No tags yet.
Over the course of my 21 year long venture on this planet, particularly the latter half of those years, like most people, I have tasted the bitterness of adversity from a spoon I did not raise to my own lips, and I've drank from the cup of brokenness so many times I would refuse its substance if stranded in a desert. I have endured the heartache that accompanies betrayal, Judas never seems to need a map to locate my open wounds. My front door has been beaten in, as I desperately searched for someone with a shield to save me, only to resort to baracading my face into the palms of my own small, hands for protection. I watched my own life be projected on a screen, narrated by someone elses's voice. I've been unwillingly cast into horror films, where I've played a supporting character to a protagonist who acted as a stunt double for his own antagonist. I have taken blood forced trauma to the soul, and destroyed myself trying to paint my self portrait based on the distorted expectation I swore as truth from the covers of magazines. I have fallen down without moving for months at a time, finally lifting my head only to catch the sole of yet another shoe knocking me back down again. My journey can be described as anything but synonymous to bliss. However many bullets have been fired, and regardless of how many rounds are left, I refuse to lie down forever and accept defeat, because sometimes you have to drown to appreciate the taste of air on your lips. Life is an opportunity and privilege, that being said, I refuse to define it by any other standard. Facing hardship isn't what makes someone strong, nor does enduring it until you reach its end. My strength didn't come inspite of the pain I have and still suffer, but rather, despite of it. No one chooses to be in pain, that defies the very laws of human nature that govern each individual being to have roamed this earth. Pain is not something we can control or predict, or even prevent, it is something that seeks us out, whether we are ready or not. No one chooses to fall ill, experience a heartbreak, be assaulted, abused, used, or forgotten, but eventually most of us will face at least one of these unfortunate atrocities at some point in our lives. They aren't ambiguous signs attempting to deviate us from the intended or ideal path of life, our lives have no blue prints, what happens to us every single day, is the bluprint, you've been drafting it a second at a time since the day you were born. My struggles didn't just magically turn into strength over night. Realistically speaking, they turned into a part of who I am over the time I have spent processing and developing the negatives, to better interpret the picture. I've been pasting these images together to form a collage that I've titled Chloe. The product of despair is not its inverse, but rather a byproduct of it, mixed with an assortment of other experiences. Life is a shapeless blob, struggles are a chisel, and you are the sculptor; there are an infinite amount of shapes this blob can potentially become, all depending on who you allow to handle the tools. For so long, I chose to let others carve my image based on what their lense revealed me to be, but this is dangerous, because not everyone has 20/20 vision. My statue grew many faces, there were times I myself chiseled away my face to make it reflective of my enemies description. But today, I am the artist, illustrator, author, director, and liaison as to what's permitted to be shaved away. Despite every reason I have to be resentful towards those that took advantage of my life, in shameful fear of staring their own fate in the eyes, I am grateful, because those are the people who gave me the feelings to put into words, the tragedy so that I could draw a scale to see its distance from joy, the insecurity to construct the foundation of my fortress, and to fear the darkness, leaving me no choice but to lay petrified in terror, or to stumble and stub a few toes until i found a light switch. We are all born broken, and its our own responsibility to ensure we die whole.