creative process

today i signed up for a ceramics class. it has been two years since i really had my hands in clay, since i really made art. right before my mom's hysterectomy i developed an anxiety that i could not shake. i was uninspired. i couldn't get a grasp on what was next. i started looking into grad school, and came to the reality that i just wasn't ready, maybe never would be.
i would start to feel anxious, and i would walk out my door and just keep walking until it subsided. i talked to my mom about it, as i talked to her about everything.
what i know now is that i knew what was to come. on some level i knew from the very beginning. as a child i was undeniably and uncontrollably attached to my mom. i would cry when she would leave. i slept in her bed until i was twelve. i spent every moment possible with her. i had and inexplicable fear of loosing her.
when she was dying, she recalled that when i was young i used to tell her that if she died i did not want to live. i remember this.
i remember laying in bed counting the years that i had left with her if she died at different ages.
when i went to college she gave me a ring, on the inside, it said "beyond time and space". she explained that our love was beyond time and space, we were not limited to physical vicinity. in later years i had it tattooed to my foot, and to my suprise my mom followed suit and had it tattooed on her foot as well.
when she was dying, i laid in bed with her and repeatedly said, "forever, right? no matter what, beyond time and space forever?" she always said "yes, forever". i cried uncontrollably for that entire month.
many people i believe chalked up our relationship to an unhealthy response to my father being absent. i played the husband for her, and she fullfilled my fear of abandonment. i need to say that i do believe my mom being single was a factor in our relationship, but only in a positive way. she had more time for me, and when she was dying she said that she was grateful because no one got in the way.
ultimately, i know that people can only see things through their filter and that my relationship with my mom was rare. i feel that very few have felt that type of connection, and even less people have felt it with their mother. my mom and i did not talk to many people about it. it was and is still hard to explain.
in some way now that she is gone, in the body sense of the word, i feel it even stronger. i guess the very fact that i cannot touch her, hear her voice, or hold her hand, and yet i still feel so strongly bonded to her makes it more real.

yesterday, i heard her voice in everything that i did. i watched an inspirational video that felt like her words. then i talked to a woman that spoke of things that my mom stood for. much of the inspiration of my life came from my mom. yesterday it found me. perhaps she directed it my way...