welcome to my brain

Tending Flowers I - Chloe Chlumecky , 2026

Canadian , b. 1999 -

- the self as something that emerges through recognition by others, a reciprocal network of witnesses, and memory as something that is collectively maintained

- grief is not something that fades or resolves but a permanent structural reorganization of the self. the death of a loved one is not just the absence of companionship but a total destabilization of identity

- every intimate relationship creates a distinct social self. a relationship is the creation of a specific version of us that can only be understood and enacted through that relationship. with death, that social self is lost, that identity can no longer be enacted, that version of you lacks context

- grief is a structural imbalance in the entire self: love remains but recognition disappears; relational patterns that were maintained through the body (because we spend our entire lives in our bodies) are broken, and the body experiences it as a sort of withdrawal

- memory erodes with time but love does not, eventually rendering the relationship and lost social self in the abstract. grief becomes detached from specific memories and becomes a permanent emotional structure, becomes something more than itself. with every loss that structure compounds

- love can survive the collapse of memory and identity. recognition and memory are not the same thing, and so even when cognitive memory fails love can still persist. i know this because i have experienced it firsthand. i have been loved fiercely by someone who could not remember why, only that they did because of the joy and relief they felt in my presence. something of the self is maintained through recognition by others, can be recalled through that relationship

- even when those relational traces are gone they are still present in the body as a form of somatic memory. death forces a total reorganization of the self, the self becomes a repository of the dead. as long as we live we contain those relational patterns, that recognition, that understanding of their distinct social self, and so they persist. grief is the lived experience of that continuation. the relationship is internalized and forms the emotional scaffolding of the self; there is no longer a version of the self that can be legible without it. as long as other relationships continue, as the self continues to emerge through recognition by others, that lost relationship persists as an active presence

The lottery used by the Selective Service to determine who would be drafted for Vietnam. United States, 1969