The Trajectory of Frayed Nerves begins with a freshly-sharpened red pencil, and ends with and mental and emotional combustion by the end of the day. The wearing down of a sharp pencil to barely a nub acts as a metaphor for my deteriorating well-being and growing frustration through a day filled with a mounting mental load, combined with the drudgery and monotony of domestic labour, caring, protecting and raising children.

The use of red evokes a multitude of the messy and enormous emotions relating to motherhood and caretaking, including love, rage, passion, danger, and being alive. Despite the underlying discombobulation, there is a superficial lightness to the work. This reflects how the challenges and feelings of motherhood are rarely articulated in the public domain, but rather, concealed under a sanitized narrative of motherhood cultivated for appearances, building the myth of mothers as pure and saintly.

Reminiscent of tally marks on a wall, the piece can also be seen as a counting down to the children's bedtime, when I can briefly reclaim my time and my identity, recalibrate and breathe, only to do it all over again the next day.

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