Paralyzed at the crossroad of the years. One year ends. A new year starts. The end of the year naturally gives way to the start of the new year and with that a lot of … hopes and expectations. In the last weeks, I’ve been waiting for the year to pass, expecting a little bit of peace in my heart. Maybe I was just hoping it will wash the trace of time and scars that the ending year has brought with all the struggles.
I love the New Year’s resolutions, recounting achievements, planning, dreaming, but this year, everything stopped, as my father had a stroke and we had to take care of him in the hospital. Unexpected, few days before Christmas he had a heart attack and died.
It is so easy to forget that our time here on Earth is limited.
In the last weeks, I really felt the burden of time. Or the lack of it. When losing a parent, the whole meaning changes. Everything seems different now. It hurts so much. Words are heavier. Everything feels so unreal. The air is thinner and hurts when you breathe in. When I finally exhausted every tear, so tired and overwhelmed, the world looks so petrified, soulless.
We are the time’s fool.
I feel all of this in one fraction of a second, trapped between two worlds, between two timelines, one so long it exhausts until the last breath, and one so short, unreal like a dream.
I feel like he took a part of me with him.
My grandfather died in 2015. It was a great loss for me. I felt that my whole world fell apart and I start questioning everything about my life and everything about life. I start creating photo poetry, this is how the 366 days Photo Poetry challenge started. It was my path of healing, of understanding and giving my life a meaning. I spent the year 2016 creating one photo poetry a day, leading to the end result, The Photo Poetry Book, which I self-published, in March 2016.
Along the way, there have been lots of struggles and difficulties. If I knew from the beginning how hard it will be, maybe I will have never started the project. It took me on a long bumpy road, with struggles I would have never expected, some of them real, some of them just excuses: financial difficulties, lack of knowledge, lack of time, no people to help me or support my work, English not being my mother tongue language, insecurities, critiques, lack of confidence. There are a lot of struggles in every path. Seems like everything is there just to stop us. Sometimes it is hard just to keep your head up and keep following the path.
I just followed the road never knowing where it will take me.
In December it was planned to launch the eBook on Amazon, when I got stuck with all the work, when my father was in the hospital.
Knowing this is the hardest decision I can make right now, I have made my resolution for the year 2017/2018. I will start a new project. In this challenge, I will be creating a black and white photo poetry, The Black and White 52 Photo Poetry challenge. I know I will continue my path of healing and I will be growing as an artist and human being, as I am hoping it will bring hope, faith, and joy in my heart. I am creating from my heart, but I will the happy for as many people will join me in my journey, because I know, there are many of you struggling with the same in your life.
My secret power source that kept me going was meeting great people along the way, always being surprised of the big heart people can have, if you give them the chance the open up their souls and being, like yourself, vulnerable.
Thank you old friends, and welcome new ones.
