good things come to those who wait.
Looking back to look forward, forward looking back.
In the end.
It is just us, we are singular. Even with others, it still remains, me alone.
I am the one I was given.
God gave me, me.
I can only look through my lens, I can only feel my feeling of the wind, taste food, rain on my skin. In the words of the greatest girl song ever written
“Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten, yeah” - Natasha Bedingfeild, Unwritten.
The echo of the times I have screamed this song out of car window and danced to it at sleep overs, is only now hitting my adult heart. Maturity is the candy I keep under my pillow, to nibble on throughout the night. We can age like fine wine. Yet just as wine is an acquired taste so is looking fondly on aging.
I am the only one I have authority over, control over. Responsibility is sweet honey to wise lips.
Self-control is a sigh of relief.
Is knowing yourself, finding yourself a luxury or a requirement to a happy life?
Do you need to define yourself before you can be yourself?
While I am the only one I have, this the only body I have, she too will leave me. She will break, decompose fade into nothing. Abilities will will lessen, memories forgotten, and death an eventual calling.
When she dies who will I have then?
I am left with the one who knew me before I knew me. Left with the one who set my life into course, who knitted me in my mothers womb. Left with the one who designed my body, who cultivated my mind, who set my spirit upon me.
As I decompose throughout my life, I am left with the one who created life. Who laid down the foundation for existence. Left with the one who set into motion my autonomy, left with the one who saved me from my autonomy.
There is an art to claiming yourself, holding authority over you. There is also an intoxication of self obsession. It seems our society hungers for identity for definitions explanations. Perhaps a long pondering on why, is healthy for us all.
This is me, I lie in this portrait, meaning hidden in the details. There was no grand plan, no great vision I saw. I simply started, and waited. It took me a year to complete this self-portrait. I started in 2019 and finished late 2020. I wanted each part of it to truly hold me. The beauty is, parts of this have already gone, faded, healed, been replaced. Parts have stayed, deepened and refined. There is a mystery to self-portraits that I love. It is a therapeutic practice. Honesty with the self carves honesty with others. I hold no words here only the images, I hold no definitions over myself, only stories.
