I haven’t been. I’ve been avoiding in ways. Either through hiding completely, hinting gently through lumps of flesh and relation to the human body, or being wildly obvious in a way that pushes beyond the truth and into function (Mechanical Gut). A sentence in my feedback made me pause:

‘The mechanical gut is obviously a deeply personal and important piece to you. You have discussed that this is both personal and societal but with work that initiates in something so personal, how do you feel about showing it? Is it important how people ‘read’ the work? How can you present these ideas in a playful ambiguous way that allows space for eh audience to bring their own emotions and feelings?‘

How do I navigate something so personal, how do I expect people to read it? Can it be playful? Can I make it so it’s readable to the audience? I knew I didn’t have those answers and that I wanted to approach my medical past in a way that wasn’t ‘sterile’. That was more about truth than it was about the matter of factness of my experience. Trauma makes you uncomfortably matter of fact.

Really, in my life I have moved away so far from what happened to me. Shoved it in a box. I’ve had surgeries that have done the same. I SHOULD have an ostomy bag right now, but I’m keeping everything inside my stomach and dealing with the issues that come with that in order to have the privilidge of at least pretending I can’t feel the pain.

Visiting Tracey Emins exhibition on the low residency opened me up. I walked through the corridor of familiar images of stomas and wept. Thankfully it was dark. A small child next to me looked to her mum and went ‘this is disgusting’. Her mother tried to dampen the feeling by saying it was supposed to be shocking. All I wanted to do was turn to the girl and say ‘Yes… it is’. A very odd part of having a stoma is everyone around you policing how you feel about it. If anyone knows that it can be disgusting, its the very person who had it. The little girl was right. But having the stoma slap bang in the middle of the body positivity movement was a struggle. People were afriad to join me in singing the song of disgust, because they mistook what was a medical thing I needed to come to terms with, for my ACTUAL body, for curves and stretch marks and natural things that had been turned into something ‘not allowed’. Yes, it was part of my body, but it was the part that’s supposed to be disgusting. And that’s where I found acceptance. I didn’t always see it that way, but being ALLOWED to made the entire thing comfortable.

Since then I’ve kept it in a box. But visiting Emins exhibition allowed me to see the stoma again, this time not on my own body, in all its squeamish glory. Not trying to sugarcoat or make it palatable at all.

This week I started looking at old photos again. Some from my time with a bag (I deleted all the stoma photos you have to take to send to your doctor) and some from three years ago when I had the feeding tube for food and hydration. For context I had the stoma for four years (should still have it now and have promptly warned my new partner that it will be back) and the feeding tube for two years.

Revisiting these photos was quite a wild ride. I pretend, every day, that none of this ever happened. I may mention it sometimes in passing, or refer to it in themes. But my secret is that it wasn’t me and I’m talking about someone else. The mess in my room expresses my complete lack of ability to look after myself at the time. I love however that there’s a guitar and a ring light in the background, my creativity was still there in some ways.

I also revisited ‘Ostomy Gallery’ an instagram account I started with 180 followers and 100 or so follow requests waiting in the wings, I never continued it because I became allergic to the bag that could be drawn on.

I remember my main idea was to create an art gallery of bags, worn on models instead of hung on walls. People would be forced to look at the bag and see beauty in it. I’ve caught myself before wanting to create to ‘force’, this is where the anger hides. I know no longer feel this way, you can look and you cannot. I was just so desperate from people not to run away at the time.

After looking at those photos I sat and drew in soft pastels. A mix of ostomy, feeding tube and scars. All mangled together. Because thats how my brain feels right now, after witnessing my past through pictures. I want to continue to draw these. I feel far enough away from it all to face it properly. I’m also going to go scavenging for more videos and photos of these times, the debris that remains after deletion.

One thing I need to shake is my exes voice saying ‘This isn’t going to make you depressed is it’ when I discussed creating pieces to do with my health. I’ve come to realise I’m experiencing it everyday. THATS what makes me depressed. The sheer loneliness of it all. The silencing and zipping up of my mouth in order to make others comfortable. I will continue to refrain from yelling about my bowels to people. But I will also allow myself to create to say the unsaid thing.