Family.

Before we left for spring break, a lot of ideas about this final project emerged. I was having a hard time visualizing exactly what I wanted to accomplish, and getting hung up on trying to picture the final outcome. I brought my camera with me everywhere and took a bunch of photos, but no clear goal in my image-making came out of it.

One of the ideas I had was to document the ways in which, during your late teens, 20s, and maybe 30s, before you really settle into a family life, your friends become your family. I know that since I moved out of my parents' house nearly six years ago, my friends have sometimes been more of a family to me than my actual family was. I also wanted to incorporate the idea of a "community" and where we all fit in within our own separate worlds. I thought the project could take on a documentary approach, maybe incorporating some portraiture as well. I had a clear idea of what this meant to me, and which people I thought were worthy of falling into this category, of people who were "family" yet not actually related to me.

On Friday morning, I woke up to the worst news of my life. One of my best friends, one of these people I considered to be my "family," was murdered senselessly in his own home. At first, I thought it was some kind of elaborate joke. Anyone who knew this person knew that there is absolutely no one on earth who could be capable of hurting him. This is a person who has eaten at my dinner table countless times, who has fallen asleep on my couch countless times, who has been in my car singing along to stupid songs with me countless times. This is someone I've told secrets to, confided in, shared personal thoughts with, made plans with, and someone who I had called my "little brother" on innumerable occasions. He was a best friend to me, my boyfriend, and others who knew him and knew what an amazing human being he was. How could he be dead?

Since Friday, I've felt like someone has been continually punching me in the stomach. I have felt complete sorrow, regret, nausea, remorse, searing pain, anger, outrage. I have felt unsafe in my own town, and in my own home. I have chastised myself and "what if"'d, and said "it could have been me. I have been at that house so many times." I have been overwhelmed by the incident itself--moved past disbelief, that "this can't be true," and moved into a possibly worse place, where I can't picture existing alongside his void.

However, something really amazing has come from this nightmare. I have learned that this person, who I valued so much, had so many other "families." And these families have become my family now. Friends I already had have gotten closer than ever, and people I never met before in my life have become so close to me that I can't even imagine that just a week ago, I didn't know them at all.

So for now, this project will document the way we cope. It will document the aftermath of terrible loss, and the healing power of support, and the process of finding out exactly what one person can mean to another person. But I also want to deal with the hard parts of it too--the feeling that something is constantly missing, and that nothing can really make that feeling go away.

This is the only photo I took this week that was in any way relevant to this project. I'm just now beginning to feel okay with the idea of documenting something so personal to me.