It was November, 12 2011 when Brian Dagle took his life. Some of his close college and High School friends were there the morning he was found, including myself. I speak from only my point of view in this collection of poems, short stories, and art pieces. These passages were written about our time together in college, losing him, and my relationships and experiences that followed the day he passed for up to 5 years after. His fearless and bright energy is missed everyday by so many.
My process in healing and understanding my emotions, was much like the process of publishing this piece; transformative. It was never my intention to be an award winning author, as I am a terrible speller and usually grammatically incorrect. Words are not usually a vessel of for me to communicate, Art is, however, after Brian died I began writing journal entries about how I was feeling or memories I desperately wanted to hold onto and relive. I then took these writings and began compiling them into a story. On rereading these passages and taking a closer look, they each formed images in my mind that I began sketching on paper so that these images were like a screen play; one feeding into and effecting the one beside it. Illustrating my writing was my way of understanding and reflecting my emotions back to me in a language I could understand. From collages of tissue paper, watercolor, and ink these art pieces were then transformed into graphic drawings that could then be pieced together into a digital manuscript. I kept some areas raw during editing, while used some more enhancing graphic features on others to bring the illustration to life.
It took almost 9 years for this project to feel complete, however, the process of healing and reflecting continues daily. My hopes for these pages are that they tell a story that the reader might recognize, to put words or pictures to emotions that may seem familiar to them. They began for me, a form of comfort and therapy through loss, love, and change, but as I released them from my heart they transformed into something much more powerful and took on a new purpose.
Because of my readers, I took the time to investigate my emotions. I believed my feeling were worthy of the time it took to be dissected and observed until I could describe them through the language of art. Anyone who picks this book up and reads these passages, anyone who is touched or moved by these images in anyway, helped heal me. That is the reason I allowed myself the time to break open, because now this piece can touch many hearts and I can keep the parts that are close to mine safely scribbled down in journals on my bookshelf. Thank you, to my readers for giving me that hope and the reason I needed to take time to heal. I hope this story moves you and you might put some time into reflecting on why.