Unbroken Line

I don’t do art anymore, but when I was in high school that was all I ever did. Mr. Jones, my art teacher, once had us do a quick sketch where we couldn’t pick up our ballpoint pen from the page and had to draw a portrait of the person next to us. My drawing was not very good, but the concept fascinated me, the one continuous line giving a sense of connection through the whole
piece. I started doing more drawings where I would put my pen to the paper and let it flow.

In life everything is connected, nothing lives in a vacuum, and to me that one line twisting and turning seemed to perfectly capture how we interact with everything.

Ever since sophomore year, I have struggled with depression. By senior year I was in a dark place, stowing away in the third-floor art room, it was not unusual for me to spend well over six hours a day in there, once even staying overnight because I wanted to finish a particularly large one-line piece. I did it in a haze.

I so badly wanted to communicate this sense of hurting yourself, not physically, but mentally, emotionally cutting yourself. I started drawing hands, reaching and trying to grab hold of the same line they were made of. I didn’t even understand my own work. Two years later, through medication and self-improvement I am doing incredibly well; I now look back on my art hung in my room as if a different hand made them, and I find new meaning in them.

Everything is connected, we are all connected; though the lines may feel obscured or hard to distinguish, too busy or too long to understand, it is all connected. When we put out hate into the world towards ourselves or others, we are only hurting the same string we are all made from. Life is hard, life is long winding, and confusing, but with work and love, I think we can all trace our path together.