It ripped. The whole shoulder. I had
actually ripped it. I stared. Are you kidding me? That moment, it felt as if my
whole world was dangling by a Gutemann 120 black thread, dangling in front of a
miraculous pass or an inevitable fail. I walked up the stairs, pin box in one
hand, the ripped jacket in the other, hot tears rolling down my sleep-deprived
cheeks, heart pumping back up at 1000 beats a second, the thought of that fail
glowing red in front of my eyes.
No one tells you how pain staking brutal
studying Fashion Design is. The little pin holes in your thumbs from the 20
pins you dropped on the floor of you work room, the flakes of skin peeling from
the edges of your thumb nails from the handling of fabrics, the acceptance of 3
hours sleep and how this is a luxury, how normal it becomes to not shower and
to not wash your hair, how easy it is to skip meals to get one extra hour of
technical work finished. Reality is no longer possible, and your days are
measured in hours and how long a new toile will take to make, and how much of
the portfolio you can finish by 2am. At 10.55am Monday morning, I finally handed
in four years of work (squeezed onto a memory stick and into a velvet presentation
box.. screw the black satin ribbon). I had slept three hours that night.
Flitting in and out of sleep in my Travelodge hotel room, napping purely so I
could focus more on the garment evaluations and illustrated lineup that I still
had to do. Every half an hour, a plummet of adrenaline welcomed itself into my
veins, widening my eyes and making my breathing jump. “I’m not letting you
fail!” screamed my brain as it fought with drowsiness.
The moment alone after I had handed in,
felt peaceful. I had actually felt sun and oxygen on my skin – staying in doors
for days on end really had felt like necessity to prove I had done work. I
deleted my lists of my phone, the reminders that the swing tags HAD to be done
by 3pm on Saturday. I scrolled through Instagram, I rang my mum, and I started
breathing normally. I took a photo to post online and I really looked at
myself. My hair was dry and had no life, red sleep deprived marks hung under my
eyes, and spots had claimed their place on my previously smooth skin. My
stomach rumbled – I hadn’t given it a decent meal in two days. It was over. I
had made it to the end and I had survived. Just about. I felt peaceful.
I had gone through the most stressful few
weeks of my life, to date. My anxiety flared
up, my panicking started showing its ugly face. I stayed resilient and I kept
my stamina. I counted the days down seven days before the hand in. I was used
to crying, crying out of frustration, out of sleep deprivation, out of feeling
like I wasn’t going to hand in. I had done away with being
a normal twenty-three year old, I said no to dating, to nights out, to spending
more than hour being social. I gave everything away, for a grade.
The morning before my hand in, I had ripped
the lining of one jacket. I ripped it out of force, out of the realisation the
lining was. Just. Not. Going. To fit. The only thought that entered my head was
just to sew. Sew the edge to the shell, gather it and pleat it to make it fit.
Just sew the bloody thing. I gave up on caring; I gave up on being perfect. I
said no to remaking the whole goddamn thing. I realized how much I had given,
how much I missed my life, my friends, my writing, the sound of my own laugh,
the feeling of waking up and being able to enjoy breakfast. The comfort of
sitting on a sofa, watching TV. I sat back in that desk seat, jacket in one
hand, pinned together, pinned ready and set for self-destruction. I focused.
Just sew the bloody thing.
