CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY

No One Is Coming To Save You

No One Is Coming to Save You is a recreation of a painting I originally made in 2022, during one of the darkest periods of my life. That year, it felt like everything collapsed at once. I was dealing with grief, the loss of a long-term friendship, trauma, substance use, self-harm, and a mental health crisis that eventually led to two suicide attempts and psychiatric hospitalization. I had spent years carrying things I didn’t fully understand, and 2022 became my breaking point. When I entered the hospital, a big part of me believed I was going there to be fixed. I thought someone would finally have the answers and somehow magically repair me. Instead, I left with a realization that has stayed with me ever since: no one is coming to save you. At the time, that realization felt terrifying. Over the years, its meaning changed. It doesn’t mean I have to do everything alone or that I don’t need other people. It means that no one else can save me but myself. I had to decide that I was worth fighting for. After 2022, I started rebuilding my life. I stopped using drugs, started taking my physical and mental health seriously, began running, spending more time outside, and eventually returned to painting. Over time, I lost 100 pounds and was able to heal some health issues I had. But rebuilding my life didn’t mean life stopped happening to me. During the years that followed, I began experiencing health problems I didn’t yet understand and eventually learned that I was living with multiple chronic and autoimmune illnesses. It became another part of myself I had to learn how to carry while continuing to heal. Four years later, I wanted to revisit the painting I made when I was barely surviving and recreate it as the person I am now. The two faces aren’t simply a “before” and “after.” They represent the spectrum of emotions that can exist within the same person. One carries grief, tears, and blood representing self-harm. Beneath the central message is a semicolon representing surviving a suicide attempt and choosing to continue on. The other side is brighter, with a happier face, but it isn’t meant to represent permanent happiness. The oversized, wild hair represents the chaos of my own thoughts, while also connecting to my experience with hair loss and eventually wearing wigs. The black and white is almost like yin and yang to me. I’ve learned that the light and dark parts of myself can exist at the same time. Being happy doesn’t erase what I’ve been through, and having a bad day doesn’t mean I’m back where I started. I’ve learned that life doesn’t divide itself neatly into happy and sad. Both exist. Darkness doesn’t disappear because you’ve experienced light, and sadness returning doesn’t erase how far you’ve come. No One Is Coming to Save You used to make me feel completely alone. Now, I see it differently. People can love me, support me, and help me along the way, but I had to be the one to decide that my life was worth saving. I’m still healing. I’m still figuring things out. I still carry pieces of the person who painted the original in 2022, but I don’t look at her with shame anymore. She survived long enough for me to paint her again.