I have some daughters

When it’s this dark in the morning, I can’t decide whether to spring out of bed and go on a crime spree, or just go back to sleep. One thing is for certain: I have Maya’s song in my head a lot more when I wake up to blackness. That’s probably not good. I think it’s worse at this time of year because it’s fun to see it get lighter a little bit earlier every morning and, just when it’s light at a decent enough hour, BAM! Stupid dumb ol’ spring ahead.

Anyway, here’s another installment of Disturbing Images. This time, Liberty is the artist and I think you’ll see that her art goes in a completely different direction. First, “Big Heart”:

From the artist: “I like to draw colorful hearts and I like to practice drawing my hearts.”

And the next one is called “I LOVE PEOPLES” (she typed the title in all caps when she saved it, so I assumed that was part of the art):

When asked about this piece, Liberty said, “I like drawing random stuff.” I asked her if she remembered what she was doing or what was going on at the time that made her choose the title and she said, “Um, no I don’t. Nothing was going on, I just love people.” Disturbing.

She makes me wonder how twinship changes birth order expectations. She is technically the middle child and technically one of the firstborns. She’s a peacemaker, but SHE LOVES PEOPLES and never compares herself or feels angsty about her place in the family. She’s easygoing now, but that’s only after years of occupational therapy for sensory issues. She used to be different. Still lovely and precious, of course, but she used to have a really hard time with life. The business of all of those unpredictable stuffed animals and real animals out in the world, for one thing. We couldn’t take her into the toy aisle in a supermarket without her covering her ears, closing her eyes, and crying. That was because she was afraid of the motion-activated toys. Non-animatronic stuffed animals were also not to be trusted. All that fur and those expectant eyes, pleading, “Hold me! Pet me!” Creepy. Don’t even get me started about the trauma induced by a Koosh ball. A Koosh ball could send this child running like nothing else. And when, as part of her therapy, she finally deigned to be in the same room as one, she would not touch it, but she would eat it. Weird.

Maybe the OT helped her cope with life, or maybe she’s just going along to get along and she’s going to stab us all one day. Who knows? I believe her brain was hard-wired to expect pain and suffering because of her traumatic birth (premie, c-section, aspirated amniotic fluid and had to be intubated) and then having surgery to repair the esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula when she was two days old, which meant that she couldn’t be held for a couple of weeks. She was in an isolette for 2 weeks before anybody could even hold her. So fucking sad. So that put her in a constant state of fight-or-flight, which led to some interesting coping techniques, which led to our nurse practitioner saying, “She does what? WTF? Get her to an OT!” And so we did(*cough* not until she was almost 3, though, because we were the parents and the parents just see that shit and go, “Huh. That’s weird,” and then go about their business. Parents are so dumb sometimes). Anyway, now she doesn’t think the world is filled with pain and trauma around every corner and her art reflects that. The end.