Business

“Sunshine” he yells, I can hear the smile in his voice, his tiny footsteps running toward me as fast as his body will carry him. The day he called me sunshine was the day I became yellow. I turn around to face him, my cheeks flushed from running and picking him up. His little face staring at me as he sits on my hips.

I was 13 when I became a big sister for the first time and a year later, a second followed. In 2012 I got a little sister and finally, I had everything I needed.

Growing up, I always found it confusing why adults chose to dress in black and grey, why they painted their walls in variations of white dressed under names such as “velvet glass” and why they were all so seemingly obsessed with everything bland; I wondered when it was that they forgot about colour.

When creating a brand for myself, I was creating it with my siblings and my little me in mind. I chose pink and yellow, I hand drew it and made sure it was easy to find. I chopped my name in half and gave myself a new identity. I wanted to add the colour to the bland adult world I saw, where professionalism can mean more than the same fonts in black and white text.

I wanted to create something that felt comfortable, something that represented me not only as a brand but as a person, the one behind the lens, the person holding the brush.

Museum

Walking through the doors of the museum, the smell of coffee and toast from the cafe lingering, boat head masts towering over me, I walk up the stone stairs to the rooms filled with archives and exhibits. Each room creating space for a tumultuous recipe of old and new, watching childrens hands reaching for the glass cases holding fossils that are nothing short of a million years old.

Walking slowly through, looking at items that were hidden for thousands of years, laying quietly in the soil, under sand and rocks; wondering who put the designs on that clay pot, who those bones belonged to - and what they would think about being propped up for eternity for later generations to look upon - wondering about the stuffed animals perched on metal branches, the jewelery that doesn’t sit on anyones neck. Every single object lending its funtion to the process of education.

The Box museum has become an invaluable resource to me, spending many hours pondering its rooms and learning about preservation and historical significance.

Throughout the curation of my current project, I have spent a lot of time searching for answers about things that are simply out of my depth, walking into this space and finding the answers has been vitally important to my understanding of marine life and its functions.

Within these walls I have been given the space to learn without barriers and explore worlds that don’t belong to me. Each visit gives me a reason to come back, I am constantly finding new interests; always looking for the details.

Learning about marine life is almost pale in comparison to attempting to understand human nature, the complexities surrounding habits, secret social rules and recipes for disaster seem to sit within our DNA. You see, there are approximately 80 shark attack instances each year, usually caused by humans entering space that doesn’t belong to them with sharks mistaking humans for seals and other animals they can feed on. In comparison it is estimated that humans kill approximately 100 million sharks every single year but they are labelled as monsters, uncontrollable creatures, thirsty for blood.

The leading cause of death to humans, killing roughly 700,000 people per year are mosquitos, though they do not kill with intent, they are deadly due to the disease they carry. The second leading cause of human deaths per year, affecting an average estimate of 500,000 per year, is humans - death by homocide.

As I have been learning about marine life it has become increasingly important to me to break down the harmful stereotypes we put on animals and understand the harm we are causing as humans whilst blaming anyone but ourselves. We are the leading cause of global warming, animal farming and millions of deaths every single year and though there are many people striving to give the earth back to itself, it is increasingly difficult.

I hope with the correct education and preservation that future generations will be aware of the needs of the planet and the other lives that inhabit it. It is through resources such as museums that we are able to continue to learn and grow and for many of us, they give us the hindsight to correct previous generational mistakes.

Sharks attack due to confusion, humans kill out of ignorance.

Growth

A tiny tenant cocooned carefully in its mothers egg hangs on a plastic peg from the top of the tank, each moment pulsing carefully, breathing, living.

This Spotted Catshark will take approximately nine months to grow into a mature shark, throughout that time, the shark will leave its coiled egg and learn to adapt into a brand new environment. When the shark matures, it will be allowed to join a larger tank and socialise. Currently the little shark is concentrating on growing.

The current length of the shark is approximately 10cm, when fully matured it will be approximately 100cm, though this will take several years.

I crane my neck back up, looking away from the tank and coming back down again, hanging over at an awkward angle not wanting to miss a thing. Each week I watch it change. Watching the egg fog over as the tiny tenant carefully runs out of space, waiting.

