This jewelry box took form in my imagination after the Strapped To The Gurney episode. I realized a week or so after that event that no matter how humiliating it had been there was a very important message there that I had missed.

I HAD ASKED FOR HELP!!!

OMG!

What a breakthrough. I had done something to really, REALLY, take care of myself. I had saved my own life! From that point on, my pattern of spiraling into hell as the result of a panic attack started to change. Part of it was a change in my medication. But every time I felt the spiral start to come on it took less and less time for me to find my way out. Now, I go home, take a hit from my medical marijuana vapor pen, and call my boyfriend or my mom or one of my two best friends. I save my own life all the time now. I have stopped praying for the cancer to come back so I can just let it take me.

This box is one of the results of this epiphany, this complete 180, this psychic change. Change is a strange thing. It doesn’t happen overnight and one day I got slammed so hard I almost didn’t make it. My first bona fide suicide attempt with booze and pills. But before I got the pills in me, I called my boyfriend. My NEW boyfriend by the way. Not the pathologically lying, crazy, fucked up, brain damaged dude before (oh the stories…).

New boyfriend was there in 20 and took care of me and ever since I haven’t had a real thought about it. Not one I’ve entertained more than a couple minutes. I pick up the phone. I turn on some music. Okay, I’m lying too. I turn on America’s Next Top Model or Grimm or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series (Swedish version) or Practical Magic. Sometimes music. Sometimes a book. If I’m home and I don’t have to drive, I smoke out. They all make the Panic go away. Sometimes I feel like Gollum having an argument with himself but the good one wins every day now.

So. The “You are Worthy of Life” box. Inspiration was also from the book, “The Help,” when Aibileen is talking to the young girl she cares for. It is something she repeats to her almost every day, knowing that when Aibileen isn’t there the little girl isn’t loved at all. I felt I needed this for myself. Because I’ve spent my entire life getting to believing this. That I am Loved. Worthy. Kind. I still have days when I can’t but they are becoming more rare.

I have a few last things to complete, the bottom edge and the feet and then a good varnish. Then I’ll show you the final piece. This is a magic box, make no mistake. Everything that goes in it is a little charm for life, for love, and for joy.