I used to think that I was happy on my own. I have been repetitively told the story that I am
enough and that I don’t need others to be happy. I have also been hopping from one city to
the other for the last five years, and hence I became used to having ephemerous friends,
situationships, and the feeling that I belong everywhere and nowhere. I believed the story
that I was told and decided that I could be self-sufficient.
But of course, that doesn’t work that way so easily. I rather became dependent on the
dopamine and thrill of meeting random, interesting, and sometimes sexy guys for brief and
impersonal encounters. I enjoyed those, but they had essentially begun to replace genuine
and meaningful human connections. I was even afraid to open myself to possible friendships
and acquaintances.
Then, I met someone special, and I shifted apart from that vicious circle. He made me realise
that I actually crave deep relations, and that I had been lying to myself because I’d been too
afraid to be vulnerable to others.
Today, this significant other has left, and I am faced with my instinct to go back to my shelf.
This is obviously the easiest path. But at the same time, I also realise that I am actually afraid
to be alone.
I suppose that is, to some extent, what is reflected in these pictures: you can see my journey
inward, trying to find a connection with a stranger that I will probably never see again. I
hope you can see the desire in my eyes to be taken, to be used and misused, and mostly to
be seen. Do you see it there?
My tale is about solitude, but it is also about how we attempt to fill in the gaps that our
emotional needs have, trying to deal with our loneliness and our desire to connect to
something bigger than us.
