For twenty-six years, I was hiding. I let the world see only half of me. I didn’t want anyone to know how weak and vulnerable I was at my core, so I would reveal only what I wanted them to see. Behind the mask, I was deeply sensitive and fragile. My heart had been broken upon birth and it proceeded to break many times over as I grew.
Certain people throughout my school life could sense that I was wearing a mask, and they would do all that they could to tear it off so that I would stand exposed in all my fragility and vulnerability. I felt lost and lonely around such people for so many years. None of my friends truly knew me. How could they when I didn’t really know myself? I had not allowed myself to explore the depths of my own ocean, and I paddled around at the shore trying desperately to be noticed by loungers on the beach.
I sometimes feel a little sad that I never found an outlet for the pain of my many heartbreaks as a child. I find myself wondering what further pain I might have avoided had I understood the powers of art back in my youth. Pain, however, as I have now learnt firsthand, is necessary training as we aim to become warriors of the light, and we find our own means to deal with it when the time is right.
It has now been six years since I picked up a camera and began creating for the first time to deal with my pain. To say that my life has changed would be an understatement.
It is as though the camera has given my deeper self a voice. That part of me that, for as long as my memory serves, has been so desperate to be seen and heard is now making himself known to the world. No longer do I feel as though I am having to act as a means of gaining acceptance and approval from the people around me. No longer do I need to hide the rawest and most beautiful parts of myself. I seek not for anything from anyone because I have everything that I will ever need here within. Instead of waving my arms, desperately trying to be seen, I have been swimming alone, choosing instead to see myself, and now, paradoxically, the world appears to be noticing.
My work stands as a beacon in the icy landscape at dawn, and those who recognise truth have been finding their way to me and warming their hands and hearts on my flame. For other people, when looking at my photographs, they might see only pretty photographs of trees in mist. What isn’t evident immediately are the depths to which I have been swimming to find these parts of myself that have made creativity possible.
For six years now, I have been healing my wounds and taking tentative footsteps from behind the stage curtain, revealing my true self as the fragile and wounded being that I am. This creative journey has forced me to strip back the layers of masks that I spent the first chapter of my life wearing as a means to survive this often cruel and volatile world.
My trust with this world is being rebuilt with every click of my cameras’ shutter, and with each photograph that I create, I get a step closer to reconstructing the bridge that was severed between my inner world and the outer world during my broken youth.
The more that I open my heart to the world, the more the world opens to me. No longer do I feel the need to hide. No longer am I ashamed of my wounds. I wear them now as a badge of honour. It is because of my wounds that I am strong. My broken heart is on display like a piece of Japanese kintsugi, and I welcome visitors from all walks of life to admire my exhibition piece.
This has been a truly beautiful process. In going out to get lost in the natural world, I have found myself, and now, six years on, I somehow find that Self in a position to help others with their own journey’s of self-discovery. Now that I am here, I can’t help but beg the question, ‘what else might be possible in this life of mine?’