This illustration is of a memory that has affected my life’s course. My family was living in the Bronx, NY. I was 3 years old when this took place. My mother was surprised that I even remembered it. The inner experience I had was so powerful, that it made this moment in time a placeholder in my mind.
My mother was taking my sister and I shopping. I was holding my mother’s hand in the crowded train car. When it stopped, and the doors opened, the crowd poured out onto the station platform. I lost grip of my mother’s hand and was swept up in the movement of bodies. I thought my mother and sister were with me…they weren’t. I turned around in time to see the tear-filled, panicked expression on my mother’s face as the doors closed, then the train left the station.
I was alone on the platform. No one noticed me. I just stood there, frozen, and mentally shut down. I dissociated from myself (hence the illustration’s perspective). My mother got off at the next station and returned. I came back to myself when she called out from the opposite platform. It was only when she reached me that I actually cried.
This artwork is currently in Australia as part of the exhibition Paperchained International
