I started shooting because I didn’t know what else to do.
I started really as a kid, with disposable cameras. Then those little square digital cameras, then a 90s minolta I didn’t understand.
I started because I figured, this is it. I might as well go for it. After a crumpled year with toxic roommates and forming habits that started scaring me, I ended up back in the house I’d risked everything to get out of years before. The list of things I wasn’t diagnosed with yet is long but more than anything I felt stuck, smothered. I would write in spurts then freeze. I couldn’t even read — bookstores were heartbreaks.
What I didn’t realize then was that one of my OCD symptoms was like a brake. If what I set out to do wasn’t going to be perfect, I couldn’t do it. One day I struggled fiercely against it, and another day, after more self-doubt and more frustrations, I wanted to break through — and I won. It just happened, out of equally strong hope and anger.
What I’m saying is not
That art solved my problems but instead
That the strength I found through creating and through fighting back still pushes me forward.
