rectangles that reads "I'VE BEEN TRYING TO GO HOME MY WHOLE LIFE"

First one was inspired by this collage I found on pinterest this morning - not sure who the original creator is but it resonated so deeply with me 💔

I have been running my whole life in search of the sense of home, safety, and comfort I felt in my grandparents' house growing up. I don't know if I'll ever find it, but I WILL continue making art about it. It's the only way I know how to cope.

Every year around this time I would help my Grandma put the "candles" up, in every window of the house. I can picture them all. And each day at dusk I would do my rounds, twisting each bulb into place to illuminate the little plastic candlestick. A sacred ritual that I truthfully took for granted.

So much of my Grief brings me back to this house. I am recently back in contact with my grandparents but estranged from everyone else on that side of the family and living 3000 miles away from all of them, but if I had to guess where my soul calls home, this would be it.

A grainy photo of a white house and a snowy yard, the photo is taken at night with flash. There are Christmas lights in the windows, as well as strung up on the trees and bushes out front. There are footprints in the snow leading towards the house. In white handwritten text reads "I've been trying to go home my whole life"

A grainy photo of a white house and a snowy yard, the photo is taken at night with flash. There are Christmas lights in the windows, as well as strung up on the trees and bushes out front. There are footprints in the snow leading towards the house. In white handwritten text reads "I'm homesick I'm homesick I'm homesick"

Griefy digital collage(?)/edit from group today feat. my grandparents' house at Christmastime in the early 2000s

A digitally altered photo of a tree overlooking a river. The tree is pink and the water is a faint greenish color. On the right hand side over the water is hand written text that reads "I am grieving a way of life that is long dead while the rest of the world dances with the corpse"

I hate posting to my art instagram now (rip) so... here u go

I may be able to help with that last bit if you wanna DM me ❤️

TLDR; I'm struggling with isolation and need more friend interactions, hmu ❤️

I'm just lonely!!!!!!!! I want to sit on a couch with an old friend and eat and drink and cry and laugh and hug and not have to worry about COVID or any of the other deadly pathogens in the air. I am grieving a way of life that is long dead while the rest of the world dances w the corpse.

This has turned into an enormous tangent but it needed to come out. I think what it boils down to is homesickness. I miss the east coast so much. I feel guilty being so far away, especially at such a precarious time for both sides of my family.

I really do feel so lucky to be in PDX. I have access to resources here that I wouldn't have elsewhere. But I still find myself wondering: "What would things be like if I was never forced to leave Maine?"

It's just not fair that so much of this is just because I'm fuckin disabled & poor. Can't work, can't support myself, can't engage meaningfully in life in the ways I want to. Having to uproot my life every couple of years since I was a teenager. Always running to where I can find support.

Getting older has really made me realize how easy it is for people to fall off the deep end, and how few people come back from it. I watched it happen to my ex. It takes so much work and intention but I'm fighting so hard not to let it happen to me too.

I'm just so lonely and wish I was better at initiating hanging out with people or even TALKING to people like I'm so afraid/timid and I don't want to be. I feel myself growing more and more distant from people I love and it makes me so sad. This isn't what I pictured my 30s looking like.

Idk why I'm saying all this. Maybe to put it out there that I'm aware of my patterns and trying to change them? To hold myself accountable? To keep myself from letting the pattern repeat itself? Maybe I'm just missing therapy and need somewhere to put all this. Idk.

I've really been working on myself the last couple years but especially since starting to taper off my psych meds last winter. I've been reflecting so much and just had a moment earlier this year where I was like "wow, I don't want to be this kind of person" and I'm trying my best to correct course.

And truly I am doing so much better in terms of doing the hard stuff. I've made so much growth in the last year. But I know I'm still being avoidant in ways that are not conducive to the kind of relationships I want to have. It's unintentional but it feels like self sabotage. I want it to stop.

I don't want to be that person that puts things off until the "right moment" though. I know that moment never or rarely comes. I know it's better to do the thing scared & unprepared than to never try at all. That's what bravery is anyways – doing the thing through the fear. I want to be brave.

I have so many relationships I want to repair or at least get closure from but I am so overloaded all the time I don't know how to devote the time and mental energy to those situations/conversations when I am always struggling to get my basic needs met.

Like my social skills have atrophied so badly over the last 8 years. I don't know how to talk to people, idk how to relate to them unless they intimately understand what it's like to be disabled, severely isolated, and chronically broke.

I'm so lonely. I miss having people in my life. I have made a couple pals in Portland and they are so lovely I just am really wanting more people in my day-to-day life and I just don't know how to make those connections.

Genuinely how tf do other broke, disabled, car-less, COVID-cautious, 30-something year olds make friends??

Been flaring so bad the last week and a half, to the point where the pillow I sleep with (which I got specifically to combat neck pain) is triggering horrible neck pain, and idk whether it's just a flare or if this my new normal and I need to buy a new neck pillow 🫠

I don't even have nipples!!!!!!

7 months post-op and I have regained nipple sensation 🥹