Rope's Length
Taken in Pittsburgh, PA November 2019.
“I actually feel like I photograph terribly and I’m the only person that can photograph me as myself. It’s something I feel really private about. But then I print them, which is such a contradiction! I suppose I like attention but only on my own terms. I don’t like the idea of having attention that was highly controlled. It’s a way of showing myself to myself. Only through these pictures do I get to really see what I actually look like. Because it’s so skewed when you look in a mirror.”
I’ve always been one who has tried to blend in the background, to not be the center of attention. Sometimes I think I want it—people adorning me, talking about me, looking at me. But when I get close to it, I immediately want to retreat into a dark cave and wait for the commotion to end. I don’t know how to take a compliment, I don’t know how to post a selfie without feeling as if I’m another Leftist Twitter Attention Seeker, or otherwise appear conceited and vain. The thought of it makes me sick, but weirdly enough I host a podcast now and part of my job is advertising myself. Sure, it’s a political podcast with an emphasis on examining pop culture so I can keep myself out of the conversation for the most part, but you also have to be personal otherwise who would be able to connect to what you are talking about? That’s the part that trips me up—how much of myself do I keep for myself and how much of myself do I excise and put on display for people to gawk at?
I barely shared my photography Instagram page with good friends and it’s been running for two years now. There was something fear inducing about sharing my artwork with people who actually know me, the opinions I care about the most. My therapist said my issue with vulnerability makes me fearful of being in the spotlight, which clicked with me. The less people know about me, the more I can prevent from being open with someone. For a long time I thought talking about all of your past traumas outright was vulnerability. I have only recently learned that it’s just oversharing, which is just another tactic to avoid connection.
I guess that’s why the podcast is nice. My friends are aware of it, but are nice enough to not talk about it with me. Occasionally they ask what I’m working on or how it’s going but otherwise we don’t spend a whole lot of time discussing how the sausage is made. I honestly have no idea who listens to it, but people do listen to it from what I see in the statistics. It gives me the freedom to be honest because I know people are listening, but they’re the equivalent of a blank face in a sea of anonymity. I don’t have that gnawing feeling that people I know and care about are listening to every episode. And if they do, they are kind to never talk to me about it.
With that comes the other part of the sword—the feeling of being invisible. I have felt like a piece of the wallpaper paste on a dingy apartment wall recently where I feel unacknowledged or just downright ignored. As if I am purposely being ignored or avoided. Did I make people mad? Am I annoying? Do I even exist? It hurts and I spend countless hours retracing old conversations, rehashing past comments, and reflecting on past actions. Did I bring the invisibility on to myself? In my effort to keep people within arm’s length I ended up just pushing people away entirely to the other side of the world?
In a bid to raise my own voice, I wonder if I am just talking to myself sometimes. If the world I have created and enveloped myself in is just another lonely existence I have made for myself.