Behind the Visual Diary
D E A R S E L F: A Visual Diary actually began as a series of poems that I started writing to myself. It was during a time when I had recently graduated but was still unemployed. I also had been forced to follow my parents to a new bigger city. I felt out of place. I felt lonely. I had no friends, and at first, it was difficult to even find a basic retail job. I felt like I’d already failed at life, and just like that Florence and the Machine song, my regrets began to collect like old friends. You see, I’d always struggled with finding value in my existence. Throughout my life, starting in middle school, there was this voice in my head that told me that I would never measure up to my peers, that I wasn’t good enough to achieve anything that I wanted in life, and that I didn’t deserve a place in this world. This voice had a tendency to drag me to dark places sometimes, and occasionally, I pondered on the idea of me leaving this world. This same voice came back to taunt me when I was getting rejected to all of the places I’d applied, but just when I was sinking back into that same dark place, there was a new voice, fainter than the other, that told me that it was time to stop entertaining these thoughts and get up and fight. I did what I always do when there were too many words in my mind to think. I found a blank piece of paper in my old, worn out college notebook, and I wrote as I sat in an empty lounge at my mom’s school. Essentially, just like a diary, these poems were a long overdue conversation that I was finally having with myself. As I continued to write the poems daily, they soon became my coping mechanism throughout this time. They were my little pep talks. They were how I separated the truths from the lies in my deceitful mind. Repeating what I’d written down back to myself allowed me to finally start believing in the truths that were always reality. I have always taken pride in my ability to use symbolism to inspire the garments I make, so of course as a creator, I decided to make these poems come to life by adding evening wear and bridal garments alongside every poem.
The visual diary is a project that I created to showcase a collection of self-empowering poems paired with garments. Through the conversation with myself, the visual diary tells a coming-of-age story of a shattered girl transforming into a mosaic woman. Each poem and each garment are a symbolic representation of the stepping stones on her journey to becoming the woman she was created to be. Every month I will release a new poem alongside a garment. As this visual diary has helped me find the fighting voice inside me, I hope that you too will find healing in the words and warmth in the sight of the garments. Please remember you are never alone in your struggles.