Liberation
Growing up in a home with mentally ill parents, where substance abuse, emotional abuse, and domestic abuse were present, you learn that the best way to stay out of the line of fire is to blend into the background. To meld with the habitat around you like a moth, matching it's stony, cold, unforgiving environment. Watching and waiting for the right time to move about, careful not to get snatched up in a frenzy. My Mother suffering from depression, was asleep every night by 6 or 7. The house was kept dark, in the isolation of our home my brother, sister and I, were left to our own devices. To provide ourselves with comfort and entertainment, expected to put ourselves to bed by 9 O'clock every night. Lacking maternal connection, in these dark evenings, with the TV playing old re-runs of the Brady Bunch and I Dream of Genie in the background, I felt loneliness. As an adult in the midst of a dark house, I still feel loneliness creep over me, like the fiery red blooms of Bougainv