Overflow

Art and Writing by Yexenia Vanegas

ID: A watercolor painting of two vases. The vases are green and purple. Both are pouring water, combining to create a single stream. The water is depicted in overlapping blues, greens, and purples. In the background is a gentle, glowing yellow. Painting by Yexenia Vanegas.

Water is life. Our bodies are partly made of water, we need it to live, we release tears when we feel intense emotions, we float in it (and other fluids) for the first 9 months of life. Water is love. 

Here in Michigan, surrounded by fresh water was where I learned one of my most memorable lessons on love.  The first year away from my family in New York was gut wrenching. What was this thing I was feeling? At first I thought it was just homesickness, I just missed my family and waved it off, pushed it back down. But it always re-emerged eager to deliver an important message.

On one of those tough days, I decided to sit and examine this “thing”, this feeling. Three words, clear as day, came to me “it is love” and with it an image of vases overflowing with water was pinned in my mind

If it was not for the deep loving relationships my family cultivates, I may have felt nothing at all after moving. After receiving that message I understood that refusing to flow through those feelings was refusing to acknowledge the root of it: love. Here is where I regained my comfort and opened up to another dimension of love.

Tears of nostalgia, and homesickness turned into tears of gratitude and joy. How could I not be joyous of missing people so much because we love each other so much? Life is a loom with all types of threads. Sometimes those different threads help create contrast which can help shape meaning. Like the contrast of presence and absence. Each has its lesson, neither is better or worse, they help define each other. Nowadays, when those feelings arise, I allow them to, I let my heart open and my eyes swell with an overflow of love. 

- Yexenia