I remember being a little girl playing outside in the recluse of my backyard. I have always been a strange, lonely girl and I have always felt a certain wanting inside of me, as if I was longing for something else, somewhere else, something extraordinary.
I remember that even as a child, I felt a feeling of distance inside of me. It was a familiar feeling, too. I knew, even at this young and tender age, that I had experienced trauma, and I had experienced abuse, and I didn’t know quite what that meant, or what all of the feelings and emotions stirring inside of me meant, either.
I remember that although I was strange and lonely, I would always find friends in the unlikeliest of places. I caught butterflies and daddy-long-legs and after my initial excitement and glee, I would hold them in my hand and examine them, these tiny living gifts. I remember looking at how intricately and delicately they were constructed. I recall marveling at how a God could create such a tiny, beautiful creature and then entrust that creature into my care, into the palm of my hand. It seemed kind of cruel to me, that this God knew full well that I could destroy that little life if I so chose, yet he didn’t do anything to prevent me from doing so.
I stared at the bug, studying its movements. I felt comfortable with this tiny life crawling about in my hand, trusting me completely. I took comfort in the fact that I could spend the day playing with my new friend, and it wouldn’t judge me or call me weird or think of me as strange because I didn’t have any other friends to play with.
I suppose that even then I felt like the butterflies and the spiders. We held a sort of kinship in my mind. I suppose that I felt it cruel that God placed me in the palm of his hand, watching me wriggle around, slightly amused with me, knowing full well that he could smite me in an instant if he so chose. I often wonder if he ever wanted to. He never did. Instead he just watched me.
These thoughts left me with a feeling of vulnerability, and even when I was young I knew what vulnerability felt like. I knew that one day all this pain would amount to something. Maybe something tragic, maybe something beautiful. Something.
…
On the particular day that this photograph was taken, I had my good friend Andrew over. It had been a while since I had seen him, and we spend the initial few hours catching up like we always do. I can guarantee that one or both of us is almost always feeling melancholy, and this day was no different. (True friends always understand.)
I found myself in a particularly heartfelt, wistful mood after our chat. I told my friend that I’d like to take some pictures, and he told me that he’d like to take some pictures of me. We left the kitchen and proceeded to my backyard. Mind you, this is the same backyard in which I grew up in, the same backyard in which I laughed and cried countless times in my life. The same backyard in which my happiness lifted me and in which my loneliness consumed me. This truth was well on my mind. By this time, it was late afternoon, early evening. The sun was low in the sky, which filled the air with a lovely orange hue.
There’s something about orange-colored days.
The same heartfelt, wistfulness that I experienced that day is reflected in my eyes here. I think for an instant, I caught a glimpse of myself as a little girl playing in my backyard.
I present to you this photograph, beautiful within its vulnerability or vulnerable within its beauty. I really like it. I hope that you do, too.
Photography by Andrew P Gibson
featuring Miss Leanna Banana
(via leannabanana.com & bleedingfragments)
