Take My Picture

Chapter twenty five

Working so hard on something that comes so naturally to most people as they grow up, was a rather discouraging thing at times. I spent the most part of the rest of this year just trying to speak. At times, the frustration and anger at my situation took over everything and I would snap at the people around me; which was often Demi and Aggie.

Demi was away, for the most part, she had the jingle ball tour and she went back to Texas for a little bit to see her family. She visited when she could. Brinley was the same. School was let out a few days after my meltdown on the phone to Demi, but Brinley was shipped off to her mom's that night. Madison was also busy; first, she had her sweet 16th birthday party and then she was going back to Texas with her family. I didn't go to her party, my speech making me too self-conscious to meet all her friends, so I didn't get to see her before she left.

My point is, Aggie took a lot of my misguided anger and frustration because she was the only one around, and well, Demi continued to call me constantly giving me another person to wrongfully lash out at. I was getting better at redirecting my anger though, and the girls in the home where getting better at reading me and my actions; having people understand what I'm trying to get at with gestures and minimal words, helps to keep me from getting overly frustrated. When I'm frustrated my speech gets even worse; as well as when I'm tired or stressed, or my head hurts, which is all the fucking time.

My therapist has been helping me with redirecting my anger and frustration in the short term so that she can work with me on moving past it or something. I'm pretty sure she used a bunch of important big words but it just gave me a headache trying to follow along with the psychological jargon, so I gave up. She told me I need an outlet, something that I can use to get all my pent up emotion out. I immediately thought of dancing. It was something that I could physically throw myself into; it gave me a way to communicate what I couldn't through speech.

But dancing hurt my head after only a few minutes, so I picked up my camera again.

It felt so strange and heavy. It took me a second to remember all the setting I needed to adjust, but before long, I was forcing Aggie to model for me left, right and centre. I actually found it a lot more therapeutic than I thought it would be, and after a little bit, I began to realise how much I had missed taking photos.

My first bunch of shoots were kinda dark, I just threw all the shit I was dealing with into the mix and tried to create something. They began to lighten up the more I did and I started branching out, shooting portraits and fashion. I even got in contact with my old dance teacher and took some studio photos of my old dance team. I prefer just taking photos of Aggie through because I don't need to give her much verbal direction for her to understand what I am trying to communicate, which makes it a lot easier.

Christmas came quickly after I found photography to be a great outlet, it gave me something to do to keep me busy each day. The days always go quicker when I am doing something productive.

Elise and Jordan had always tried to make the holidays a happy time for all of us. They celebrated Christmas with us by setting up a tree with homemade decorations, setting up a secret Santa with homemade gifts, and they always did their best to buy all of us a little gift from them. We spent the day like we spend most holidays; cooking a huge meal with everyone and we had a 'family' games night. Sometimes it would end up as a pretty awkward affair or end in fights, but the group of girls in the home at the moment are all pretty close so it was a really good day.

Demi, Madison and Brinley all got home in the next few days after Christmas and Demi insisted we have a Christmas with just us. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense considering by the time we could all actually be in the same place, it was on Madison's birthday.