Becoming Alchemy

I used to think if the abyss called,

she’d swallow your voice.

She was a dark unknown emptiness.

She wasn’t empty, she was full.

And part of me.

And we were full of love and rage,

pain and ecstasy, and all the things in between.

But I realized I had become the abyss.

At least in the ways that

I understood her to be.

I waded through for a decade -

embracing the darkness

to find the light.

Now I pray to her darkness

– the one that found mine,

and give thanks for returning my voice.

This book is a beginning and end

I began this work 10 years ago, 11 years after I was drugged, raped by two men, and left in a tent to piece together what had happened. I did everything in my power to forget and move on. The harder I tried to forget, the more I remembered. I waded through that PTSD/depression cycle for a decade. I couldn’t go back to the place where it began but little by little I found comfort in nature’s chaos and healing embrace. I had to confront what I had lost and decide what I would reclaim, leave behind, receive, and transmute.

The images are divided into 3 chapters and broken up by text. The first is the aftermath: tumultuous images laden with pain, hiding from the audience, contrasting the body with the chaos of nature. The second section is (mis)connection: the desire to form a bond but still not getting it. The final piece is the journey of healing. Emerging, climbing, basking in the beauty of bodily agency and growth.

or perhaps this book is the end and a new beginning.