Brackets

"It is very difficult to tell you this story. I still feel lost.
It is very difficult to understand and explain a memory that is falling apart piece by piece."

A young woman in her early twenties has her entire life completely changed by a tumor detected in her brain. Thus, a parenthesis is opened in Judith's ongoing life, who has lived as a normal teenager until now. This parenthesis is also the beginning of a new life that is completely foreign, different, and full of unknown things. After this difficult process that starts with the process of accepting the disease and extends to her struggle with it, to the things that have changed during this period, to her inner world, to all her movements, there is only one way for the young woman to close this involuntary parenthesis that is opened for her, who tries to gather the scattered pieces of her memory back one by one: To write her own story.
My mind is still so confused that I am hesitant to have any conversations these days. It is very difficult to tell my story. I still feel like I am hanging somewhere or lost most of the time. But I will try anyway...
What have I been doing all this time!? Hah! According to what they said, I was staring blankly, feeling like I was going to throw up, saying strange things and twitching my body. Although all these symptoms indicated an ordinary epileptic seizure, according to the results of the examinations, the cause of everything was a tiny mass that appeared in an unlikely corner of my brain. Yes, I was only 22 when I was diagnosed with this disease, but I never cared. I slept a lot during the process of accepting my disease and treatment, I had fits and seizures. There was a day when I forgot to count, I even forgot the address of the street where my house was located. I slept, slept, slept. I slept more and more each passing day. But something I did not know strangely reconnected me to life. Now, as I write these lines, I think that ten years have passed since all these events. Who knows, maybe it was not me who was sick, it was someone else. What I was experiencing was not a fatal disease, but a persistent, troublesome cold. Who knows?..

Returning with an award from the world-famous Angoulême International Comics Festival, Brackets is a true story that its author Élodie Durand experienced and wrote and illustrated herself…