An Ode to My Absent Whole
2024
Pigment print on Hahnemühle cotton rag, framed
55 x 35 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP
I’ve always felt adrift in an endless sea, waiting to glimpse an island that might not exist. There’s an absence—a hollow echo where something essential should be. My heart, in its wisdom or desperation, built walls to protect itself—walls that began to feel less like safety and more like a prison.
In 2020, I took a step I had avoided for decades. I saw two psychologists and was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, the quiet shadow that had shaped my life since childhood. I wrote a timeline of events—a sprawling record of pain—which was given to the police to pursue a case. But this wasn’t the healing I needed. It was perhaps a necessary reckoning, but it didn’t fill the emptiness.
My healing came from a moment I didn’t expect. After finishing the timeline, I sat on a balcony, watching the leaves on a tree dance in the wind. For the first time, I wasn’t just observing the world—I was in it. A part of its rhythm, its delicate, beautiful harmony. In that moment, I imagined myself atop a mountain, holding a glowing orb: my soul, my essence, my core. For the first time in my life, I felt whole. I wanted to share this orb, to be seen, to be held, to know what it meant to belong.
I think this yearning is universal—a search for connection, a longing to belong, a quiet hope to rebuild what’s been lost. It ties us together, weaving a fragile thread of shared vulnerability through the vast solitude of our individual lives. There’s a melancholic beauty in this—an ache that reminds us of our capacity to feel deeply, to hope against despair, and to find meaning even in the quiet spaces of our longing.
This year, the ache returned, heavier than ever. My soul felt fractured. I’m scared it’s shattered beyond repair. Writing another 40,000-word account of my life wasn’t an option this time. Instead, I turned to the fragments of my life—photos capturing moments both vivid and blurred—and pieced them together into a collage.
The collage became my way of saying, Here I am, still learning what it means to be wanted, to be lovable, to feel safe. I didn’t mean for it to be so dark. Maybe that’s just where I am right now. Or maybe I’m just not great at editing. But the process reminded me of something: belonging might not be about finding the island but about building one—piece by imperfect piece, from what we carry and what we share.
Maybe I’ll never fully understand what it means to feel whole. But I do know this: the pieces I hold, broken or imperfect, are still mine to shape. I want my soul back. I don’t want to be a shadow again.
(I know this is some melancholic bullshit, but it is how I feel at the moment.)