The (formerly) depressed artist.

I was watching a movie called Where’d You Go Bernadette which is about an architect who after a big artistic failure quit making art. The film touches on basically, the potential for an artist to become a menace to society when they aren’t making art. I, however, believe the opposite is true. The character “Bernadette” has a line which is “I just need you to know how hard it is for me sometimes… The banality of life” if I remember correctly. It made me cry and I remembered a diary entry I wrote which is the following (an excerpt): 

7 August 2023 at 0:04. 

“Feels like a rock on my chest and a cage around my heart, which I’m too terrified to set free—a caged bird, terrified of being shot down by those closest to them for being different. Meanwhile, I’m adrift, my voice constantly getting lost in the vast sea of banality”

Looking back now and thinking about how I was feeling then, I now see I was depressed or was at least showing the beginning of what I soon came to realize was depression. It, however, only hit me until a few months after I came back from studying film in Mexico City and realized that after two months of being back in my hometown, I hadn’t picked up any of my cameras once; a terrifying realization. 

You see, after my father passed away, photography—street photography, in particular, became a conduit for my self-expression and a need rather than just a hobby, that’s when I fell utterly in love with it. So imagine my shock and dismay when I suddenly realized, I was going through a hard time (like I was when my father passed) but had no interest in what I thought was my outlet. So, on to therapy, I went. 

After a long therapy session where I was made to pretend a cushion was a person I had to unload my feelings onto and finally being told what was wrong with me, I left therapy feeling lighter because I now knew why I was feeling the way I was feeling. At the time, my room was full of clutter, I would barely want to get out of bed, had no interest in seeing anyone, let alone talking to anyone and photography had fallen to the wayside as I came to realize. 

A few weeks after that therapy session I saw a glimmer of hope about which I wrote in my diary: 

“I was in the shower, going through the motions when I noticed these beautiful rays of sunshine that were peaking through the palm tree outside and into the warm bathroom. They were so incandescently beautiful I immediately stopped what I was doing, to stare at them and how the water vapor went through the light and created what resembled a sort of rain of stars, a galaxy, spinning, ever so alive. I put my hand through the light and the motion made all these specs move so fast, I let out a breath in awe and I saw it react to my presence again. I suddenly looked at my hand moving through the light and the specks of vapor and I realized, I am alive. I burst into tears at that moment, for I had never been so ever present in so long.”

I’m writing this a few months after said therapy session and subsequent diary entry and I now have more clarity than ever before on what I was going through– my self-esteem had never been so low before in my life. I’ve always struggled with self-image, never really feeling satisfied with the way I looked, and with that sentiment always being echoed or confirmed rather, by the people in my life and their comments about my body, I never really ever thought I could ever come to like, let alone love myself which is why I think I overcompensated with trying to be good, people please in every way I can because my body can’t. I would get so mad at them for saying these things and so hurt, sometimes thinking of all the good things they had given me to try and counter the bad wasn’t enough. I, at times, would think to become anorexic, so they could get the skinny girl they always wanted but not in the way they would have wanted me to get there, but despite attempts, I was never able to sustain it. It's so sad, isn't it? They hurt me, so I tried to hurt them by hurting myself.

Living in Mexico City was so incredible and yet so horrible all at once. I was growing as an artist, learning from people whose films I’d seen at the theater, but emotionally, I was going through hell. And, after coming back here I realized I had gotten stranged from myself and my emotions so as to try and not lose it or avoid getting more hurt. A week or so after the latter diary entry something happened in my brain and ideas began flowing again and so “Resurgencias” was born. I had never delved as deep as I have in portraiture as I have with this project but the idea came and I, being the artist I am had to be loyal to it. You know that Taylor Swift lyric (of course I had to bring her up) “hell was the journey but it brought me heaven”? Perhaps not heaven, but right now, I can tell I’m finally on my way up more committed than ever to stop being a menace to myself and instead be a menace to society. 

“Your role as an artist is not to be polite, it’s to provoke” - Cate Blanchett.