Through the Viewfinder
By; Colby Stewart
When taking a picture, you're an outsider. The world goes by while you’re frozen in the distance, capturing the moments that are only important to you. A narrow window of sight, watching through the eyepiece of the camera you can see events unfold from another perspective. Watching the world around me go on while I’m stuck behind this lens, a life changing experience that I underwent for two years. The act of taking a photograph relates to the events that I experienced during my concussion.
Freshman year of high school had just ended and I was on my way to an end-of-the-year barbecue with my lacrosse team. I would like to tell you what happened that night but I wouldn’t be able to remember even if I tried. The memories remain clumped in a fog that I cannot access in my brain. I do know that an elbow to the jaw while playing a friendly game of basketball, a seizure to follow and blood everywhere was how the night ended. I awoke the next morning to what felt like an anvil balancing on my forehead. While trying to dunk on me my friend had accidentally struck my jaw with his elbow, resulting in an impact seizure and causing my tongue to almost be bitten off. The pain was unbearable, my head was stuck in a vice that wouldn’t stop tightening. I told myself that I wouldn’t miss school because of a headache, such a simple pain that everyone experiences. I went for the rest of the week until I couldn’t handle it anymore. My mind was hazy, the world seemed so distant, I was watching life go by through the viewfinder.
After missing countless days of school with the symptoms developing from just a headache to sensitivity to light, noises and more, my father brought me to the doctor’s office to be diagnosed with a severe concussion. I went through the typical concussion protocol for what felt like forever with no progression just declination. Depression started to form when I crossed over the time a concussion should last, my parents were worried to leave me alone. I was experiencing psychosis for the first time, the voices surrounded my mind, always calling my name when I was alone. I would have to leave school early almost every week, driving down to Boston Children’s Hospital, to be told that there was nothing that they could do to help me. I was in a gray area called “post-concussive syndrome” where the symptoms of a concussion continue even when the brain has healed itself. Frustration boiled through my veins all I wanted was to be free again. The doctors chose to prescribe me to seizure medication that was supposed to help stop the traumatic pain I was dealing with. I couldn’t hang out with my friends, I wasn’t able to play sports for two years, my dad ended up forcing me to be the manager for my hockey team because he didn’t want to see me go a year without hockey. The team ended up winning the state championship that year which was the turning point in my injury. That moment was the whole time in the two years of having PCS (post-concussive syndrome) that my sight shifted away from the small rectangular eyepiece to be able to see everything for what it was. The pain started to dwindle down and resuming physical activity was one of the best feelings I have ever had.
This experience was one I obviously wouldn’t ever want to have again but going through it once in life was a great way to learn how to climb out of the lowest part I could be mentally and physically. Taking a picture takes less than a second but the act of setting up for the perfect shot could take hours maybe even days of planning. I appreciate life to the fullest after being stuck looking through the viewfinder for two years. Photography is more than looking to take the shot, it is about focusing away from the camera to make the shot.