to everyone who has ever liked one of my drawings or sent me a lovely message – you are the reason I’ve been able to keep on doodling, and sometimes the reason I even bother doing anything. I wouldn’t be here without you.
I hope you enjoy Bird Brain and that it helps you remember that no matter what you’re going through, you’re not alone. I also hope that you find some money in your pocket that you’d forgotten about, and that you see a really cool pigeon today. Thanks for picking up this book, I love you!!!
The term ‘bad times’ feels a little glib. Unfortunately, ‘times when I feel so utterly miserable and overloaded with panic that I completely detach from reality to retreat into a deafening void and wallow in self-deprecation for what feels like an eternity’ just didn’t have the same level of snappiness to it.
Typing the above sentence feels like I’m exaggerating how bad my mental health can get, but I’m really not. I used to think that being depressed or anxious just made you shy away under your bedcovers and sleep for hours, your brain reduced to a deflated balloon. And that is sometimes true; I wasn’t surprised by this emptiness when my mental illnesses began manifesting. (Not that expecting it helped me deal with it in any way.) What blew me away was the sheer abundance of feelings, the excess of misery, paranoia, worry, self-hatred, envy, exhaustion, guilt, and so on and so on, all blurring into a disastrous cocktail. I felt like a perpetually whizzing blender, brimming with emotions that threatened to knock my lid clean off and splash everywhere at a moment’s notice.
While that doesn’t sound like it could get any worse, somehow it can and it does. It’s not enough that mental illness straps you onto a never-ending nightmare carousel spiralling downwards into hell; no, it also isolates you from everyone with a powerful sense of finality. Sometimes I go about my day feeling as if I’m encased in an invisible bubble. I seem completely fine, but in actuality there’s this tangible barrier physically separating me from the rest of the world. It absorbs anyone’s attempt to probe beyond the surface and traps all my attempts to vocalise what’s rattling around inside my brain, until I’m suffocated.
The bubble ignores rational thought. Logically, I know that I am not the only person going through this. Logically, I know that my loved ones would support me through anything. But mental illness takes any positive, factual thought you may have and Frisbees it into space. Without these gleams of optimism you’re left to force your way upstream against a raging river, alone, all the while blaming yourself for getting into this mess. If only I had done this, you think, or this, or that, or any of those other five million options that have only just occurred to me, that I absolutely definitely would’ve 100 per cent been able to do. It feels simultaneously completely avoidable and totally inevitable.
So, yeah… it’s pretty bad. I’ve never been good at getting the words to come out of my mouth to describe this. Art filters it out much more effectively, sucking all the negativity out of my brain like a leech and bleeding it onto paper. Although I can never really draw something in the midst of a downward spiral or panic attack – it’s pretty hard to hold a pen when you’re nervously sweating out the Pacific Ocean – once the edge fades I try and make a comic to purge the experience. I’ve always loved drawing, but it surprised me just how much creating these pigeon comics helps me; they’ve become my tether to existence, my voice when my mouth fails me. My self-improvement is also definitely related to the soothing numb of medication, but hey, everyone still needs an outlet.
And the connections art can bring! It’s very bittersweet, just how many people have said they relate to these comics; it sucks that so many people have gone through the same slog of shit, but oddly comforting to know that, actually, I’m not alone in what I’m going through. And neither are you. The comics in Bad Times all took shape from moments of crappiness in my life, and they can seem quite defeatist, but I hope that their nihilism can burst through my invisible bubble and into yours to connect us. A strange sort of connection, but a connection nonetheless.
These last two comics were based off the same awkward party experience and made within twelve hours of each other; the former, shortly upon returning home in a drunken stupor full of the flippancy that only vodka can bring, and the latter the morning after, once shame and the hangover had kicked in.
I’m at a point now where I can deal with parties without wanting to disappear into a crack in the wall and become one with the insulation, but at my worst, large social gatherings just made me feel the emotional equivalent of being set on fire. It’s either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid that I kept going to them.
An average schedule of my partygoing experience:
9:00 p.m.: Arrive.
9:15 p.m.: Complete greeting and catching up with the handful of people I know.
9:17 p.m.: Stand gawkily clutching a cup of fruity alcohol, staring at it like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.
9:18 p.m.: Resolve to discover a conversation I can easily enter.
9:20 p.m.: Down my cup and refill.
9:23 p.m.: Introduce myself to someone.
9:24 p.m.: Quickly realise I have no idea how to participate in a conversation. You moron. What did you expect? That you’d just be able to act like a ‘normal person’? Who the hell are you kidding?
9:25 p.m.: Flush with shame as the other person breaks from my awkward eye contact and moves on to better prospects.
9:26 p.m.: Sear their look of disgust into my brain forever.
9:27 p.m.: Feel as if everyone’s eyes are stabbing into me as punishment for this murder of an interaction.
9:28 p.m.: Everyone is talking to somebody else, and is having much more fun than they ever would with me, a fact they are screaming at me through osmosis.
9:29 p.m.: Realise that there are a lot of people here, and they are all without fail doing this.
9:30 p.m.: Feel sweaty and short of breath.
9:31 p.m.: Convince myself that locking myself in the bathroom and crying for a few minutes will expel all this negativity from me and leave me pristine. I am a dirty sponge that just needs to be wrung out.
9:32 p.m.: Queue for the bathroom.
9:40 p.m.: The queue for the bathroom has not shortened
