First year
First year of my design programme, we were given a list of non-profits and told to make a PSA for one. I picked the Canadian Mental Health Association because it was near and dear. I was diagnosed with OCD in sixth grade, but it took a year-long psychology course at Western to actually understand what was happening in my own head.
The spaghetti
Living with OCD often feels like having a bowl of spaghetti for a brain. Each noodle is a thought or an emotion, some kind, some dark, all tangled together. You reach for one hoping for clarity and there’s no telling which one you’ll come back with.
Two things have helped most. My dad told me once, “You are not your thoughts.” That gave me distance from the noise. The other came from Joe Talbot of Idles, who sings, “If someone spoke to you the way you do to you, I’d put their teeth through.” Both lines still sit with me.
The piece
A blue world with a tired head at its centre, the mind inside it visibly confused. Mouths cover the head, all shouting conflicting things at once. Some kind, some cruel, all overwhelming. Built in Illustrator and Procreate, refined through moodboards and crit. My professor loved it. Whether anyone else has carried something from it, I’ll never know.
First-year scope, but it still reads true to me.