"I was here for a moment and then I was gone..."

“There’s a man outside the window.”, my mind said.

“There’s no one outside this window.”, my mind said.

See a face, two eyes, a mouth staring back at me

as I sat crunched up at the corner of my sofa in fear, weeping.

What happens if I sleep? If I move? Was this person really there?

The clock hand moved.

12 am to 6 am.

Tick tock tick tock

“There’s no one outside my window now.”

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"I was here for a moment and then I was gone” is a visual diary in which I try to capture the essence of my struggles through many nights of loneliness and the derailment of my state of mind that began in 2013.

This body of work comes from a space of struggle and the need for reconciliation between the reality of my life at the age of 24 and the romantic notion of what I thought my life was supposed to be. I was struggling with my failed relationships and taking care of a senior family member during which my career took a backseat. At the same time, I was emotionally drained and filled with anxiety due to the constant worry for a suicidal friend. I was not equipped to handle the situation mentally. I was in a fog and though it seemed like I had apparent support, in reality, I was falling apart. There was the guilt of shifting my grandmother’s responsibility to my parents who were living in another country and the emotional burden of running away from a friendship.

There were nights of nightmares that didn't exist and days of letting pass opportunities that did. The one thing that kept me together was my making of photographs of my environment and the process of photographing, which was not constructed, but very responsive. And I responded to those moments without questioning its aesthetic value as an image. These photographs are reflective of what transpired and how I healed during the process.