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I can’t remember the last time I spent hours, wasted sleep, and poured through photography blogs. I’m not entirely sure what this means. Maybe it means nothing, and I’m OK with that.
I have such a strange relationship to photography, with photography. It broke me several years ago and I’ve pretty much put down my camera ever since. I don’t think it was so much intentional as it just started feeling like a burden. A relationship I could no longer hold my heart out to, wage battle over. More practically, and less romantically, I just got really tired of carrying my camera around.
But I still remember that day, on my knees…in a bathroom. I let my photos go and I gave them over. And even when they were taken, two months later, the pain of it was hard to swallow. It’s still hard to swallow, those stolen memories.
Still, there’s something familiar there, looking into the story of a photo. Even if they are from a lens that doesn’t belong to me.
This is a relationship I don’t understand. It feels bruised and vulnerable, and I’m timid to touch it again. Nonetheless, the black and whites of Steven, Mustafah and Elliot keep me looking over at my camera, toying with the possibility.
I have had to fake OK for so long now, out of a necessity for survival, that my soul feels like it’s crumbling. Like, in moments, I feel so irretrievably wounded and confused. This blog was never intended to be an outlet for my over-dramatized, late night confessions…it was meant for displaying the healing process I was experiencing through the somewhat resurrected practice of drawing in my little, repairing world. Now, I’ve spent so many days and nights without the time or space to continue to heal, only to be broken more.
The truth is, in most moments, I have no idea how this happened. Have no idea how or where to express my loss. No clue how to communicate my confusion or no way to clear up a year (or two or five) of sometimes seemingly blur.
It has become exhausting to experience both total joy and fulfillment (even short-lived) and total heartbreak all in the same day…over and over again. It is draining to both love and hate the same things, the same people, all in one breath. (But the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy, right?) Sometimes, I wish it were apathy I could find. My mind and my soul have no answers for where to make clean breaks or where to hold closely and tightly. And it’s the moments in which I finally get space and breathe that I am shockingly reminded that I am alive…that I am existing…amongst this blur, and the realization feels too painful to acknowledge.
As usual, I’ll walk away from this blog writing and throw rocks at my intentions, my communication of these overly-dramatized statements, and wish I’d never been honest with how I was feeling, even if only in this moment. And tomorrow, I’ll love myself and the world again and forget that I even said them or wonder why I even felt this way.
My boss told me yesterday, out of total wisdom, grace and her typical genius, that you have to allow yourself to have bad days. Reminded me that some days, I get to be sad. Others, I get to be an ass…that I can lose my filter and be blunt about how I’m feeling, what I’m experiencing. She, a day earlier, remarked on how intentional I was about everything…that the “Love Wins” bumper sticker on my car, of course, likely had a story…a case for my intentionally placing it there…the same way that the same word on my wrist has a story…a purpose and a continual intentionality—an ever-evolving yet continually-solidified meaning.
But I wish, for just a brief period of time, I would allow myself the grace to be unintentional. That I could let go of everything easier.
Love deeply. Hold loosely, Brandi.
Lessons are painfully, heartbreakingly learned. Fought for and failed on. Stumbled around and succeeded in.
I fight with believing that things could and should be so much simpler. That nothing is as serious as I make it out to be. But the losses are real, and I must grieve that in order to take a step forward. I have to question whether it’s worth it to continue to fight over whether things should be what I believe is right and better, or accept them how they actually are…at least for today.
Tonight, the bottom line is that—when I’m honest—I’m confused and hurting. Angry…furious even. And taking steps back to acknowledge those things feel dangerous and exhausting. I’m afraid, however, that my avoidance of them has only prolonged them, and it’s simply time to allow myself the grace of unraveling.
With all possible sincerity, I cannot begin to describe how happy I will be to make it through this week.
Life is too fucking brutal for my taste.
“I was able to ache for her, for all that had been so impossible for her to bear, for the bad cards she had been dealt. Yet I could forgive her only about half of the time. I was struggling to learn the little things she forgot to teach me—that I was beautiful, and of value, regardless of how well or poorly I was doing in the world—and was mad that she had given me a bad owner’s manual. I saw her as foil, and believed that I had grown to be the woman I was simply because of how hard I had to work to defend myself against turning out like her.” —Anne Lammot, Grace (Eventually)
I am, even after all of this and all of these years, still having a really hard time coping with the fact that I am, nor will I ever be, perfect. In fact, it makes me angry that I even have a hard time with it.
Perfectionism and its roots get the middle finger from me today.
[video]
“Tiny miracles from
the tops of wood floors
and all she wanted was to finish
what was started over
three years ago.
Beauty crushed her then
but it’s pain now
and she can’t seem to tell
the difference any more.
Listens to a circus
in her head,
washes her showers
away with tears,
and clings to a single promise.
Sits at the foot of the door
and wonders
what it will take
to open.
To be open.”
I fear that reading patriarchy/feminist blogs at 1am on a Friday night/Saturday morning signal *both* my growing need for thought-provoking discussion now lacking in my life since (oh-so-recently) graduating AND my declining chances at ever finding a man who understands me and likes me anyway.
Wait…does saying the latter actually revoke my feminist card? :)