What I made when I lost my mind.

I was 23 when I had my first imaginary friend. Their name was Gabagool.

This story begins with a phone call that came in May. One of those calls that makes your stomach flip, your heart sprint, and your brain scream. The voice on the other end presented the opportunity to live and work in “remote Antarctica,” known in the Antarctic biz as “the field.” With a frothing mouth I said yes as they barely finished the sentence. The place I would be, specifically called Marble Point. In bureaucratic terms, it's a helicopter refueling facility. An outpost to support both the helicopters and the pilots when they would be working in the nearby, science-filled Dry Valleys. In simple Sarah terms, it is the coolest gas station in the world, and I got to be the fuelie, the pump goblin, the diesel duchess, whatever you want to call it. I got to live on the edge of the world and fuel helicopters. Awesome. Can you believe they even paid me to do this? Insane.

Jokes aside, there was just one kicker to this whole thing. It was just going to be me and one other woman. A stranger. Alone. For five months. With limited outer communication. Fifty miles from the nearest human.

shivers down the spine

After agreeing to this stint, the reality of it sort of started to kick in, sort of. Yes, I knew it might be tough. Yes, I knew there was the chance of becoming lonely. And yes, I knew there was a strong chance of losing my mind. But also, how could you be graced with such a wonderful, weird and exciting opportunity and have the AUDACITY to say no?! On the outside, I assume it could look like a form of finding oneself but without the supplements of ayahuasca. Sure, yeah, I’m sure you could “find yourself” through this, but that wasn't really the point. Finding yourself? Seems sort of cliché to me, a term used too much. The thought of finding myself through this didn’t really pass my mind—my beef with that term can come on a different day. It wasn't about finding myself, it was about why the hell not? To spit in the face of fear!

So I went. I packed up, kissed the normal world goodbye, and landed in the middle of nowhere. The kind of nowhere that doesn’t care who you are. The kind of nowhere that will chew up your routine and make you start from scratch. The silence is different there. It’s thicker. It has presence. And that silence, it stretches out in front of you like a road with no end.

Cut to November. A month into the job. Hey! Twenty percent done, and I’ve only reached the kind of crazy that involves daydreaming up an imaginary friend. Enter: Gabagool.

The very first Gabagool.

Ah, yes, Gabagool. Don’t forget the name. I woke up from a deep sleep one night with the name copy and pasting, copy and pasting, copy and pasting itself in the folds of my brain. It stuck like a mosquito in a spider web. Before work for the day had started, I took old shelf paint and mixed it with water in a mason jar, to pour it out on a piece of watercolor paper and used my paintbrush to pull the liquid into the shape of a beautifully ugly deformed skeleton. Gabagool was ugly. Is ugly. A deep red skin tone with hips and ribs that jut out. A kind of figure that would not survive a Pixar pitch. A deformed skeleton, uneven limbs, a slightly moldy aura. Big, white, beady eyes that look into your soul more than a proper dose of psilocybin.

Immediately, I was in love. The love came from a mix of feelings, from having a friend in this alone place, and a sense of proudness in creating and daydreaming in an environment so alone. It was a slap in the face and a big middle finger to the idea that isolation has to be grim and lonely. Attack that idea with wit, spite, and self-preservation. Using imagination as resistance and creation as survival.

Gabagool started to run my life. Every thought, every action was related and thought back to them. When I ran, Gabagool ran next to me, imagining how their lanky form would move over the rocks, how their limbs would flail when taking big jumps. When I painted, I held my brush in the way Gabagool would hold their brush. Loosely, scrappily, confidently. When I slept, Gabagool entered my dreams, introducing new ideas and perspectives I’d have the pleasure of waking up to.

I only saw one other real-life person every day. Your mind starts to wander, you get tired of talking to yourself, so you make someone new. You make someone new and you are infatuated and taken over by this new thing in the same world. It is like a new relationship. Gabagool and I were in our honeymoon phase in the field. It was a way to create a constant in a world I could not control.

A controlled environment of going crazy. An environment I set up for myself through a watercolor figure to have something to spiral into. The idea of going crazy, of losing your mind is seen with a negative outlook. Perhaps in some context, but it can also be the most pure form of human. Everyday amenities are stripped away, and you are left with nothing but yourself. Yourself and your thoughts. You are in full control of creating the world that your eyes want to see, and how you want to interact with the world around you. In this case, I chose Gabagool. Gabagool was my spiral. Instead of spiraling into chaos, sadness or loneliness when being alone for five months, I created. Sure, I may have lost my mind a tiny bit, but don’t you think it would be a little bit more suspicious to not lose your mind just a little bit in such isolation?

Gabagool soon became less a figment of my imagination and sketchbook, and more my heart and soul and self poured out onto a piece of paper, a piece of paper that was like my way of saying hello to the outside world. Gabagool was sent everywhere, from the South Pole to Alaska to Greenland to Minnesota. It got to the point that Gabagool was associated with me, or maybe more so I was associated with Gabagool?

At some point, it wasn’t just about having a companion anymore. It was about having a story to share. Something to send out beyond the ice and wind. A way to say, "Hey, I made this. I made it in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but paint and my brain."

The thing about being far away for so long is that the outside world doesn’t forget you—but it kind of keeps going without you. Everyone’s living their lives, doing their routines. You get maybe one short call a week, and that’s if the satellites feel like cooperating. So Gabagool became another way to say hi. To say: I’m still here. I made something. Just thought I’d share.

In the end, Gabagool wasn’t just a weird painting or a coping mechanism—it was proof that something beautiful, absurd, and defiantly alive can grow in the cracks of isolation. When stripped of noise, stripped of people, stripped of comfort, the mind doesn’t shut down—it builds. It scrambles to create something, anything, to reflect back at itself. Gabagool was that reflection. A rebellion in pigment and paper. A lifeline disguised as a skeleton. A reminder that losing your mind doesn’t have to mean breaking—it can mean building a new version of yourself, crooked and bright and alive. Creativity like that doesn’t come from comfort. It comes from staring at a white wall until your brain demands color.