This past week has been a long one, unsurprisingly, with classes back in session. I have survived, and started a new embroidery project which is making me entirely gleeful. I also got to attend a lecture by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez about art creation and curation within the wider context of the modern world, sustainability and environmental impact. It was incredibly interesting and rather inspiring.

Find following: a piece of flash fiction retelling the first time I attempt to write some of substance by my own initiative; a poetic fragment about starting new projects; and an observation of a childhood of ill mental health.

Nostalgic reading,

Alexei

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My first fumbling attempts at an engagement – half despairing, for want of something to do, and half, the seemingly natural conclusion to a life of voracious reading – are defiant, naive and frustrating.

With a head full of grand plans and grander ideas I sat. Stalling and stumbling over the difference between two words. Scenes lost to my mind’s relentless tumbling, tripping and tearing off down myriad tangents.

Failing though those very first stories may have been, they cemented within me the anchor that would tie my life to words. A permanent partnership I have never since let go.

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The pleasure of a new project, working the itch out of eager fingers, with careful stitches.

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Lost

It’s only now, an adult the world over, that I realise how much of my childhood I lost to mental illness. To the fog and fugue of years under the aegis of depression, anxiety and trauma response.

I can see it in the way I’m really only now learning how to interact with other people. How I’m starting to find define my own strengths and style and personal preferences. The clarity that has come, with the progression of recovery, has illuminated the dimness I had laboured under for so long.