Art and Anticrises

To A – because everything will be okay.

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It’s been six months since I wrote this, and to be honest, I had completely forgotten this was even a draft on my Drive. But today, I feel even more hopeful than I felt when I typed these words. I’ve been okay for a very very long time, but today I feel hopeful not just for life but also for love (cross your fingers for me, friends!). They say hope is the last thing to die, but in all honesty, for me with heartbreak I feel like that was the first thing to go. But not anymore. So it was refreshing to read this, and think back on what the process of falling back in love with love was, after being heartbroken by the idea of love.

I meant every word when I wrote this, and I mean every word today. Not to jinx it, but I’m almost looking forward to my next heartbreak to see what I learn and how much I grow and how much more I get to love from it. This doesn’t make much sense, but I just know you get what I mean. At least I would hope so.

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I published my first Art and Anticrises post exactly a year ago today, on August 25, 2023. And precisely today I hit my goal for this year of 52 arts and culture visits in 2024, a milestone for me and what this silly little account stands for: an intentional attempt of keeping art well and alive in my life, one through which I also aim celebrate my godforsaken sensibility that I curse as much as I cherish. It makes me happy to say that, over the past 365 days, my attempt has been successful on both ends. I’ve learned so much about myself, perhaps more than I ever have in any semi-condensed period of time. Yes, through the things I’ve written to post here (though not everything makes it online…), but also through the endless museum wanderings and theater reveries that I’ve indulged in. Some may call it excess. I call it self-reflection.

Not everyone knows this, but Art and Anticrises came into existence from a place of brokenness. At a time when I spent all of my free time crying, I thought, why not use that time freeing my feelings through paper? At a time when I felt the most unloved I had ever felt, why not lean into the things that I loved the most? 

Summer 2023: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Everybody in my life knows that, unfortunately, too well. Everything around me was changing at an unprecedented pace, and I was trying hard to stay on my feet by clinging to the few things that I knew made me who I am– my passion, my purpose, and my stubbornness. Above all, though, I was questioning love. I was doubting my ability of truly loving, but also my worthiness of being loved. With a shattered heart, I felt as though I couldn’t find love, for myself and for life, anywhere. But in art I had always found it. And deep down I was certain I would find it in it again. And I did.

It sounds melodramatic, and in retrospect, it was. But that is the way it felt. And in retrospect, I’m glad things happened the way they did, and I’m proud of myself for allowing myself to feel my feelings as intensely as I did. There’s beauty in madness, and boy did I lose my mind. 

But great art has many times come from moments of madness. And so has growth. So has maturity. So has resilience. That’s got to be worth something.

It’s funny because my story of heartbreak begins and ends with art. A summer holiday and a friendship reunion. I had plans with the boy I dreamed of a future with. A future he painted for me with heavenly brushstrokes straight out of a Renaissance ceiling. I felt kissed by Klimt, embraced by Fragonard, revered by Botticelli. 

He made me feel all those things that art stirred up in me, from the Mario Benedetti poems that shaped my teenagehood (El amor, las mujeres y la vida) to the iconographic images that I went back to over and over in my art studies (take a look at my account and you can put it together yourself). All those things that I had never let anyone make me feel because it was too scary. A sunset, a painting and a poem can take you to heaven yet can never hurt you, but a lover? They can turn heaven into hell with a snap of their fingers. Or a few words at your doorstep. Or whatever their preferred method of leaving your life is, in the flicker of a moment.

When my fantasy shattered, the illusions that I had built up in my head over twenty two years turned to dust. The part of me that broke the most was the part that believed that love was a choice and that what made it real was seeing the ugly, the flawed, the messy and accepting the other person as they were. That love was choosing and that love was believing in it despite everything and everyone telling you not to. I thought I was experiencing the definition of true romance, falling for someone who was very much not perfect but loving them regardless. Really, I was just learning that heartbreak hurts even more when everyone, including yourself, tells you I told you so.

We all know the line between art and artifice is a thin one. I knew it in theory, but not in practice when it comes to matters of love. With a rushed decision and the coldness of a sharp knife, that changed.

Art has been so special to me in so many ways for the vast majority of the most formative periods of my life. But over the past year, it’s taken on a significance it never had before: Art as a beacon of hope, a crutch when my heart feels heavy and my thoughts scattered. Experiencing art as a celebratory ritual of the capacity I have to love and feel, and as an opportunity to love again. I thought I knew love and I thought I knew art, but the past year has shown me otherwise: I see love in so many more places than I ever thought possible.

Love in my friends holding me and my tears at the steps of a museum, or anywhere else. 

Love in taking myself to places I feel too sad to go to but should, for my own good.

Love in making time and prioritizing art and every other thing that brings me pure, raw joy.

Love in finding meaning in works that feel like they were made for me but also in galleries that I never expected to.

Love in heartbreak. And the many good things that come after heartbreak.

Art and Anticrises was my way of turning pain into beauty. I’ve looked at more pretty paintings, magnificent sculptures and pink ballerinas than I ever have since starting this project, since getting my heart broken. I’ve looked inwards and grown outwards, more than I have ever before. And I truly think that has to count for something.

I recall so well the night I decided I would create Art and Anticrises, and to the best of my ability, commit to it. My friends and I were going out dancing. I was getting ready and I made up my mind about it. By the time I got to my friend’s apartment for the pregame, I was 100% hyped by the idea. I excitedly told everyone, and everyone cheered on me, told me I should definitely do it. I was so excited, and anything that brought a smile to my face was enough of a reason for my friends to cheer on me, because I wasn’t smiling much back then. 

I write this today, on the one year anniversary of my first Art and Anticrises post, and on a day when someone very close to me goes through what, in her life, will probably be the equivalent of my Summer 2023. I will die on my grave swearing that no pain will ever compare to a woman’s first true heartbreak. There may be worse pains, of course, but this one is distinct—a particular ache that no woman ever truly forgets. You may move on, you may forgive and perhaps even forget about the first boy who really broke your heart, but the memory of what the heartbreak felt like will live on.

I see my friend and I think of me last summer. I think of every single one of my other friends who I’ve had to hold through their tears and help mend their hearts. And I remind myself that, though it pains me to see someone who deserves the world feel so much hurt, she will be okay. Just like I was. Just like we all eventually are. Three hundred and sixty five days ago I would have never said this, but heartbreak has been one of the biggest blessings life has sent my way, as difficult as it was to cope with it when I first experienced it. 

I can’t wait to continue to live, to love and to feel so deeply – even if it comes at the expense of a little bit of my pride, quite a bit of my hopefulness and a whole lot of pain. I will die on my grave swearing that – after all – it’s worth it.

At least I hope so.

Yours truly y con mucho amor,

Debbie