Art Saves Lives: Creating Who I Am — by Valerie Acosta

In preparation for this essay, I looked through my collection of half-finished journals. In the neon-colored “Ballerina Bunnies” Lisa Frank notebook that haphazardly documents my teenage life, I found this entry from 1996:

I CAN’T SLEEP. 

Why has Hypnos condemned me? 

I didn’t give him that terrible name. 

I didn’t wake him from his eternal slumber.

Why did he keep a watchful eye over me when I was a baby, 

but now, so cruelly, nightly condemns me?

My 14-year-old self was grasping at literary straws to try to understand why I couldn’t sleep, love or feel loved. This colorful 90’s notebook is full of poorly rhymed sonnets and what I thought would eventually be publishable masterpieces. I blindly trusted poets like José Angel Buesa and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to teach me ornate and clever words to describe my complicated feelings in two different languages. I faithfully and clumsily imitated their lines and poetic structures as inspiration. Their works of art, combined with my simple musings and disorganized thoughts, give an unfiltered glimpse into my life during that challenging time.

I was a tortured poet before there was a department for it. What I also didn’t know [then] was that I was teaching myself the emotional language I needed to work through feelings that were just too overwhelming for my brittle teenage soul.

I credit this neon notebook with saving my life for the first time.

“…when I create art, I do it because it would hurt more if I didn’t do it.”

As life happened, I struggled to balance the person I thought I needed to be with the person I already was. In my teens, I would show up to Saturday Civil Air Patrol drills and cover my pink tights and black leotards with Woodland Camouflage, the fluidity of my ballet practice masked by the rigidity of my military drill movements. This duality would follow me for the next 20 years, my outlets for artistic expression covered up one by one to make space for each new adult responsibility.

Perhaps this is why I have never thought of myself as a legitimate artist. I write poetry, paint, make pottery, scroll wood, take photographs, play guitar, have a daily journal practice, and have performed in front of audiences. I’ve always thought of everything I do as a simple but necessary outlet for my inner struggles. I’ve waited for someone else to give me permission to call myself an “artist.”

The second time I trusted my life to art came in 2017. This is the year I met Seema Reza. I was sitting in my therapy group when a free-flowing soul with magazine-worthy hair came in the room to guide us in a writing session. I started to write in English, but I was thinking in Spanish. I couldn’t find the word I thought I needed, and I said, “Sometimes there are no words for things.” She said, “Write that down.” This small but necessary guidance has shaped my writing for the past 7 years. Now when I write, I do it for me. I don’t do it so it can sound pretty, and I don’t censor it to make others comfortable. Now when I create art, I do it because it would hurt more if I didn’t do it.

Since then, I have created paintings, snapped photographs, made pottery, played my guitar, taken singing lessons (so I can sound better in the shower), written songs, and performed in front of audiences. I have convinced myself that even when my art is not good, it is still necessary.

“…my art people have given me permission to land with all my baggage, as I am, and they are slowly helping me unpack it.”

When I create something I’m proud of, I am mindful. When I hold in my hand a ceramic bowl that made it through the firing process unscathed, I am reminded of my ability to create. I admire its glaze smoothly dripping to the edge of the foot. I think about the raw clay I shaped with my hands while breathing out my anxiety. I think about the patience I learned while it slowly dried to avoid any cracks. I think of the smile in my children’s faces when they eat ice cream out of this tiny bowl that I brought to life. I think about how long it has taken me to create something from nothing, and I feel proud. I feel the moment.

For far too long, I floated through life in a box-holding pattern, like a heavy cargo airplane that has too much fuel and baggage before it lands. Burning and biding my time until someone else cleared my landing.

This art community, these people, my art people have given me permission to land with all my baggage, as I am, and they are slowly helping me unpack it. Here, I share time and space with others, who just like me, slowly… ever so slowly… heal, because we are creating together.

“I have convinced myself that even when my art is not good, it is still necessary.”

The familiar comfort of my pain has always been more tempting than the vulnerability of transformation, but even though I’m still not entirely sure of who I need to be, I know that I no longer want to stop being what I am.

I am an Air Force Veteran.

I am a student at George Mason University School of Art.

I am a potter who makes ice cream bowls at Corgi Clay Art Center in Stafford, VA.

I am a visual arts facilitator and a Veteran advocate with CBAW.

I am a mom who is in awe (and a bit jealous) of her children’s artistic abilities.

I am my own work of art in progress.

I am an artist, but only because art saved my life.