Comrades, over the last few weeks I haven’t been myself, or I should say I haven’t felt like myself. I’m finding it very hard to remember things; small details of everyday life seem to be huge, impossible tasks to perform; I forget where I am or where I need to be and when, or simple details in the middle of a conversation. And as a consequence, I’m becoming incredibly hard on myself because I like to run my life as smoothly and as efficiently as I possibly can.
Grief is taking that efficiency away and turning me into a bloody mess. So I just learnt from my therapist about all the chemistry that happens inside the brain during this process; that’s helping me understand what’s going on. Grief isn’t just an emotion; it places the brain under prolonged stress. Stress hormones like cortisol can interfere with memory, concentration and decision-making, while the parts of the brain responsible for planning and emotional regulation end up working overtime. It’s strangely reassuring to know that my brain isn’t broken or lazy; it’s simply trying to cope with something enormous so 90% of the processing capacity is in protection mode while the functioning 10% is getting overloaded by trying to be as “normal” as possible.
I only wish I had the words, or the patience, to explain this to those close to me because, as a result of that constant mental load, I’m finding that my fuse is much shorter than usual.
But it is incredibly frutsrtating! Even trying to pull out captions for this newsletter are incredibly difficult. I’m finding way, way easier to create and produce diptychs, triptychs, and retouch images than to process words.
This week’s photos are a fine example of this. I wanted to do some photos in the city over the weekend and I took the wrong camera with the wrong lens. Instead of having my usual gear for grain and lo-fi aesthetics, I took my working camera with a ridiculous megapixel count with the sharpest lens in the drawer. I mean… Still, I’m always OK to work with what I have but gear matters when you know how to squeeze the best out of it for a purpose. Anyways…
Thank you all for your support, your words have been incredibly kind and worry not, I’m looking after myself; well, at least trying to.
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