Don't Let Them Hear You

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be someone else? What about somewhere else? To be loved? To be hated? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live a different life? Of course you have, but have you ever made yourself believe it was true? Did you ever forget where you came from? Who you really are? Have you ever had days go by in an hour? What about weeks? Years? Have you ever pretended to be loved because you can’t love yourself? I have.
Growing up I didn’t have many people to talk to. I decided I didn’t need friends or people even. I decided that my imagination was the only thing I needed to keep me alive and happy. I devoted my time to dreaming of being somewhere else, someone else, who actually mattered. Immersing myself into tv shows and movies so that I could finally feel like I was important as they were. To be the main star. To live out my wildest dreams and nightmares.
Living in my world was fun, until I realized it had consumed me. My time. My personality. My perception of the world. I was drowning in an overwhelming need of constant comfort, but only having myself. I couldn’t do anything without being in a different state of mind. I told myself I would grow out of it, that it would go away. I ignored my problems and filled them with these fantasies. I can’t be hurt if I don’t let anyone in. But the truth was that I was hurting myself. I knew it wasn’t normal. But I couldn't stop. I had nothing else, no one else. I was trapped in my own head. I grew to hate myself. I isolated myself, only making it worse. I thought I was crazy. I decided to hide.
Now after over a decade of excessive dreaming I decided to face my reality. How once a comfort has melded into an addictive habit that I can’t control, realizing that my daydreams were a coping mechanism to escape the real world. My daydreams feel real, imagining every intricate detail and transitioning my consciousness in and out of these different lives and people. I wanted to understand what the limits of my mind's creativity can be. I wanted to show you where I was all those years. Not just in my room, but in my mind. “Don’t let them hear you”, I tell myself, “you don’t want them to know what you are doing, who you really are.”
In these experimental portraits I use in camera techniques to interpret my mind. To show just how loud my head is. I crave quiet, but it is the one thing I hate more than noise. I want to overcome this burden, but it is harder than you might think. I want to live in the now, not the imaginary. To have overcome my biggest fear of revealing my darkest secret is a moment I can’t hide from. Now that I have exposed myself, let me crawl back to my hole.