Altered

This is an altered book I started when I was in high school. It's still unfinished and there are a lot of pages that I completely hate, but it helped me through a really rough time in my life.  My grandpa died of stomach cancer when I was in 8th grade.  I'm not sure if that's when my depression started or if it was before that.  I wasn't diagnosed with depression until my junior year of high school.  I have no idea how long I had it before that, just that there was a long time in my life where I didn't smile, didn't laugh, and was constantly tired.  When the kids at school would ask if I was okay, I would tell them that I was just tired, but I knew that wasn't true.  I think I started this book as a project in my art class when my fake aunt started to die of cancer.  She was actually a really amazing family friend, but she was like my mom's sister.  She was one of the best people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  She always had a genuine smile on her face and knew just the perfect thing to say to everyone to make them feel really good.  Even when she got near the end, she never lost her smile or her optimism.  She had beat cancer once.  It had been in remission for three years and then her husband found a lump on her spine.  Sure enough it was back again.  It metastasized and quickly spread.  She passed away before she could get her bone marrow transplant.

I started this book because I wanted something that could give me even 1/10th of the hope that Aunt Katie did.  I called it Rays of Hope.  It is mostly pictures glued to pages in a book.  I didn't realize that the book would get super thick if I glued something to the front and back of every page.  Some of the pictures are my own art, some are from magazines, and some are just things from the internet that made me smile.  Some of them are blurry, some are pixelated, some are wrinkled.  I think that part of what makes this book so special to me is that it was really the only thing I had control over when I felt like everything in my life was spiraling out of control.  I got to choose every single thing that went in it.  Nothing I didn't want would go on the pages.  I glued sayings that I found inspirational to some of the pages.  It's something that always makes me feel a little better when I'm in a really sad mood.  I really want to finish it and change a lot of it to fit with my life now.  But here are a few pictures, and I will be sharing more on some Tuesdays and Thursdays when I don't normally post.

This is the front cover.  I had to use so many layers of paint to cover
the original cover.  It started as an old book about the Mafia.



This one scanned a little blurry.  The picture is the first watercolor I ever did.
It was the size of a full page, but I cut it up to fit in my book.

When I was feeling super emotional today, I wrote a song/poem thing.  I might share it on here on Thursday.  Maybe.