Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

Goodness yes, anon, of course I do. It’s very important that I do feel sad from time to time. There are times that I feel very sad, and sometimes I even feel very very sad, or even sadder than that. I get all wobbly and insecure on an almost daily basis, sometimes hourly, if it’s a bad day. I have crippling doubts and morbid daydreams and dreams that I suppose most would consider nightmares, only I find them more interesting than disturbing in retrospect. I’m in a constant state of flux between hating myself and my work and loving everyone and everything in the universe, but that’s how I am and always have been. It’s a bit like being on a pogo stick.

The thing is when you hit the ground on a pogo stick there’s that wonderful bit of spring underneath that’ll shove you back up into the air afterwards. Yes, it can get squashed all the way down, and sometimes you hurt your knees if you hit the ground too fast, but the more it gets squashed the bigger the push it gives you afterwards. That’s why you’re all so important to me- why anyone, in this world, is important. You’re there when people need to be pushed back up into the air- and it can be hard, very hard, being squashed, hearing all those negative things, and sometimes you don’t even know that’s what’s happening to them and to you- but if you weren’t there they would just plough straight into the ground and never get back out again. Springs can be made of kind words, good pieces of art, music, someone laughing at a joke that you made, but didn’t expect anyone to laugh at. Some of the best springs are the ones that are always there, regardless of whether you’re going up or down.

So yes I do feel sad, but not always, and if I didn’t feel sad I wouldn’t be able to be funny or positive. Not really. I wouldn’t be able to understand what funny is. I’ve always found that the people with the worst sense of humour are the people who’ve never been miserable; how can you know how precious and amazing food is unless you’ve starved? How can you fly if you’ve never fallen? How can you laugh if you’ve never cried?