Everything Will Be O.K.
A story about why we make art
It’s been fourteen years since I created this illustration, but I remember it clearly.
I dipped a fine-tipped brush in black India ink and traced it across a sheet of white copy paper. I was sitting cross-legged at the foot-high folding table I used for everything—eating, working, reading, and making art. It was the only piece of furniture I owned in my studio apartment.
My first apartment as a professional graphic designer cost $700 a month. At twelve dollars an hour, rent felt like a luxury. But according to my therapist, I needed to move out of my parents’ house.
For the past seven years, I had been bouncing from California to Singapore to Australia, living with men I had met as strangers, who became intimate partners, and eventually fiancés. When those relationships ended, I moved back in with my family and all their chaos, always at the worst possible time.
I needed space. I needed quiet. I needed time to process what had happened to me.
But I couldn’t find it among my family’s unrealistic demands, the stress of my first nine-to-six career, and the emotional aftermath of several violent breakups. My mental machinery couldn’t keep up. Eventually, like an engine on its last leg, I sputtered, malfunctioned, and came to a screeching stop.
I had not been overly sensitive in the past, but during that time I lived as though my skin had been sanded down and someone had left me naked on a windy beach. I huddled for hours under blankets, but I could not sleep. Ideas, hopes, dreams, fears, and visions raced through my mind while I lay in bed, exhausted and awake.
Then there were the surges of energy. Sometimes the only way to calm them was to sprint through the neighborhood or smoke cigarettes.
When I wasn’t running, I was vulnerable to a radiant warmth in my chest, like an unwelcome heater turned on in summer. The warmth would increase my heart rate and make breathing difficult. It moved from my chest to my neck, then down my arms and legs, until I was flooded with pure emotion: despair, glee, rage, sadness, all of it mixed together and too large to contain.
My therapist called these panic attacks.
But I believed they were something more.
Inside them, I saw the golden thread of humanity. I closed my eyes and traveled from life to life. I saw that every person, no matter where or when they lived, was singular. A starving child and a plastic-faced woman somehow shared the same source. I saw nightmares of broken childhoods and unaccomplished dreams.
In the material world, I had a job. My dream job, in fact.
But I couldn’t figure out the point of working it.
At the studio, I created colorful food wrappers with thoughtfully designed details. I came up with album art for musicians I didn’t listen to, people who would never know my name. All of it would eventually become garbage.
“Everything will be O.K.” was a phrase I whispered to myself from time to time. It was not optimism exactly. It was a reminder that things were not good right now, but maybe, possibly, one day, they might get a little better.
I did not need to feel great. Happiness was obviously out of reach. I only needed to be free from the prison of my own mind.
So I turned the phrase into art. I screen printed it and hung it on my wall.
And when I felt the heat creeping up my chest, I would look at it and remember to breathe.
If I could take one step in the right direction, I might make this life bearable. And maybe, at some point, at a time I would not recognize while I was living through it, the effort would be worth it.
Dear friends,
I currently write for free. But if you find my stories valuable—care to buy me a coffee? I do love coffee, and appreciate all of your comments, tips, and ideas.
Til next time,
Leslie