Luke warm water splashes against the porcelain walls as my hand dances around the current. Submerged underwater, I hear glasses clinking in celebration, smell the holiday feast and feel the embrace of a lovers arm. When I resurface I’m hit with a contrasting reality. These moments have been happening more frequently. I ready myself for the day and walk hurriedly out the bedroom; floorboards creak with each step; the resounding echoes remind me that I am, in fact, alone. Take another pill.
I feel like an intruder in this world. This house, like myself, is a shell of what once was. My memories were once as picturesque as the photos that lined these walls. Smiling for the camera is a fools troupe of keeping these moments enshrouded in pleasantries but my heart discerns the truth. That woman isn’t home any more. Take another drink.
Yet, to shield yourself from the reality of pain is to exclude an entire experience of life. Life is joy and pain. Through attempts to block off this balance one can coil into a world of their own mind, disappear into a false reality. Living life behind a deadlocked door. Take another pill.
Through the years this home became the world I created for myself. My emotional bunker, my safe space. The beauty and mystique may be illuminating, but the void can be equally obscure. These thoughts and contradictions are consistently winding in a continuous and widening curve; my spiral.
S P I R A L is a mixed media series conceived and shot by Jenna Jones inside the Ablin House built by Frank Lloyd Wright. The series was inspired by the emotional perils women face from a world that attempts to construct their experiences for them. We are more than our trauma but it takes shared experience and discussion to help us unbend.
Written by Joseph Pizzi
S P I R A L
A Series by Jenna Jones