Distressed

The clarity came at dawn.…

The rising sun pushing its stunning colours through the morning air and reflecting off the expansive ocean, making me feel like I was being filled with liquid gold, pouring into every corner of my mind, body and soul.

It’s the act of pure weightlessness that which allows you to escape the world for a moment or two. When the water fills the ears, silencing the outside world, allowing you to acknowledge your thoughts then letting them float on bye.

I had found my happy place.

Nothing was going to take me away from my daily ritual. Until one afternoon late 2018, when my world crashed, literally.

I still don’t know why he did it… Maybe he was in a hurry, maybe he just didn’t look… he never told me. Either way, his decision altered my life forever, projecting me off my motorbike and into a world of trauma. I almost died that day.

For the first time in my life something had happened to me that I didn’t do, it was out of my control, and it didn’t just affect me, it changed the way my family would live, the way my children would grow up.

This was fucked. But I only had 2 choices, I could give up… or show my kids that no matter how hard you get knocked down, to get up and be stronger.

I knew I had to be the best version of me, for my family, for those around me but most importantly, for me.

The clarity in which I saw life had become so clear to me now, the energy the ocean gave me each morning held me up just enough to get me through each day.

But I’ve got internal struggles, I’m dealing with daily pain, debilitating cramps, a new Frankenstein leg that I needed to learn how to walk again with, and a rapacious insurance company make life even harder during what was meant to be support. 

I am in this juxtaposition of happiness and pain, calm yet distress.

I needed a way to scream without screaming. And I felt others did too.

It was imperative that the ocean represented my calm in the image but how was I going to represent the pain? I needed the opposite to water… fire!

A flare represented the pain so perfectly. Its violent uncontrollable energy not only represented my scream but also the screams from the bush fires, the virus, the evil.

The flame would sit in the middle of the ocean amongst the calm all entwined as one… as you can’t truly appreciate the pleasure unless you have felt devastating pain.

I thought it would be simple, just throw someone on a surfboard, push them out to sea at dawn and get them to set off a couple of flares.