The Hearts
For a long time, the shape was enough. Now I'm ready to show you what's actually happening inside it.
These aren't finished pieces. They're maps drawn in the middle of getting lost — and slowly, sometimes, finding the way.
The heart that keeps taking hits
I drew this on whatever paper was nearby. There wasn't a plan. I just needed to get it out.
The arrows aren't going in. They're already there. That's an important distinction I didn't notice until later.
Still don't know exactly what it means. That might be the point.
The hiding heart
There's a room in this drawing. Life going on around a tiny, barely-visible heart in the foreground.
I've been in that room. Functional. Moving through the day. The heart quietly underneath everything, just surviving.
This one is easy to miss if you're not looking. Which was the whole problem.
The sleeping heart
There's a figure in bed, a thought bubble, a heart inside it. The halo above the scene might be hope. Or just light. I'm not sure.
Some seasons the only place love feels safe is in the dream. That's honest. I wanted to draw it honestly.
The heart is still glowing even in the thought bubble. That stayed with me.
The quicksand heart
Half buried. The ground active around it — marks like something is still moving, still sinking.
There are seasons where every attempt to get free makes it worse. That's what addiction felt like. That's what this drawing is.
I drew this one fast. I think I knew what it was before the pencil stopped.
The seesaw heart
The heart sits on the low end of the seesaw. Tilted. Off-balance. Whatever is on the other side is invisible — and that might be the truth of it.
You don't always know what's weighing against you. You just know the ground isn't level.
The pivot point is a circle. Something to turn around.
The peeking heart
A corner. A heart pressed against the wall, half visible, half hidden. The shadow behind it — whatever it came from — still present.
This is the moment before you decide to step out. When you don't know yet if it's safe. But something in you looks anyway.
The corner is sharp. The heart is soft. That tension is the whole thing.
The mirror heart
Rivets around the outside. A studded border. Like something that has been through enough that it started reinforcing itself from the outside.
But inside the armor there's still a softer heart. That's the part the outside was built to protect. The armor wasn't wrong. It was just trying to keep something alive long enough to matter again.
Some seasons you harden. That's not failure. That's survival.
The hope heart
A balloon shaped like a heart, the word HOPE filling the whole shape. It wants to float. It's still tied to the ground by a long, tangled string.
At the bottom of the string there's a tiny heart. I didn't plan that. It was just where the pencil went.
That year, hope felt exactly like this — present, real, and still tethered to something heavy.
The string is the part that tells the truth.
The roller coaster heart
A heart-shaped track. Words written along the rail — joy, love, gratitude, happiness, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration. A little train car at the top with a tiny heart on it.
The track loops back on itself. Which is honest. The seasons don't move in order. You revisit things. You pass through the same stations more than once.
But the train keeps moving. And the destination written at the center of the whole shape is happiness — not as an achievement, but as the thing at the center of the path.
This one took the longest to draw. I kept adding words to the track.
The happiness heart
A wide top — words pouring in — determination, gratitude, joy, dreams, wonder. The shape narrows into a single point, and hanging from that point is one small heart.
All of it — everything you've been through, every word you've written, every prayer you've prayed — funneling down to something that fits in your chest.
I don't think happiness is the destination. I think it's what's left when you stop running from everything else.
The open heart
Simple. Almost too simple. A heart with a little "OPEN" sign hanging from it on two strings, like a shop door.
It surprised me when I drew it. An act of will, disguised as a small thing. After a long time of the door being shut.
I don't know exactly when that shifted. But I know it did. And I know this is what it looked like from the inside.
This one still gets me.
The new day heart
A landscape. A horizon. A sun with rays cutting across the sky. Two clouds. And in the middle of it all, a small heart sitting on the ground in a pool of shadow — present, grounded, not floating away.
This is the drawing I come back to. Not because everything is fixed. But because the sun came up again and the heart is still there to see it.
That's what a new day looks like from inside the middle.
Nothing is wasted. Not even the days that were just about surviving to morning.
These drawings mark the territory. Where I've been, what it cost, what it opened. If you recognize any of it — you're not alone in the middle.
