Trying to Keep Afloat
by Reyna Hernandez, RN

In the past, I had experimented with acrylics and charcoal, this time to tell my thoughts, the simplicity of penciland paper is more than enough to attempt a visualization of my perception of mental health in regard to my own.

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I like to think that in my head I have multiple versions of myself that each do something for my mental health. For example, I have a resilient self, a weak self, a pacifist self, a nurturing self, a mean self, a confident self, etc. These selves together make up me, my personality, my beliefs, and dictate my actions.

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In the drawing, we are in "water," this is what I visualize my mental space to look like. The darkness at the very bottom is everything I do not know, what I do not think of consciously, the bad thoughts that I sometimes have, and the things we have long forgotten. As you go up from the bottom to the top, it gets lighter, representing the things I have on the surface of my memory and the things I consciously do.

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In my mental space the best place for my selves to be is on the surface of the water, this would signify mymental equilibrium. The two people depicted in the picture are two of my selves. The one "drowning" is my weaker self.This is the embodiment of my weaknesses, my insecurities, my pessimistic thoughts, doubt, and stress. She is drowning, because too much of it has accumulated all at once, as it sometimes does in life. Personally, this doesn't happen often but this is what I perceive it to feel like when it does. The person on the surface of the water is my resilient self. This is the self in my head, that when things are too much, too stressing, is keeping afloat and trying to get me backto equilibrium. That is why the resilient self is attempting to pull the weaker self out of the water.

Although I visualize many selves in my mental space I believe that it is my resilient self that is the key player in mental space. She has gotten me where I am today and has kept all the other selves in check as I have grown up and had to deal with situations that at any moment could have deterred my life from where I wanted to be and decisions that dictate who I am today.