You Wouldn’t Be So Depressed if You Really Believed in God

“You Wouldn’t Be So Depressed If You Really Believed in God” is a photographic response to my lifelong battle with despair. Through abstracted self-portraiture I try to painting my interior world as I navigate life with an invisible sickness.

“You Wouldn’t Be So Depressed If You Really Believed in God” explores the summary points of residing with despair and the way this invisible sickness impacts my youngsters, my inventive observe, and my relationship with every day life. Through pictures, I have a look at how my religion (or lack thereof), Latina cultural assumptions, and position as mom form how I perceive and relate to despair. I don’t try to create self-portraits within the conventional sense; as an alternative, I present the fragmented and typically distorted methods by which I expertise relationships and the mundane rituals of on a regular basis life. How inanimate objects can usually signify extra than simply an uneaten meals, and the way despair could make your world, no matter how stunning and secure it’d really be, really feel heavy, darkish, and scary.

Whenever I used to be having a very arduous time, my mom would say to me: “You wouldn’t be so depressed if you really believed in God.”.  As a baby, this recommendation made me really feel like I used to be not solely failing God and my household, however that I used to be utterly powerless. Years later I got here throughout Jane Kenyon’s poem “Having it out with Melancholy”, and found that the identical phrase my mom usually stated to me, “You wouldn’t be so depressed if you really believed in God.”.  The poem is likely one of the strongest and correct depictions of despair that I’ve learn, and it crammed me with nice emotion to learn that the “advice” which had haunted me since childhood had factored into Kenyon’s life as nicely.

The first part of the poem, cited under, was a catalyst for me to start this photographic collection and permit myself a type of catharsis.

“When I was born, you waited

behind a pile of linen in the nursery,

and when we were alone, you lay down

on top of me, pressing

the bile of desolation into every pore.

And from that day on

everything under the sun and moon

made me sad even the yellow

wooden beads that slid and spun

along a spindle on my crib.

You taught me to exist without gratitude.

You ruined my manners toward God:

“We’re here simply to wait for death;

The pleasures of earth are overrated.”

I solely appeared to belong to my mom,

To stay amongst blocks and cotton undershirts

With snaps; amongst pink tin lunchboxes

And report playing cards in ugly brown slipcases.

I used to be already yours – the anti-urge,

The mutilator of souls.

…….

3. Suggestion From a Friend

You wouldn’t be so depressed

If you actually believed in God.”

– Jane Kenyon