You'll notice that this blog is (or rather will be since this is just the beginning) full of self portraits of my sister. Before "selfies" became a thing, my sister was capturing herself through the lens of an actual camera. She got out as much as she could but a lot of the time she would spend in her room.
Her own sanctuary.
Or perhaps her hell.
Maybe both.
She would do her make up and hair and dress up and take pictures of herself. I wonder if that was perhaps when she felt the most beautiful? By herself.
This was a time that social media wasn't really around.
She never posted them.
She kept them hidden and it wasn't until she was gone that I had found them to share with the world.
I wonder now if I'm doing the right thing?
If they were meant to stay hidden?
I've often thought that- Am I doing the right thing.
I hope I am.
Her story, her pictures, her journey are all worth telling.
It was beautiful and tragic.
But it happened.
It was her truth.
It was my truth.
It's a story that I hope will help inform, help others understand, help others know that they aren't alone.
Behind her camera, beautiful red lips and perfect face, she felt alone.
Mental Illnesses do that.
They try to capture your sanity, they force you to feel alone.
To feel different.
You are NOT alone.
Not when, statistically speaking, 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness each year and 1 in 6 for youth aged 6-17 (www.nami.org).
You are NOT alone.
What can we do to escape that feeling.
Loneliness is a deep, deep spot in your soul that is hard to pull out of.
Sometimes it's hard to even find.
Sometimes you get stuck there.
Within yourself.
It is dark. It captures. It denies and it surrounds your happiness with illusions.
Loneliness has layers.
The more we talk about it, the more the layers are broken down.
Let's talk about it.
Let's talk about stigma and let's talk about how beautiful it is to be different
because
aren't we all different?
Not ONE of us the same.
7 billion people in the world, not one alike so whether you feel normal or on the outside, we can't escape that fact that every single one of us is different.
I guess it's something we all have in common.
right?
Our commonality is that we are all different.
It's absolutely beautiful.
