Statement
For months and years, I have been suffering from the insufficiency of joyfulness and exuberance as living with depression, which also resulted in the struggle to acknowledge the self and the query of my existence. My sentiment towards death had always been extreme and paradoxical — I dreaded to think the vanishing of people who I loved, whereas I felt indifferent and apathetic about the demise of myself. In 2018, my Australian mother, one of the very few I felt connected with, passed away due to brain cancer. It was also the first time I indeed witnessed a death, touched a body without the soul, and experienced the grief of loss. Since then, I lost the connection to this world again, and I kept questioning what the meaning of life is, although I did understand there is no answer. After all, life is such insignificant and meaningless comparing to the whole universe. ‘You can’t walk this earth forever; someday you will have to fly’. I heard this sentence a few days after she passed away, which she used to tell her children when they were still kids. Somehow the words consoled me, and have accompanied me through today. I attempt to alleviate my extreme sentiment and reconcile the grief of loss throughout this research project.