Dear Survival,
You look like flying, but you don’t feel like freedom.
This piece came from a conversation with a woman named Krishnaa. She spoke about the sheer amount of medicine and medical technology it takes to keep her alive — the supplies, the waste, the constant reminders that her survival is not effortless. Sometimes, she said, it makes her feel like she wasn’t made to survive at all. And yet, she keeps going. For her family. For her husband and her son, who want her here — even if it takes everything.
That contradiction stayed with me.
This painting shows a bird still in the air, still lifted — but tethered. Bound. Flying at the cost of its own body. The strings pull upward, but they dig into its frame. Survival, here, is not graceful. It hurts. It asks something of the body that the body was never meant to give endlessly.
I spent hours embroidering the bird into this piece to represent how much time, effort, pain, and persistence it takes to stay alive when your body resists you — how survival becomes an act of labor, stitched together moment by moment.
Krishnaa also lives with diabetic peripheral neuropathy — pain that lingered, followed her, reshaped her life. She served in the military until she no longer could. Her sense of freedom, of purpose, of what her body once allowed her to do, was taken from her in pieces. And yet, she is still here. Still flying. Even if it looks different now.
This work is not about weakness.
It is about the cost of survival.
About being kept alive by systems, machines, medicine — and the complicated gratitude and grief that comes with that.
As someone who hopes to practice medicine and do research, I cannot look away from this reality. Survival is not just a success metric. It is a lived experience. It is pain, love, obligation, endurance, and choice — often all at once.
This piece exists because her story moved me.
Because survival deserves to be witnessed.
Because flying should not require suffering — but when it does, it should still be honored.
Stories like Krishnaa’s are lived every day. If you’re able, please consider donating to diabetes research or to funds that help people afford insulin and life-sustaining care.
Everything,
Edidiong C
Creating My Autobiography 