gray sky
lost faces
empty path
looking up
river legs
holes
closer
roadkill
distorted
My adolescence started in the summer of 2010 when I was nine years old. I lived in a double-wide, single-story, trailer-style house with my mother, father, younger brother, and recently born youngest brother. The house was situated on 20 acres of forest, fields, and wetlands, which I spent my days running around on. I didn’t go to school. From 2010 to 2013, I learned a lot about what it meant to be on my own, and how one passes the time being a kid making fun of anything and everything.
At the same time that I was discovering much of the joy of life, I was also experiencing the side effects of my parents’ ongoing adversarial relationship as it rapidly approached divorce. They were usually pretty good at keeping things away from us kids, though they couldn’t hide the holes in the wall, broken coffee mugs, screaming matches, or nights when my dad was kicked out of the house. I can still remember the taillights of his blue Toyota pickup disappearing down our long gravel driveway.
The more I poke at my memories, the more holes in the happiness begin to appear, often inexplicably. I can remember days of convincing myself I had contracted some chronic disease and staying in bed, unable to figure out the real reason why I didn’t want to get up. “I’m just tired,” I told my parents as everyone went out to spend the day on the river. I felt awful but didn’t know why or how to explain it.
This is something I’ve never addressed directly, never sought to showcase nor spotlight, even amongst those closest to me. Opening up about my extensive relationship with this repeatedly indescribable feeling has always been a challenge. I am still working on it to this day. I’m not sure where it came from, though I know it’s here now. It’s something that I live with. This feeling that walks around with me is not always noticeable yet always present. While I have undoubtedly gotten better and naming and processing this feeling when it arises, there are still days when I find it hard to get out of bed. My girlfriend calls them “pudding days” because of how it feels to walk through them. Their frequency fluctuates anywhere from once a month to twice a week.
This project is meant to be a visual representation of that feeling when it arises, of how it feels to have moments when I am unable to do anything other than lay in bed. While some days allow for that, I, of course, live a life in which I can’t do that all the time. I have responsibilities and the like. Ergo, this isn’t a showcase of myself in bed but rather a collection of photos that attempt to communicate this feeling. I also want to include some works that demonstrate the solace that I sometimes find when I’m sitting through ‘it.’ My hope is that people who have experienced similar feelings can find solidarity in this work, though I must admit that much of my reason for working with this concept is slightly selfish. It is more of a personal catharsis and process than anything else. However, I still have the hope that others can gain something from it.
This work was created over six weeks in the spring of 2022 and is mostly comprised of photos taken during three excursions around Oberlin, OH. With the images containing no people (or images of people), I wanted to capture a sense of mundanity and emptiness or numbness. Specifically, the image of two park benches with a cloudy sky was an attempt to evoke a blue feeling or a sense of dismal grayness. The highlight of the people-less photos is that of the roadkill squirrel, for which this project is named. This photo is a symbolization of this feeling at its darkest; an utter obliteration of depression and self-loathing.
The photos with people in them (the flier among dead leaves, the blurry self-portrait, and river legs) were printed smaller than all the other photos, with large white borders. This was meant to convey a sense of smallness and illustrate how this feeling often makes me experience intense isolation from those around me, even if I am with them. Additionally, my figure in the self-portrait is intentionally blurred out, while the background is in clear focus. This was done in order to demonstrate how disconnected I feel during times like this. The photo of legs at the river was intended to represent a solid aspect of my life. It is a moment in the isolation where I feel a sense of solace.