REFLECTIONS AND MIRRORS

Brained Circuitry was first inspired by this short series of art pieces I saw online. Someone had taken different computer commands and warnings and photoshopped them on top of pictures in the context of different human feelings. Inspired by that idea, I began to write a poem that first conveyed the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty that featured various computer pop-up screens and prompts. However, the little poem expanded into the series that it is now over the summer, when I first picked up my job at the pool.

 

To be very honest, the experience was far from enthralling. The job that I was assigned with was more manual labor than anything else, which made my brain activity majorly flatline since there was nothing intellectual or mentally challenging to engage in while I was on duty. Not to mention that the people there were hardly good conversational partners. Debating about sex, drugs, bodies, and scams to shorten work hours by pushing them onto someone else, there was no challenge to talk about something above the physical and something more abstract and interesting. But, then again, what’s to be expected from hormonal-crazed, booze-sucking, pot-smoking, misogynistic high school and college students who couldn’t care any less about anything unless it involved getting laid? (I wish I could be making those adjectives up, but from the conversations I managed to pick up, that’s the most accurate description of a huge majority of the staff I had to spend time with.) Piled on top of that was the constant shame I had for my body. Not being the fittest person around yet having to walk around in a swimsuit in front of body-judgmental individuals put more stress on me than I could have ever imagined it could.

 

Could there have been better people there? Absolutely. And I did have the fortune to spend some time with the few that were there. But, unfortunately, their contributions did not outweigh the massive anxiety and depression I garnered from work. It became so bad that I began to manifest symptoms of social anxiety and had a major panic attack three-quarters of the way through the summer.

 

As terrifying as that all sounds, there are positive things to take away. One: that I now know I need to be in an intellectually stimulating environment. It’s not “something nice” to have, it’s not a preference. I know that if my brain is allowed to fall into disuse after staring at rippling water for eight consecutive hours a day, my neurons will fry like an egg in a frying pan—this is your brain on drugs, this is my brain on nothing. Two is that I learned to manage people; which individuals to avoid, which ones to build alliances with, which ones to manipulate. It’s not a perfect science and I’ve hardly gotten it down pat, but there’s progress to be found. Three: I have about $1300 in the bank to spend. And money might not bring you happiness, but it’s a start to repairing. There is no remedy like splurge shopping and giving yourself a little love, even if it’s in things physical and transient. But four, and maybe most of all: out of all that stifling pain and suffering, I found release through this poem and I found my muse for this poem—enough to blossom it into a series of four. Because if there are any silver linings out of this storm cloud, I best find it. If not to make my whole summer seem better, than because the intellectual challenge will be enough to sate me for a while and bring closure to this whole fiasco.