Work in Progress- Endorphins and Oxytocin
I have become curious about the meaning of love and what actually happens when I fall "in love"with someone. I have been doing some research into what scientifically happens when people fall for each other, such as this lovely TED talk by phycologist Helen Fisher. I have also been delving into my own personal journey as a human.
The first part of my project is involving me creating a weaving of my entire romantic history. I used a different color for each person, and each foot equaled one year. The amount of color in the weft equalled how much time I spent with that person, the amount of color in the warp was how much of myself I gave to that person. Cataloguing this took MONTHS of work, going over old journal entires and emails until I finally had a visual map of what my romantic history looked like.
I'm also weaving in photographs, poetry, mementos. All of those things that when I started looking, I couldn't believe I still had. All of those things that were at one time, some of the most important possessions I had because they reminded me of someone I loved.
This magazine is actually one that I had up in my locker in grade 9 of a celebrity I had a crush on.
As I was going over my old writings, I also noticed something else. There were redundancies in things that I wrote from one relationship to the next. Reading the words, "I don't want to live without you," or "You make me the happiest I've ever been," really made me interested in how I can feel the same way for a different person time and time again, and yet still feel just as stoically that it is a brand new feeling.
I have no idea of where this journey will lead me to yet, but it sure has been an interesting process to go over my own romantic history and see the same feelings I had for different people again and again.
