Your hands in mine

I often feel heavy. Like there’s a weight in my chest that keeps me from floating. As a child, I often felt like there must be something more, like something was missing. I didn’t have the words to describe it then, but I can identify it now: a constant gut-wrenching urge for connection and understanding that has followed me into a life designed to isolate. The deceptions of this world fuel separation and turn me inward. Where am I present? If the assumption is that all can deceive, then where is my truth? Where am I real?

I am real when I’m alone, I am real when I feel. I feel a lot, and often not at all. What is real happens inside a home, my home. What is real grows on trees and is in the air I breathe. I am mirroring and masking the self, a dance between wanting to be seen and wanting to remain invisible. Documenting the tension between exposure and disappearance, I explore the line where absence feels present and visibility feels unsafe. Drawing connections between the women in my family, I observe the traces of where and who I came from, patterns of love languages, and the reflection of pain passed down from those before me.