The Day I Want to Die

According to statistics, there are ten times more people wanting to commit suicide among
those, afflicted with migraine.
As long as I can remember myself, I’ve always experienced strong headaches. When I was
teenager, everything went not as painfully – it just took a pill and some sleep for it to end. The older
I became, though, the stronger the symptoms got. The illness got especially severe after giving
birth, the pain started to wear me out; there was nowhere to hide from it; pills or sleep couldn’t
help, and it seemed that spasms would last forever. Provoking fear and panic attacks, this pain
became associated with lost hours of life in which I could do nothing, even fall asleep. That is
migraine.
Beginning in a dream state, it captures your reality, plunging you into its own world, the
world of pain and helplessness. You don’t exist in the real world; life goes on without you.
However, sometimes you must leave the bed and contact the outside world – and it doesn’t seem
to be the same one as it always is. The usage of blurring techniques and colour spots in
photography represent my worldview in the times of migraine attacks. Colourful, varied themes of
my self-portraits once again stress the feelings I experience during those periods.
Those feelings, accompanying my state of migraine attacks, are conveyed to the audience
in the series of photos that I created. Some of my acquaintances have started feeling headaches,
while regarding my works. Only through feeling it yourself can one understand the nature of
someone else’s problem.
“Through optimistic re-evaluation of your feelings, try to learn finding pleasure in some of
the not so pleasurable, or even downright painful, processes in your organism. Masochists have
proven that it is possible”.
– G. Ratner.
In recent years, photography became not just a hobby for me – it became my life. I’m
inspired by artists making creative self-portraits using various techniques. I always try using
something new and unusual. Through photography I express my feelings during migraine attacks.
Making my self-portraits, I get pleasure from both the creative process and the final result. By
recreating the reality I’m in during an attack, I express myself in the real world. Photography allows
me to accept my helplessness and come to terms with my state. Accepting it, the attacks become
less frequent.