Hospitals, like airport terminals, have an otherworldly aspect to them. Brightly lit portals to elsewhere that exist outside the usual rules of time and space. To enter one as a patient or a traveler is to put your life and its preservation into strangers’ hands. You become body more than person.

Creating my way through my worst moments is my way of refusing that reduction. An ongoing attempt to remind myself that I’m still alive - and that my life is worth living, even when it hurts the most. It is my attempt to transmute profoundly isolating experiences into vehicles for connection and mutual recognition. After all, isolation is one of the most universal aspects of suffering.