IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COOL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. IT'S ONLY A COLL STORY WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT. trust me.
A
What do you do when your mind doesn't feel like home? When you can't discern which voice in your head is actually your own? When you lose your identity after lying to yourself for so long?
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I slap paint on canvases ten times too large, soak markers across a page, and scratch colored pencil into paper until the wood splits.
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So here's a personal discussion from yours truly to yours truly. Here's me coming to terms with what's real and what isn't; determining if those around me (and therefore my relationship to them) are actually genuine.
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My conscience is composed of the voices that engage with each other and react to the actions of my peers. And sometimes it makes my head really loud. I internalized this madness for years. It's hard to express yourself in words when the words themselves can't be discerned.
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I lost myself within my own mind.
...until now.
When you look at these pieces, you're looking a physical representation of this noise. It's a rather bright and noisy representation of my attitudes, emotions, and internal conversations as they take shape and color. Here's me giving myself closure from past and present relationships: romantic, platonic, and above all, the relationship I have with myself.
SO HERE WE ARE.
Is this all rather dramatic? Sure.
Cold-hearted? Whatever.
Angry? Most definitely.
Worrisome? No.
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This is a conversation about mental health. It is what it is.
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Since you're still here (and obviously quite invested), I'll open up a bit more. I started getting really terrible panic attacks this fall -- something about starting the normal swing of life again made my social anxiety run up the fucking walls. Don't worry, I'm working through it. But sometimes my head gets really warm and my mind starts racing: internal monologues, past conversations, and words gone unspoken take over as I lose reign of my thoughts. It's absolutely horrifying not being in control of your own head.
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Someone encouraged me to throw this mental mess onto paper, post-episode: "Comb through everything and address as much as you can. Get it all out there so these intrusive thoughts take up less mental real-estate." So I did just that. You just finished scrolling through all of it.
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Ask my friends, and they'll tell you my anxiety is still quite crippling. So, does my mind feel like home yet? Absolutely not. But I'm getting there.
C'est la vie, friends.