The Green Christmas Ornament

One thing people ask me on Instagram and Facebook is if I had a rough childhood. Yes, I did.

My first and only memory of my childhood was my mother and father fighting in front of me while I was crying and screaming. Truthfully, I can't remember anything before or after that until the age of six when I saw my sister's father hold a knife to my mother's neck and try to kill her in front of me. The only thing I could recant was one of my first sights of blood pouring out of my little hands from crushing a Christmas ornament out of anger.

It was in that moment I saw my mother and knew what rage and pain felt like.

Needless to say, those days are long gone, and my mother went on that night to almost shoot him after him leaving, and then trying to come back to kill me, my mom, and my sister in her womb. It was the first time that I witnessed how true of a badass my mom was. It's not every day that you see your mom or father go to the limits to protect her child, and I think that's something I'll always admire about my mother: she would do anything to protect me and Victoria.

I won't lie and say that in some way, my childhood influenced my future artistic endeavors. Chaos is a part of my construct, but as I learned a couple years ago, it's important to recognize that it isn't necessary to dwell in. I think it's natural to become attracted to the things that we so often think are what we deserve, and for the longest time, I thought I deserved what I saw. I didn't, you don't and nobody does. It's something I quite often found myself indulged in for the longest time, and stupidly, I squandered a good portion of my 20s on things that kept me stagnating as opposed to growing.

When people ask me if I had a rough childhood, I recall a time when I wished things were different, but honestly, I wouldn't change it for the world.

The primary goal of what I pursue is to show the dark underbelly of the human existence. Rarely these days do you find something so vile to the point of expulsion, and because of society's choice in coating our eyes with paint, we are never taught the hard lessons of life; and life--for some of us, anyway, was not a hand promising a win. Blood, piss, shit, vomit, pus, snot--why does this offend so many? Why does the very construct of human nature offend us? Perhaps it is a subconscious habit to hate ourselves, leading to the extinction of our species. To theorize, I believe that we are afraid of mortality. The wounds that bleed, the nose that runs, the cut that weeps...these are things that show the fragility of the body. When I was a little girl, I tended not to become to obsessed with death, but there was a part of me that so needed to see what was beyond that vale. I think, seeing what I did as a child has borne a part of me that wants people to know "you are not so important." And what I mean by that is, we are one, tiny speck floating on a galaxy that is being swallowed by a black hole each day. We know only 1% of our Earth's ocean, and just as much of our own brain. We shield our children from the threat of violence, sex, and things that SHOULD not be experienced at such a tender age, but unfortunately, the horrors of realism come creeping upon us like a plague.

My childhood made me grow up way sooner than I probably should have, and do I wish things were different? No. It has shaped me into this social pariah that has come to love life more than someone who is surrounded by everything cute, pink, and happy. Death, violence, the darkness, and those things that go bump in the night are stark reminders of how awful it can be. When you have happiness--you tend to appreciate it that much more.

I never believed in going into something half-hearted, and for every drop of blood spilled on my flesh, is a drop of the pain I felt as a child. If I could, I would flay my flesh, so delicately sear it and taste 32 years of a human who had to endure so much, yet rose from the rot and became a human again. Life is not pretty, and I'll never bullshit you into believing it's always going to be okay, but I do believe that the more you become accustomed to the reality of life and it's ways of fucking you right up the bootyhole--the more you'll appreciate the dandelion that bursts through pavement. Take your pain, suffering, torment, and rage, transmute it into something so powerful that no amount of darkness will mar your vision, allowing you to become the light that shines through all black.