Beloved Brain II
Drawing My TBI Symptoms & an Offering
It appears that quite a few people snuck onto my mailing list while I’ve been away. It’s nice to meet you :-)
Dear Friends,
I forgot what I was going to say.
See — something caraaazy happens when I try to think and look at a screen at the same time. A fog descends, or maybe a wall, the dead end in a maze. Then my eyeballs start bouncing around a bit? Yeah… So it is, and hence, my quiet around these parts lately.
I’ll be brief.
First, an offering:
I made this simple graphic many years ago and I have decided to make it available to you for free, a gift!, to print and decorate, use as a background for your computer, plaster on your eyeballs, live and breathe. Maybe this year I’ll get my s* together and make this a beautiful fancy letterpress print with my pal Laura, but for now…:
If you do print it and draw on it or hang it somewhere sweet and feel like sharing that with me, I’d really love that.
In other news, my TBI symptoms continue heartily! I’m extremely grateful to the people in my life who are taking care of me, sending love, and sharing their own experiences of TBI with me. It’s an isolating state of being, one that stretches on into ambiguous future. I’m learning so much about myself and am confronted daily by bewildering mysteries (like, what the hell is happening inside my skull!?). I’m learning a lot about empathy too, and self-worth outside of the capitalist labor=value narrative. You have to when you can only work a couple hours a week. I wish I could synthesize my thoughts about all this for you but my brain is not ready. I’m very tired.
My eyes and brain are telling me to get off the computer NOW, so very quickly…
…here are a couple drawings I’ve made attempting to visualize the physical sensations I have felt in my eyes/eye muscles. My eyes are very easily fatigued (I’m working with the TBI Clinic’s Occupational Therapists to strengthen my eye<>brain connection), and if I do too much computing or too much looking at moving things or bright lights, things get wild in the tiny muscles around my eyes. Drawing the sensations makes me curious which I think makes me more compassionate towards my situation, or at least a little less resentful.
Be well,
Take care of your sweet sweet brains.
With love,
Sara
this resonates so much with me, and I'm very sorry you have to experience it. OT is hard work but I expect it will pay off!!
🩷🩷🩷