Oceans of Disbelief/ Jungles of Longing
There is this puffy, far away feeling of disbelief. I’ve been trying to shake it for months- and I’m learning to recognize when it comes and settles in. Over the past 2-ish years my 19 year old, diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (a connective tissue disorder), has been complaining of joint pain, then using a cane, then a wheelchair, and now bed-bound. It’s happened during a pandemic, where we’ve been alone and tucked away; where no one could see the change but us. It didn’t seem real.
They have complications that are on the rarer side and we are in the midst of a health crisis- and my brain has resisted its reality at every turn for the worse. Isn’t that weird?! Maybe it’s a self-preservation or biology… I have two other children bouncing off the walls- it can’t be that one is in the other room just lying there! Things have to keep going. Kids go to school, meals made, laundry piles, holidays come and go and we’re coming off a pandemic and I’m longing for connection, for adventure, for travel, for anything else! And to draw!
And things DO keep going, but at a stutter and stop - for hospital stay, for research, for moments of struggle and extreme emotions… any plans for the future ride on what happens next and these drawings have come bumping out on waves- rougher around the edges than usual, as I try to show up where I’m needed and still be myself, full of all of this.
April Coppini
May 2022
There is this puffy, far away feeling of disbelief. I’ve been trying to shake it for months- and I’m learning to recognize when it comes and settles in. Over the past 2-ish years my 19 year old, diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (a connective tissue disorder), has been complaining of joint pain, then using a cane, then a wheelchair, and now bed-bound. It’s happened during a pandemic, where we’ve been alone and tucked away; where no one could see the change but us. It didn’t seem real.
They have complications that are on the rarer side and we are in the midst of a health crisis- and my brain has resisted its reality at every turn for the worse. Isn’t that weird?! Maybe it’s a self-preservation or biology… I have two other children bouncing off the walls- it can’t be that one is in the other room just lying there! Things have to keep going. Kids go to school, meals made, laundry piles, holidays come and go and we’re coming off a pandemic and I’m longing for connection, for adventure, for travel, for anything else! And to draw!
And things DO keep going, but at a stutter and stop - for hospital stay, for research, for moments of struggle and extreme emotions… any plans for the future ride on what happens next and these drawings have come bumping out on waves- rougher around the edges than usual, as I try to show up where I’m needed and still be myself, full of all of this.
April Coppini
May 2022
