Flailings of a 40-Year-Old Boy
by Jacob Madrigal
I describe myself as flailing when I get stuck in a headspace where I can’t seem to take any positive action, paralysed by self-doubt, depression, and/or anxiety. Sometimes this means frozen body (and sometimes mind too), sometimes thrashing about physically as well as mentally. Situations in which the words in my head just dig me deeper into myself, more damning, and I just want to get out of my own skin.
Embroidering is one way for me to externalise, to stim, to slow down, to hyperfocus on something else. To create something solid and lasting outside of my head. It almost gives my spiky musings gravitas, catching at threads of overflowing thoughts, and nailing them down with whimsy.
Ultra-slow-motion whining, which strangely releases the thought as it’s been captured and catalogued. When I’m too alienated from being able to write as I’d wish, words and ideas can creep under the radar in messy stitched wryness. Some of it is self-deprecatingly tongue-in-cheek, some pretends to be, and some is what feels straight-up true – which is unclear, often even to myself.