Cycle of Histrionics Quilts
Histrionic Personality Disorder
Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is a mental health condition marked by unstable emotions, a distorted self-image and an overwhelming desire to be noticed. People with HPD often behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention.
-Cleveland Clinic
There’s something about coming of age in the late 90s/early aughts that has consistently brought me back to my questions about art imitating life or life imitating art. When I was in my teens I was prone to arguing that the reason so many relationships seemed so shallow among my peers was the prevalence of shallow relationships on television. Interactions were sitcoms or soap operas played for an invisible audience that surely was on your side as the main character. Nothing seemed to go past the superficial. Everything seemed to be a performance. We were bombarded with the ‘Real World’ to reality tv and our growing brains did what all generations have done before: pantomime. But this time, there seemed to be no counter arguments, no guidance from adults, and no contemporary culture that encouraged an alternate way of being. In so many ways, our overly commercialized culture that plays to the lowest common denominator for the least amount of money possible got us here. And the advent of social media only amplified the pantomime.
Suddenly we could create and curate our personas to our friends and family. Through status updates, filters, stickers, top friends, collecting likes and followers, and hashtags, we could star in our own reality show and in some cases, do more and more dramatic things to keep attention on us.
There was a moment in high school that epitomizes my reasoning. I was sitting with a group of friends of the moment in a diner. We were pop punk before it was sold at Hot Topic, goth inspired with more color. One guy was 16 and already taking college courses in psychology. Another was just shy of being considered a music prodigy. The girl was sweet but raw, someone who had grown up on the rougher side of town. We were a band of middle class misfits just smart enough to be bored with the pace of public education but not advanced enough to do anything about it. The guy taking psych classes pulled out the DSM IV and started flipping through the various disorders. This is how my theory of performance was implanted. All three at the table started comparing symptoms of what they could have. Teenagers self diagnosing their own pathologies. It was a point of pride and competition. And I saw it repeated across other groups of friends. Since we were never going to reach the top, it was a competition to be the most fucked up without hitting bottom. Brilliant mistakes. Beautiful disasters. Local legends living in infamy in our own minds. While in truth we mostly faced the normal mental health issues: depression, anxiety, PTSD, and ADHD. We weren’t sociopaths or psychopaths; we were average teens desperate for our lives to mean something and willing to play the parts to be seen as unique.
This evolution towards more histrionic behavior and the normalizing of it is a bit of what these quilts are about. I can’t say if I feel things more deeply than when I was younger, but these feelings seem more at the forefront than maybe they should be. And when I want to bury them, or not talk about them, there always seem to be people close to me who want me to lay myself bare, as if my feelings are a form of entertainment.
These quilts are objects of comfort and meditation, an examination, and maybe a way to connect you and your experiences of the world in a way that could bring us closer together without pretense or performance. And everyone could use a good security blanket.