As I stand at the tank, I think about the resilience of babies within the oceanic world. How so many eggs are abandoned at the moment of birth while other species like Octopus give their lives to procreate, with males regularly dying soon after insemination - a once in a lifetime event for male octopi; whilst females usually die before her eggs hatch, her last days filled of starvation and exhaustion.

I look around around the aquarium, hearing the screams and funny footsteps of tiny people, pondering how it is human life became the unnatural rulers of the world - perhaps we will continue to just thank the opposable thumbs.

I regularly find it nothing short of a miracle that human children manage to become such resilient adults, not maturing until approximately 30 years into their lives by which point we have been subject to an arrange of individual events and circumstances, each out of our control; by the time this happens, humans are often ready to procreate themselves if they haven’t already.

Of course, like all things in the neurodivergent brain, maturity comes later. Thanks to the recent developements on the understanding of neurodivergence, studies looking at neurodivergent vs neurotypical brains are showing differences in growth. It is estimated that neurodivergent brains are maturing about 5 years later than their peers, this of course is leaving a huge impact on neurodivergent brains, amounting more problems to the daily life routine.

I have always found myself feeling developmentally delayed, when I was in primary school I felt like I sat on the outside of my friendship circles, watching and playing but not in the same way. In high school I didn’t understand crude jokes or references, now I’m going into my late 20’s I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the sterotypical timeline.

The journey of growth is one that doesn’t stop until our internal clock stops ticking but throughout that time we have to learn to adapt, for those of us with divergent brains, this process can be much harder. We have to learn to adapt to a world not built for us, the same way the shark was not meant to be born into captivity, neither were we.

Diagnosis

I was 2 days into my 25th year when I got the email, carrying the weight of the file reading “On completion of the assessment, all criteria were fully met, demonstrating that a diagnosis of adult ADHD is indicated”.
I had been waiting for this assessment for more days than I care to count and reading those words brought me to my knees onto the cold kitchen floor, sobbing.

The power of diagnosis is not to be underestimated, when neurodivergent people have lived for many years believing they were different but they couldn’t understand why, when you struggle for so long trying to fit in to a world that is simply not made for you. It broke my heart and mended me all at once.

For many years I had been struggling with my mental health, my school reports telling me I would excel if I could just sit still and concentrate, if I could just work faster. I knew things didn’t make sense for me and it wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that my body simply could not handle it anymore. Diagnosed with a crippling anxiety disorder politely presented with a side order of depression that prevented me from leaving my flat, unable to eat or shower for days on end.

I was terrified and I felt so alone. I had been strugging for so long and I had finally collapsed. I started taking anti-depressants and had weekly therapy sessions to help me cope. It was during this period that I began to explore neurodivergence and what that can look like in adult females and the more I read, the more I understood. I saw myself and it finally made sense.

I struggled to get through my second year of uni, only able to work in short intervals. Working erratically, chasing my thoughts as they left my head. My home was as messy as my mind, I was unable to keep on top of anything.

Finally I finished my second year and got my foundation degree. I quit my third year 7 weeks in and deferred for a year. I packed my bags and moved to a new city, I started again in a new uni. It’s been challenging but it has been extremely rewarding.
Being around so many other neurodivergent creatives has been immensely freeing. I feel like I don’t have to hide myself anymore.

I am now in the process of beginning my final major project which will be focussing on the symptoms of ADHD and how they run parallel with the natural world. Working with the tenants of the local aquarium, I will be making a series of work that will reflect what it is like living as a neurodivergent adult.

I want the work to encompass the past few years and truly show the day to day life of what it can be like, attempting to fight a neurotypical world as a neurodivergent person.

I want this project to bring awareness to the subject and to reflect the importance of diagnosis. Diagnosis is pivotal in the understanding of neurodivergence and allows a person to understand themselves and gain clarity with themselves. It allows the correct medications to be prescribed, it allows schools to work in different ways, each diagnosis is a step closer to acceptance for neurodivergent people.

Thanks for being here and I can’t wait to share this with you!

- Rae