{a photo project honoring radiance, one of my words for 2012 :: 52 photos that represent radiance, 52 photos that represent luminosity.}

when i was young – maybe in eighth grade – it was time to change or end a friendship. i didn’t know how to navigate that transition, so i just stopped speaking to that person.

i have regretted it ever since. until this week, i felt so much guilt and shame about what i did that i almost never talked about it to anyone.

right before my senior year of high school, a friend of mine stopped speaking to me. i never knew why.

it also made perfect sense. i believed i was worthless. when she stopped speaking to me, it seemed proof that i really was worthless. of course she stopped speaking to me. i wondered that she had ever been my friend at all, or that anyone else ever had.

when i talked through the two experiences with a friend, the thing that struck me is that i use what i did as proof that i am a horrible person, while i would never think that about my old friend. i hold what i did against myself and use it to beat myself up, over and over. i also use it as a way to beat myself up for having been on the other side, because clearly it was doubly deserved.

from this vantage point, i feel so much compassion for younger me. she was struggling with worthlessness and a sense of not belonging anywhere, even in her own skin. it was a very hard age. she really was doing the best she could.

i also feel so much compassion for all of us. we are all holding stories inside, feeling scared and ashamed and alone, and our stories grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they consume us.

it makes me wish that we could let things into the light a little more, where we can see that we are all doing the best we can in any given moment, that we are almost always our own worst critics, and that even in our darkness, we are never really alone.