Symptomology - 'I felt hollowed out, empty and bare.'

May 08, 2026

Symptomology - 'I felt hollowed out, empty and bare.'

Symptomology

'Chronic illness humbles you,

it teaches you

that you ain't shit'

Is a series of intimate digital prints created at the end of the 2025 winter. With myself being the subject of my project and practise I was curious of how my body looked to the viewer. My carer; my partner, my children and my doctor. These are the people that witness my body moving in manners I myself don't see, I rather just feel it.

At the beginning of my diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder and POTS in 2022 I used to record symptoms on video however it felt selfish to my mind that was unkind due to living with C-ptsd.

I stopped recording symptoms as I came to the realisation that it wouldn't help medically, and I also stopped looking in the mirror albeit I never really did, doing my hair and make-up was no longer a daily important task. Clothing was worn without thought of how I looked, the mismatched clothes waited to be changed only after a shower which seemed fewer in between.

I was stripped back. I was stripped back from pain, stripped back from the disorders and conditions, stripped back by a depressive slump that seems to be a theme now living with disability.

I felt hollowed out, empty and bare.

I still felt the feeling of not being able to create, I no longer had the energy to sit on the lounge and create a drawing with pens and a book because my body felt too hard to hold up.

My neck concrete, my legs lead and gravity seemed to pull my body down into contorted movements.

My partner suggested that I do something digital and my laptop should retire to the confides of my bedroom again; my laptop hadn't seen my bedrooms walls for a few years and I felt a sense of sadness with the realisation that I was again at a point of decline.

I asked my partner how my body looked, what do you see? What does my body signal to you? When do you know when I'm symptomatic? How did you become so intune with my disabilities.

I stripped off my clothes and told him to take images of myself and replicate how my body looks in these moments; I felt like a broken barbie doll as he moved my body into unnatural positions. I have shared so much vulnerability with him; not of my own volition instead witnessing my own body betray me.

I felt vulnerable within this act of taking photographs to use as a reference. We did however do it with a bit of humour, a theme that runs throughout our relationship. It softened the harsh reality of my experience, my experience has been brutal. The pain I never thought could reach to the levels it does with minimal help; Panadol and Aspirin as my savours in these deeply hard moments.

Symptomology is a series of digital drawings, they are created with a red neon effect symbolic of the pain with a black background a recurring theme within my works. The images of my body outlined to invoke the feelings of empty space between my body and the outside world depicting the stripping away of the self; I am no longer a vessel of a sure and concrete identity I in fact feel none. I feel like an almost a nonexistent being, socially with no sense of community, and personally feeling like I am fading away into the deep abyss that envelops due to hidden and invisible disability.

Symptomology embodies vulnerability and intimacy within moments that are often seen by minimal witnesses if any. And an ode to the thousands of people who feel stripped bare from invisible, hidden chronic conditions. The loss of identity and disappearing from our communities due to being house bound.

Symptomology whilst born out of my own curiosity of my own body is a strong and poignant depiction of the silent hardships of those with disability face. The erasure of the self, the silent tears shed whilst being constant pain and the mental toll chronic illness creates. Symptomology reflects back to us our own vulnerabilities of our changed bodies and reflects the complete randomness and viscousness of certain conditions.