One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty Nine

This project ‘One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty Nine’ displays itself as a timeline of my trauma. Documenting my hometown in Hertfordshire, a place in which many find safety and comfort was the setting of a traumatic experience of sexual assault. It further explores people that I grew up with around the time of this trauma as well as this sense of cyclical pattern as they all return to our hometown to the pandemic. The second part of the project explores my current relationships towards the end of the pandemic still affected by the ongoing damage that trauma can have on the body and the mind. Reflecting on how my overwhelming fear of admitting to them that I was sexually assaulted. This difficulty in understanding my body and accepting it coincided with me moving over 250 miles away to university. A chance for a fresh start and an opportunity to rebuild my life. However, after finally admitting to myself and a few others what had happened to me at 16, the downward spiral intensified. Having been diagnosed with PTSD I tried to ‘cure’ my mental health issues that had come as a part of the trauma, with medication, therapy, and self-harm. This section of the project follows my current relationships with those I have met at university which has been tested at times due to my overwhelming paranoia and manic episodes. With this blanket of denial about my sexual assault lifted I have come to terms with trauma as a cyclical pattern. This work is an ode to my younger self and to those who are struggling with similar issues such as mine, although the path to recovery is difficult, it will always be worth living.