How did all this go so wrong. Am I broken? How and when did I lose myself? Can I do this? What if I never find anyone to love me?
I asked myself these questions and more as I ended an almost 25 year marriage. I was married young, a month before I turned 20 and had my first child a few months later. One can say divorce was inevitable. I married young, tried to balance college, parenting and being a wife for 6 years while we slowly grew apart and the realization that this person who said they loved me was emotionally abusive and that I had not recognized it as unusual because I was raised the same way. Constant fear, feeling unsafe and unheard was normal for me. Until I had children and I vowed to protect them from this hell that was mine. So I stayed, for them, so I could protect them however I could, until I lost myself and could not do it any longer. Was this the right decision? Hell if I know, but it’s done. I am divorced now and I am slowly healing. Taking responsibility for my part of the dissolution and keeping my children close and loved. Having eloped, I never had a wedding so I thought it would be cathartic for me to create self portraits in wedding garb to make sense of this quarter decade of my life.
The series begins with a bride stepping into the path of the marriage, unknown to her. This is represented by the fog. As she walks over towards the fog, she has some doubts, represented by the unruly veil, whipping in the wind, but she bravely and determinedly marches forward to the ledge which represents the beginning of marriage. There are some hiccups in the beginning as she tries to control her skirt whipping in the wind and she starts to experience married life; moments of contemplation, wondering if this was the right decision for her. The last two images show the bride striding away from the fog/ marriage with her taking the veil off in the last image and rolling it into a ball. The veil for me stands for the fairy tales we are told about marriage and the lies we tell ourselves in order to stay in relationships that do not serve us. Once the veil is off and the truth is seen, it cannot be unseen.
