It’s been two months short of a year since my emergency surgery.
I’ve made a lot of art about it. To try to work through the trauma, mainly . Two zines. A lot of smaller artworks, sketches, text.
And now a 5-minute animated film.
I hope that’s going to be the last project focused entirely on this topic. I don’t want to keep digging through those memories.
Am I OK?
Physically, I’m pretty much in the state I was before. My muscles are a little weaker, and my digestive system is a little more sensitive, but I’m living as I was before all this. With the exception of trying to take care of myself more. Exercise, a more balanced diet…
Mentally… I’m managing. I feel alright most of the time, but I get into weeks-long depressive episodes every now and then. My mood swings are worse too. I’m good enough, I suppose, but I am definitely going to look into getting professional mental help.
The Surgery
With MECHAGUTS, I hope to close this whole chapter of my life. To move on.
I have regretted choosing the topic for my semester film many, many times throughout its production. But I couldn’t think of much else. It was the main thing on my mind. My stupid fragile body and my horrible, terrifying ostomy.
As a side note: Often times ostomies improve quality of life, and are a planned surgical change. My case was extremely rare, and it was really hard to deal with something so strange, something I’d never heard of or even thought possible.
I have a couple fairly large unshared projects also relating to it. It is very likely they will remain unshared. I haven’t decided yet. But, at least currently, I am done with it. I don’t want to keep reliving all the memories, all the sensations, thoughts, experiences. All the PAIN.
I do want to share this note I took sometime before my second hospital stay (for the ostomy reversal):
Since the accident, I haven’t been feeling like myself. While my stay at the hospital has made me more attuned to my body, I have never felt more disconnected from it. It’s paradoxical.
Nights are tough for me. I start feeling shitty about everything. I feel like I’m not doing enough in my life. There are night when I feel my life is over. It’s ridiculous. The ones in the hospital were tougher, though. Many of the nights I spent there I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t stop crying. Almost every day there I felt like I shouldn’t have survived. Like I didn’t deserve to have my life saved. It felt like everything should have ended right then and there. I still feel like that, on especially bad nights.
I fear for what will happen when I go back to that place. I have survived so many horrors those two weeks, and I’m not exaggerating when using that word. What I saw, felt, smelled when aware of my body (most of my stay, when I wasn’t conked out on painkillers or morphine) made me percieve it as meat. I perceived myself as meat. Gross flesh that should have been hidden away from sight and contact long ago. I feel like my brain activated some sort of switch during my stay at the hospital. When I was there, at some point I stopped caring about what the nurses and doctors would do with me. The memories haunt me. I luckily don’t remember exactly how most of it felt, but… there are exceptions. Looking back after my psyche went back to its “normal” state, I find it unbelievable how ambivalent I was about all that, and recall my memories with the deepest horror. I understand why it happened, though. I had to think like that in order to keep living.
I’ll never be the same, that’s for sure. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I hoped to live an unremarkable medically life, even if a short one. Now everyone’s telling me I’m so “strong” and “brave”. I hate that. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to have to be. At the same time I wish everyone around me would forget that ever happened and I want to scream and let the whole world know about what I’ve been through. It’s confusing.
Moving on
All that’s left to do on MECHAGUTS is to release the behind the scenes stuff, so others can learn from my process. I also want to do a video & text tutorial on datamoshing, which is a technique I used extensively in the film.
I will be now focusing on much more, well… Light-hearted projects. I have a couple of video games in the works.
I think I’m going to take it easy for a little while. Take a break.
I’ve got a new, exciting chapter ahead of me, after all.
