My Right Brain Failed Me and My Left Brain Took Over

I was feeling relatively hopeless, unmotivated, unaccomplished, exhausted...I kept on dissociating to get through each day. Time became a weird concept.

I wouldn't remember days; before they even started, they were over. Being awake felt miserable, but if I didn't get out of bed, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night- which meant more time awake and even more misery.

My brain was spiraling so much and my thoughts were too loud for me to do anything school or work related.

I couldn't think clearly, or hold a thought.

My body was too fatigued to do any exertion.

I was too emotionally exhausted to see any friends.

Music was no longer something I found joy in, slowly my outlets started to dwindle.

It took all of my energy to not be constantly crying.

How could just one person feel such intense pain?

And why feel the constant misery and hopelessness, if I could mentally try and remove myself from the pain?

But as miserable as I was, dissociation no longer held any benefit. Each time I removed myself from reality, it became more and more painful to come back.

I needed to move back to something that would ground me, something that would force me to be present. So, I reopened my bead and jewelry collection. I put it in the family room to force myself to at least go down the stairs each day, to at least get out of bed. It was a small step, but it was a small step in the right direction.

I’ve always been a creative person, but I hadn’t always turned to jewelry-making for comfort. It was something I picked back up in the summer of 2022, when my friend and I were both struggling with our own well-being. We were geographically isolated and both trying to navigate the difficult and life-altering life challenges we were facing. It became something we could do, when everything else in our life seemed out of our control. It became something to keep our hands busy and our minds distracted, something beautiful and of creation and novelty. But in the midst of my health crisis, it became so much more.

Jewelry-making became my anchor. Every morning, I would drag myself out of bed and into the family room. I didn’t have the energy for much else. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t talking to anyone, and I certainly wasn’t leaving the house. But I could sit there and create.

There’s something about working with your hands that makes you feel connected to the present moment. As I strung beads together and twisted wire into intricate shapes, I felt just a little bit of peace. It was the only thing that kept me grounded, the only thing that reminded me I was still here, still alive.

My mom noticed I wasn’t eating, so she started bringing food to me while I worked on my creations. It was the only way I managed to eat most days. But more than the food, it was the act of creating that saved me. Even when everything else felt completely out of control, I had this one small thing I could hold on to.

Some days, the fatigue was so overwhelming that all I could manage was a single bracelet or a pair of earrings. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about the quantity of what I made—it was about the process. Jewelry-making gave me a reason to get out of bed, a reason to keep going, even when it felt like there was nothing else.

Jewelry became my way of coping, my way of surviving. It may sound simple, but in those moments, it was everything. In that winter, it was the thing that motivated me to get through a day. The activity I would grant myself if I took the energy to eat and shower. It was something that helped me take care of myself.

In the next post, I’ll share the moment when everything came to a head—the moment when my body refused to go any further, and I was forced to face what was really happening. It became even more of a lifeline as my well-being continued to decline in the Spring of 2024. And in the summer while I was undergoing a more intense treatment in Arizona, when my symptoms were even more heightened, it became the only thing I ~could~ do.