Mental Health: Comparison & Kafka's Roach

I feel like my life is a circus, hoping that nobody else can see the mess I've made as I balance on the edge of being a train wreck. Why can't I be good enough right now? In the absence of accomplishment and the pursuit of something "greater", who am I? When will it be my turn to experience alignment and fulfillment? These questions are elusive. I can never really grasp them, no matter how far I stretch my arms. That doesn't seem to matter to me though; these questions have become a mild obsession, an addiction to try and make sense of things that are senseless. Comparing myself to others is something that has taken up a lot of space in my life recently, fueled by the fear of feeling left behind and unworthy as a result of it.

The ceaseless wanting and desire for "more" is an internal plague. It makes me want to rip myself apart just so that I can glue myself back in a way where I can fit in. Maybe if I tore myself into pieces, and rearranged them in a certain way, life wouldn't feel so cruel but the truth is I am being cruel to myself when I choose to carve myself into shapes just to fit into other people's ideas of what it means to live a good life.

Rejection can make you do a lot of wild things, and as an emotional outlet for the complex feelings that arise from it, I've started painting again. When I got rejected by Fulbright (and a plethora of other things), I was gifted a bouquet of sympathy sunflowers, carnations, and dianthus. They were decaying as the gap widened between my rejections and the present moment. The petals were mangled, twisted, and curled. The center of the flowers were rotting, and the water line began to develop a milky film coating. I wanted to capture this feeling, and so as the flowers were taking their last breath, I decided to paint with them.

It felt poetic to use something dead to bring the feeling of rejection to life. I didn't imagine rejection to look so colorful, but it just felt like the best way to depict the confusion and chaos that I was experiencing inside. Like many of our lives, there is no rhyme or reason to the painting. If you look close enough, you can see the stencil of some of the petals, whereas in other parts of the painting you can't really make out what's happening.

When I finished the background, something felt missing. Although I captured the chaos metaphorically (and literally by using flowers that symbolized loss and confusion), I wanted to include something dark to contrast that. I've always loved The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and as someone interested in the Kafkaesque, I knew his roach would be the perfect focal point. The roach is contained in this almost permeable, thick black border - it looks like it could just about escape it if it wanted to, but it doesn't. The roach is contained, stuck, and trapped. This painting, in essence, is trying to bottle up a feeling rather than depict something that is concrete and real. You can't necessarily see your feelings; this was my attempt at trying to visualize mine.

I'm still hopeful for the roach though. Even though it is contained, you still get a sense that it's not always going to be stuck there as it inches closer toward the border. It's moving forward, not behind. Even though it can't  see a way out right now, that doesn't mean there will never be a way out.

Rejection is redirection. When things get taken from you, there is more space for what is meant for you.