noli me tangere

do not touch me

TW: SA, mental health, child abuse/incest, nudity, abuse

spring 2017

shot on canon ftb-ql, ilford hp5 plus 35mm film

In the winter of 2015, I came out to my Southern Baptist parents. At this point, I was already the problem child. Didn’t go to church, didn’t believe in god, had tattoos, took weird naked photos in art school. Being gay was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

After two months of not hearing from my family, my parents arrived in Savannah, GA, packing a lot of religious heat. I was to seek help, counseling, because I’d apparently been raped as a child and this is why I was gay. I needed god, and I needed to pray the gay away.

After a tense week with them in town, learning that a close family member had sexually abused his sister for fourteen years as they were growing up together, I found my own therapist. I needed answers. I always knew something had happened as a child, and I wanted to know just what that was.

What unfolded was more than I bargained for.

I began EMDR twice a week, two hours at a time.

During this process, a door to the bleakest darkness swung wide open. Images of a lifetime I didn’t understand flooded my mind. I couldn’t escape them.

Months passed while I tried to run away from all that was ripping open inside of me. I moved to France. I moved to New Jersey. I moved back to Savannah. All the pain and fear and suffering turned into a furious monster that clawed its way out of my skin.

One day, while in the darkroom, my headphones started buzzing back and forth to the music in my ears. I unintentionally dropped into an EMDR state in the pitch darkness. I could feel a presence in the room with me. I was terrified and didn’t know what was happening.

Ancient, blurry images made a home of my mind. The only thing I knew to do was bring them into the physical, hoping they’d leave.

It wasn’t until almost a decade later that I understood what was happening. I was seeing events from a past life. Events that mirrored a similar event in my early childhood.

It was through the process of literal alchemy in which I transmuted long-lived monsters.