Recovering from co-dependency is being ripped away from everything you once knew to be true and being shoved out into the cold to figure out a new truth on your own (seeking outside support is highly recommended from my experience). Each step I take toward my new truth leaves a trail of uncertainty, fear and regret on my heels, just waiting for me to slip and fall back into my old ways of operating. The misconception I’ve had is that I can’t make mistakes. If I did –– I believed –– it would mean I was completely wrong and should never have left the comfort of my mother’s strangling skirt strings.

Thankfully, my beliefs are growing. They are the tiny multicolor buds in a flowering garden of possibility grown out of determination to do something different, and the desire to find out who I was really put here to be. In my heart I know I was not meant to be ordinary. Not that there is anything wrong with ordinary, it’d probably be easier on my tiny co-dependent soul if I were. I know I’m not though, in the same way a dog knows it’s not a cat, and a transgendered person knows that there is something not quite right with the body they were born into. So the work I’m doing now, is necessary.

The most difficult part? Not having the full support of the people I love, my family. While some members have supported my transition into being a full time artist from day one, others have been a harder sell. Now with me doing something as “impractical” as moving to Singapore to pursue a degree that I can get in the States, it feels like the bottom is falling out. Those that were supporting me are wavering and I’m in a revolving non-verbal stand off with those that don’t. It hurts. It hurts like fucking hell, but if I look back now I don’t know if I’ll ever get the courage to move forward again.

Building on a shifting foundation is rough. It feels like I’m flipping an old and rusty house. With every repair I make I find a new issue, like termites or a leaky roof. Termites and roofs be damned, I’ll build over, under, and through if I have to because I’m sick and tired of the rickety old abode of my life. There is a garden out there, that’s waiting to wrap itself around a regal brick home on a solid foundation to compliment it’s beauty.

Rosie.