I Am Not Securely Attached

And like any good girl, I don't aspire to be.

✦ I will be taking a break from Instagram from Wednesday, February 22nd until further notice to pull away closer into myself and work on drawings for an upcoming solo exhibition. Please make sure you are subscribed to this newsletter to continue receiving personal updates and love letters. My shop is still open: prints, stickers, and postcards await you. Thank you. ✦

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Sensitive content warning: Today’s letter includes the topic of suicide and end-of-life agency. If you are an extended member of my family and are somehow reading this letter, please respect the container of this newsletter and do not contact other members of my family about my writing. Contact me directly by responding to this e-mail or at Hello@lordcowboy.com.

Dear reader,

My family has been in crisis since July. The crisis has continued to intensify, and my new-ish relationship has mimicked its timeline and progressed alongside it.

I’ve tried, like any good girl, to keep the pain at bay the best I can. In a sense, I’ve tried to protect my relationship from me. One need not be super savvy to intuit the plausibility of keeping up with a gig like this.

On Wednesday, I talked with my mother on the phone for hours about her desire to end her life. I recorded the whole thing into a voice memo, for what reason I suspect only the future me knows. For the first time since the heatwave in August, I spoke honestly to her.

It’s not that I’ve been lying to her for the last six months, it’s just that nothing I say sticks to her anymore. The truth no longer holds its weight, and I can’t make sense of speaking it when I could just say the things I know maintain her comfort while we cycle through this ride of reruns. I’m fine. The weather is nice. Work is good.

I’ve noticed that sometimes things get shaken up, and out of the blue it feels like my mother is awake again. In these moments, there is nowhere else to go but the truth, and conveying it to her before she disappears again feels urgent.