Anguish

Some years take everything. Your confidence. Your sleep. Your sense of who you are. You stop showing up for people. You stop believing in yourself. You just survive.

This piece is that year.

The face is more fractured, than hidden. It’s pulled apart, screaming without sound. The stripes distort everything because that’s what prolonged stress does. You can’t find yourself in the noise anymore.

One of the things I enjoy about tufting, though, it that there is something about the physical act of pushing a needle through a surface, row by row, that quiets chaos.

It’s harder to spiral when your hands are working. You can’t disappear when you’re building something.

Anguish is a portrait of a hard year, and it’s what the other side of it looks like.

I made this, which means I got through it.