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exposed nerve

$5.00

Exposed Nerve holds a special place in my heart because it's the first zine I ever made. In the zine, I explore the ways I experience anxiety through four separate lenses: a reflection on how I relate to the concept of "home"; processing my experiences in academia; my relationship with music; and my thoughts about the Zola Jesus album Okovi.

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Excerpts:

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"I always had issues with fitting in and making friends as a child, even before I moved to Madoc. But the social isolation I felt in Madoc was different than it had been before in a way that I still can't quite describe in words. The vast majority of my peers at school had known each other their entire lives. They had a culture and experiences that I didn't share with them. I couldn't relate to them.

Things did not get better as time went on. Quiet exclusion gave way to merciless bullying."

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"...when I started grad school, I hit a wall. Hard. I became paralyzed, convinced that I didn't deserve to be in grad school because I wasn't as smart or as hard-working as my classmates. I hated all of my research ideas and everything I wrote for my classes. I felt that I didn't have anything to contribute to my field, or to the world in general. It got the point where I simply could not do anything for school -- every time I tried, I froze."

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"At a time when I was starting to feel the full force of a world that I had never been completely comfortable in, listening to music that reflected that feeling back to me made me feel understood in my discomfort."

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"...there's so much of my experience of Okovi that can't really put into words. So much of it is an affective, an experience that resists description in words."