I still don’t know if it is right after all, did I keep the truth and the fear in balance? I don’t know, but I felt proud writing it. I have always loved writing but I didn’t know much of how to do it until the last few months. It was always too personal to me and so I abstracted myself. There must be a million ways we abstract our clarity and each one has led me to becoming more and more and more distant from the sharpness I needed to bring to my writing, to my work as a portrait photographer, to the way I navigate hard heavy things that I don’t know how to do.
Here is what I wrote:
The relationship was so obviously mismatched that I didn’t think I needed to set boundaries for it. That’s how easy this shit always starts and then seven months later you’ve settled.
This photo was taken in 2017 on the day I decided I was going to break up with him. Three months and tries later I broke it off and blocked the number.
I’m not going to tidy this story up.
I’m not going to be flippant with the pain I had to feel by living this shitty story. I won’t soften it with, “and then I met Matthew” or lighten it up with fake laughter comforts, “ha ha, I was so blind”. Not a chance. That would be too easy and I’m not going to do easy to the woman in this photo, or the woman writing this post, or the women reading it.
The stupid truth is that I settled because it was easy.
Fuck easy.
Easy will rob you just like it robbed me. Easy is reflexive, easy is purposeless. Easy is a boy. Easy is a check in the bank and a boss you can blame. Easy is a slippery silent backslide to your own made-up bullshit. Easy neither asks nor makes anything of us, or for us. Easy will never scare you or excite you. Easy isn’t as bargain it’s a burden, it’s slavery. You deserve better and so did I.
This photo was taken by my friend Maddie Beeton