Skeletons In My Closet

by Reihinna H.

My grandparents were refugees during the Korean War and immigrated to America after my parents became teenagers. As I grew up, I placed great pressure on myself to meet the high standards of my parents and be the “perfect daughter”, the daughter that always got straight A’s, performed well in sports, and had an interesting hobby like art.

This immense pressure to be perfect was taking an toll on my mental health and was falling into multiple cycles of depression and anxiety. I was scared to tarnish my image of being a perfect daughter to my parents when they worked so tirelessly to allow me to flourish in a new country. I felt as though my problems with my mental health were so miniscule in comparison to their hardships that I couldn’t dare to ask to see a therapist. I was so blinded by my longing to be “perfect” that I was hurting myself mentally as each day went on.

I painted my depiction of the idiom “skeletons in the closet” to help me through my dilemmas. I painted myself dragging a giant lifeless skeleton to show how I felt so chained down by my mental health struggles. I wanted the scattered bones to act as my broken mental state. The immense scale of the entire closet in comparison to my painted selfl was to represent how guilty I felt for wanting to ask for help. It felt like an endless walk through the grim and lonely closet.