Pinned in Place

..Y me quede en mi sitio como Mariposa de museo... Esta situación nos tomó a todos por sorpresa, en mi caso siento que me dejó en pausa en pleno vuelo. Tenía muchos ánimos de trabajar, viajar y crear; y de repente todo paro.
Me siento como de esas mariposas de museo, esperando algún visitante para ver pedacitos de la vida pasar frente a mi. “Pinned in place” con alas de colores vibrantes pero sin poder volar y vivir en el mundo.
Espero poder quitarme estos alfileres de encima pronto para poder abrazar a los que amo, trabajar con más ganas que nunca y vivir cada momento como si fuera el último.
Gracias @olga.piedrahita y @daniellelafaurie por invitarme a participar de la iniciativa #editorialdomestica #modaimaginada que me ha permitido dejar mi imaginación volar libre dentro de mi casa.
Y gracias a @neramniminde y @amcamelovega por permitirme convertirlas en mis muñecas de papel y jugar un rato.

TRICH

What do you do when you are stressed?

Do you eat? Cry? Get moody? Clean? Go to the gym?

For Anna Victoria Moore, a 20 year old Atlanta based model, the answer is “I pull my lashes out”.

Literally.

Trichotillomania is an obsessive compulsive disorder where people that suffer from it have the uncontrollable impulse to pull out hair from their body. It’s estimated that four percent of the population worldwide have this condition which is hereditary and more prominent on women. Anna’s first trich episode happened when she was around four years old and since then she has learned to live with her illness.

When at age nine she started receiving treatment to manage her decease her family discovered that her grandmother on her father’s side also had it, but she had hidden her condition from her loved ones by using wigs and fake lashes her whole life.

Anna’s case of trichotillomania is not a severe one and she only pulls her top lashes, where in other cases people also pull hair from their heads, eyebrows, arms, legs, and even genital areas. She explains that when she is involved in stressful situations, she is filled with anxiety and unbearable tension and only finds relief from it when she pulls her eyelashes out. When she does this she does not feel pain, but experiences a sensation of all her worries fading away.

Her condition has affected her career as a model in multiple ways, from agencies refusing to sign her because of her illness to a make up artist in Greece calling her disgusting for not having eyelashes. Anna little by little feels more comfortable going out without her lashes and has decided to share her story in hopes of reaching out to people with her condition. She aspires to see more people in the media with trichotillomania and to inform society of this and other mental illnesses, and how people with different conditions can live a normal life.

I’m inspired by her and wanted to showcase beauty in vulnerability. Maybe someday we will learn to see beauty in unusual faces.

*This article was first published in VICE Colombia but have gotten several request for a translation of this piece.

Special thanks to Piper Von Hoene for the make up artistry. http://www.pipervonhoene.com/

I Don´t like Mondays

I Don´t like Mondays

Why would you kill someone?

Why would you decide to shoot out of your window and shoot at a stranger?

A 16 year old´s reason was she did not like Mondays.

Brenda Spencer was only 16 years old on January 29, 1979 when she decided to shoot out of her window at Grover Cleveland Elementary School killing two and injuring 8 children and a policeman. As she was hiding and barricading herself at her home after the shooting, a reporter was able to reach her and asked why had she done it.

Her answer: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day”

Known to be a troubled teenager with a couple of arrests, she lived with her father in poverty after her mother left them; sleeping on the same single mattress as him surrounded by beer bottles. In December of 1978 a psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recommended that Spencer be admitted to a mental hospital for depression but her father refused to give permission.

When I was little I got disappointed one Christmas when I got a microscope instead of a telescope, my six year old self didn´t know the difference between tele and micro and couldn´t understand why if I wanted to look at the stars I had gotten a weird artifact with blue and red liquids and glass slides. My disappointment is nothing compared to what Brenda must have felt when she asked for a radio for Christmas and her dad got her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition. When asked why he might have done that, she answered, “I felt like he wanted me to kill myself.”

Instead of giving her the help she needed her father decided to give his teenager daughter a gun she later used to shoot at 11 people, which made her go down in history as the first mass school shooter in modern history.

We live in a society that its easier for people to get a gun than get help.

Do you still think there is not a problem?

Brenda was sad and troubled.

She wanted a radio.

Daddy gave her a gun for Christmas.

She shot 11.

Created for HAVE DIGITAL