Starry Night

I’m a Jill of All Trades & Master of None. Blame it on my insatiable curiosity—I fall in love with hobbies easily & immediately want to attempt them.

So, along with my ukulele, French lessons, perfume garden, cardio training, tarot cards, pole dance classes, leatherwork, pyrography, costuming, sketching, tattooing, dollhouse crafting, the four books I’m reading at the same time, beadwork, writing (fiction & op-eds), counseling, performance art, &etc, &etc, &etc… 

I picked up origami. I don’t know how to make a crane or box or a frog that hops. I make one thing, over & over again, & that thing is stars. 

I’ve made hundreds, at least. I can do it with my eyes closed at this point. 

So here’s the lede I buried: I get sad. I have clinical sadness, also known as depression. It comes & it goes. I chart its patterns like constellations. I try to focus on eating well, sleeping well, exercising & making art & meeting new lovers, but sometimes the only way to live is to just live through it.

I fold a star, pinching it in my left hand as I shape its points. They’re so small, about the size of a dime. It’s just one tiny little paper trinket; you could mistake it for a scrap of trash at first glance. But I make another. & another. I focus my thoughts on stars, away from whatever dismal boo-hoo thoughts that sometimes hijack my brain. 

& soon enough, I have handfuls of stars. They’re a rainbow of colors, mostly gradients of yellow & orange with small bursts of red, green, black. It feels like filling a jar with the night sky, sweet little facsimiles of great, burning orbs nine trillion kilometers away.

Despite this, they're a physical reminder that my mind doesn't work as well as I'd like. There’s so many, it can be overwhelming to consider that these silly paper stars are the currency with which I measure my lows. But who else will record our histories, & who will decide how they’re written? I write mine in sweet kisses, in vulnerable moments shared with lovers, in joy, & in stars.