When I made this, I was listening to The Japanese House on repeat for a few hours, which I feel is very telling of my mood at the time. I started the day feeling good, if a little lazy and self-indulgent. I very quickly started to feel stressed by things other people were doing, not being done in the exact way I would do them, which isn’t really like me. And then I started to feel stressed about there not being a room I could go to to be completely alone and not be disturbed. So, I could cry if I wanted to, or feel angry if I wanted to, or just to lie down listening to music and figure out why I was feeling the way I did.
Eventually, I created a space and I asked for some time to myself, with my thoughts. Which is something I value most usually and hadn’t really been taking the time to do since quarantine. The opposite of loneliness. I realised I need to make more effort to take this time to breathe more often, otherwise I could risk taking out my frustration on someone else, when it’s no one else’s fault. A reminder to have the self-awareness of how I’m feeling and the awareness that the things I am feeling frustrated about, wouldn’t normally bother me. No one is doing anything wrong; it’s only bothering me because I haven’t taken the time to think and listen to myself and how I’m feeling.
When I was reading through all the writing on the image, I was muttering it out loud so I would stay focused on it, and it reminded me of the scene in The Craft (film from 1995) when Sarah is repeating the spell she is casting on Nancy “I bind you Nancy, from doing harm. Harm against other people and harm against yourself” and it kind of felt like I was casting the same spell on myself!
2020