Shame and Punishment
Shame and Punishment is a portrait of the soul worn thin by years of hiding. It speaks of the quiet agony of masking. Folding myself into shapes that weren’t mine, simply to survive in a world that offered no refuge for my truth. I learned early that my joy was too much, my grief too strange, my way of being, wrong. The glances of others that were full of judgment and confusion, became mirrors that taught me to change and shove myself into a more ‘acceptable’ way of being. I thought the only way to be safe was to erase myself. So, I did. Although, the box I’d squeezed into couldn’t hold me forever. Cracks formed, and I spilled out, messy, loud and unfiltered. Still, I held to the feeling that I was not ‘acceptable’ or ‘digestible’ for the world to accept me. So, I patched those cracks the only way I knew how: with pain, with silence, with the suppression of everything bright and natural within me that longed to be free. This painting is the aftermath. A visual echo of what it means to live unseen, punished simply for being. It is a tribute to the self I silenced, and a raw reflection on the shame imposed by a world that punishes being different.
Shame and Punishment is a portrait of the soul worn thin by years of hiding. It speaks of the quiet agony of masking. Folding myself into shapes that weren’t mine, simply to survive in a world that offered no refuge for my truth. I learned early that my joy was too much, my grief too strange, my way of being, wrong. The glances of others that were full of judgment and confusion, became mirrors that taught me to change and shove myself into a more ‘acceptable’ way of being. I thought the only way to be safe was to erase myself. So, I did. Although, the box I’d squeezed into couldn’t hold me forever. Cracks formed, and I spilled out, messy, loud and unfiltered. Still, I held to the feeling that I was not ‘acceptable’ or ‘digestible’ for the world to accept me. So, I patched those cracks the only way I knew how: with pain, with silence, with the suppression of everything bright and natural within me that longed to be free. This painting is the aftermath. A visual echo of what it means to live unseen, punished simply for being. It is a tribute to the self I silenced, and a raw reflection on the shame imposed by a world that punishes being different.
Shame and Punishment is a portrait of the soul worn thin by years of hiding. It speaks of the quiet agony of masking. Folding myself into shapes that weren’t mine, simply to survive in a world that offered no refuge for my truth. I learned early that my joy was too much, my grief too strange, my way of being, wrong. The glances of others that were full of judgment and confusion, became mirrors that taught me to change and shove myself into a more ‘acceptable’ way of being. I thought the only way to be safe was to erase myself. So, I did. Although, the box I’d squeezed into couldn’t hold me forever. Cracks formed, and I spilled out, messy, loud and unfiltered. Still, I held to the feeling that I was not ‘acceptable’ or ‘digestible’ for the world to accept me. So, I patched those cracks the only way I knew how: with pain, with silence, with the suppression of everything bright and natural within me that longed to be free. This painting is the aftermath. A visual echo of what it means to live unseen, punished simply for being. It is a tribute to the self I silenced, and a raw reflection on the shame imposed by a world that punishes being different.