abuse |

I realized at a relatively young age that I didn’t see the world the way that everyone else did. There were so many things that went on in my head with one singular action. I never had anyone tell me I saw the world differently. I just always felt that way from the way my eyes saw things all the way to the way I felt things. I still feel that way today. As a child I wrote a lot–all the time. When I was seven I was published for the first time and then when I hit my teens I hit the road blocks some teens hit. I wouldn’t say all of them hit the particular ones I hit. I really hope they don’t because it wasn’t fun. They weren’t the typical ones like drugs and alcohol, even to this day I’ve never been “loaded” aka drunk out of my mind, honestly I haven’t even really been buzzed. I hit the blocks where you lose a part of who you are. What I lost? I stopped writing. You’re probably wondering why I am telling you this; it has something to do with rejection. Last Monday I told you how it inspires me, but it didn’t always. It didn’t even come from people who matter, but I still believed what they told me. I still threw away my pen and kept the way I saw things jammed inside my head. It practically drove me insane. I had to find another way to deal with the way I saw things. So I found a camera, and started taking pictures–of everything. I started experimenting with lighting–natural lighting. I, to this day, haven’t used any artificial lighting in my photographs–even portraits. I just find the sun and use it. I love photography because it enabled me to vent what I was seeing without saying anything. It allowed me to sit in the splendor of the world and just bask in it, even when I felt that the darkness could consume me.

Photography is seeing the world without the need for words.

I could sit in my silence and not be disturbed. I could bask in it without feeling completely alone–I could be me without the nasty interpretations. The thing about photography was that I didn’t doubt myself in it. I just took the camera and started taking pictures–crap cameras to boot. I refused to use photo-shop. I wanted my photographs to speak for myself when I couldn’t. That’s what I did–and it helped me to get back to the place I was supposed to be–to the writer I was supposed to be. Finally, when I told someone to take my camera and try to take the picture I did because they thought it was so easy and they couldn’t even come close, I realized that what they had been saying was wrong. I was a photographer and they hated it. They had hated my writing, too. I realized it then that they had just been trying to take me down and well, I had let them. I still let them until a year after I graduated high school–when my husband told me to flat out write something. He said something to the tune of, “You don’t like that book? Why don’t you write one that you will. You used to write and you were good at it.”

The thing about my husband was when I met him he saw everything differently, too. He saw it as musical notes and lyrics. The way we see things changes as we get older, now he sees things as cars and helicopter tricks (you should see him fly these things–he’s insane with them). The way I saw things changed as well because I got back to actually being able to see them. Then I gained the confidence to let you see them too–in both my writing and my photography. It all comes down to this: