Ever since I was little I have had very severe mental health problems, this can up in so many different forms such as dissociation, breathing problems, visual stress, difficulty thinking straight, including my Fibromyalgia which I was diagnosed with in December 2019.
After going to the doctors on countless occasions and them not doing anything to help, I eventually started to make my own ways of coping. Photography was one of these ways and is among the only things that help me feel excitement and happiness.
When lockdown struck back in 2020, a lot of people felt isolated and scared to leave the house, mental health became a much bigger factor in our everyday lives. However, to me, not much had changed. My life stayed pretty much the same. Agraphobia was a big part of my anxiety, in other words being too scared to leave the house, the door was like a barrier between danger, the outside world, and my safe space, the house. I was to scared to go anywhere without my boyfriend who would work shifts, 6-2 or 2-10. The 2-10 shift was the worst as I would hardly see him and he was the only thing keeping me going. In a way, having people feel this way as well due to being told to stay at home, gave me a feeling of comfort, in this period I actually was not allowed to leave the house which really did help in a weird way. Although, I did very much miss being in nature. I was always too scared to be alone with my thoughts, but when I was on walks, I felt a lot more freedom and safety in myself. It was as if being in nature was my only escape from the dreadful feeling of hopelessness, in other words, I actually felt a small amount of hope and joy when I was able to go out and photograph whilst being on a nature walk. I wonder whether this is because it reminds me of being home, in France, the place where I feel most happy and most safe. Even though I still had bad anxiety in France, I was happy and mostly unaware of the stuff that was going on at home.
This project is important to me as it is helping me to recognise just how photography or any art medium can be used as a form of therapy, and the more I connect with this idea, the more I wish to pursue it as a career, helping people through expressing themselves visually, but also through creating something physically rewarding.
I want this project to be about me and my feelings, I have a strong fear of talking about what happened to me in my childhood but I also feel I have to tell people for them to understand me. So I am trying to make a safe space here to write down how I am feeling as well as have the visuals alongside. This is where the photo poetry will come in. The poetry will act as the voices I hear in my head, as well as the feelings I feel on a daily basis, and the imagery will work as the hope as well as to show that eariness and depressed aesthetic. Black and white help with this as it strips away all colour, the thing we associate with happiness and joy.
Ironically, my depression has very much affected my uni life and the projects I have created through them, especially this one as this year has been very difficult in terms of motivation and getting on with things, so I have almost completed neglected this module which is likely to show up through the work, however, this only emphasizes my feelings even more. Having depression is a lot more than a lot of people realise, it isn’t just about feeling sad or hopeless, it is about forgetfulness, loneliness, social anxiety, agoraphobia, repetitiveness, procrastination, lying in bed, neglecting self-care, I often forget to eat, I rarely get out out of bed at a suitable time, I sleep for the majority of the day, because these are muy coping mechanisms, in my mind the longer I am asleep, the less I have to deal with reality. Although, for the first time, I do actually want to make a change to these habits and to better myself which is why I have finally asked my GP about getting Trauma therapy, which is going to be a complete shit show and is going to make me feel 1000000x times worse for a little while, but I know it is all just part of the journey I need to take to feel better. My motivation is my little sister, she is only 16 and I see myself in her, I was exactly the same at her age, and I want to better myself so that she can see that life does get better, but first I have to prove it to myself.
So as I said before, I am creating a safe place here for me to talk about stuff or even just show things visually and to let out some of my dark thoughts to create this project, something that I will be able to look back at in the future.