Rebecca H., Miamisburg Middle School
Coping Mechanisms
Drawing has always been a passion of mine. The way I can get lost in my art, and express how I feel through it, is satisfying to me. It helps me. It’s a form of coping, and a way I can let go.
In December of 2022, a few days before Christmas eve, my mom was sent to the hospital. My mom’s coping mechanism was smoking cigarettes. She thought they helped her, but they did not. I wasn’t allowed to visit her for two weeks, not until January of 2023. Seeing her in that hospital bed was horrifying. The dim lights and the soft buzzing and humming coming from her oxygen mask deepened my anxiety at the moment. She couldn’t speak. Her throat was dry. She couldn’t move. The wires pulled too much. I was in the hospital with her for seventeen hours that day.
Mom has always been there for me, always asking how my day was after school and asking if she could see the drawings I’d design. Cigarettes broke her mind, though. She began getting irritated more often; she fell into a deep depression, and she began having episodes of paranoia and hallucinations.
On the 28th of January, her time came. Just a couple days after my thirteenth birthday, she passed at six in the morning. That took everything out of me. My lack of motivation was finally catching up to me. I stopped drawing for months on end, up until July of 2023. At that moment, I was taking crisis therapy. I told my bridge therapist about my passion for art even though I wasn’t drawing as much. She told me how my mom would’ve been so proud of me, and that I should start drawing again instead of resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms.
I took her advice and began drawing once I arrived home that day. I began drawing and making art more and more, finding myself lost in the pages as I became obsessed with what I would create. Art has been helping me in my recovery. Little by little, practice by practice, my art began improving as I began to overcome depression.
I imagine my mom is watching me from above, relieved that I’m recovering, delighted that I’m still making art. My form of coping is healthy, and it forces me to be more productive. Though I have those little spurts of depression and lack of motivation, I still push myself to try my hardest and prove that I can control my mental state. As I let my pencil flow over the paper, I let my worries fade away.
