I See You

Jun 30

Authenticity, Forgiveness & Trust

With 35mm Film Photo Series & Family Album Images

It’s been a long time coming … and yet even now drafting this article for the fifth time, I am not really sure about where this is going, or whether I am going to be able to bring any clarity at all.

I wanted to talk about connection, but it actually became a reflection on authenticity and forgiveness, I think.

I started writing about what it means to truly connect to someone. And came to recognise the importance of being authentic and of being able to bring this authenticity into our relationships. Why is this important? The question, perhaps, is actually, is there another way?

Can a relationship — starting with the relationships with ourselves — exist without acceptance of each other’s truth? Does one’s pain, and so the inability to see the other’s truth and take responsibility for it, compromise a relationship? Is there still space for authenticity? Is there still space for connection? And love?

“Can a relationship – including the one with ourselves – exist without acceptance of each other’s truth?”

As a child I felt invisible because of the unwillingness, or maybe inability, of my parents to see and recognise my truth.

They don’t see me and so I can’t be truly here. They don’t love me and so I can’t truly trust them.

How can someone hold their truth as valid without expecting others to acknowledge it? How can we feel validated when we feel unseen?

Sometimes it is necessary to speak up and set boundaries in order to protect our truth. And well, this can be really difficult. I used to see setting boundaries as closing a door. And all the doors had to be wide open, in case they woke up and decided to love me… from those wide open doors nothing but emptiness and rejection came through. The more I craved to be seen, the more I felt invisible.

“How can we feel validated when we feel unseen?”

What I did not understand back then was that in pursuing this dream to be finally seen, I became truly invisible and, in the long term, this passiveness made me a prisoner. I would just wait to be given and never request … and therefore never really think about what I was waiting for. What I wanted.

The door was as invisible to others, as my desires. The only perceivable thing was this lack of initiative and passiveness that made it even harder to reach out to me. What if I had simply asked? What if I had simply indicated the door? Would things have been different? Easier?

My unwillingness to take any action, even just to close that damned door, was what made my true self invisible, even to myself. Even when screaming all my pain, I still felt invisible, misunderstood.

The solution seemed indifference, a careless lack of feeling. And whilst I thought I had numbed myself from any emotion, I had only covered everything with a thin layer of anger. And the anger did not let me breathe properly; it made me small and kept me a prisoner of my own fear of not being loved. It constantly reminded me I was not loved and I was not special.

And worst of all, it covered my dreams. It made everything impossible and therefore futile to desire or aspire.

I did not see this. I felt I was realistic and rational. And yet I systematically destroyed every glimpse of joy and hope of doing something I could be proud of.

Nikon Compact, Fuji Colour 200 ISO, Sines, Portugal, 2020

“My unwillingness to take any action was what made my true self invisible, even to myself.”

Over the years, this narrative became who I was, and I convinced myself that there was indeed a reason for my parents emotional or physical absence.

And the reason was me.

And from this place of passive awareness, I saw evidence in everything.

Once I abandoned my grandmother's shield, I saw how I wasn’t special, I wasn’t the best in school anymore, I wasn’t the

prettiest, I wasn’t even truly troubled, I didn't know how to make friends or how to have fun, I simply did not have what it takes to do anything.

But the truth is I had lost myself … in the exhausting search for my parents’ love, and then everybody’s approval, I had simply forgotten who I wanted to be.

Nikon FM2, Giardino degli Aranci, Roma, 2010

“...in the exhausting search for my parents’ love, and then everybody’s approval, I had simply forgotten who I wanted to be...”

*Family album scan, S.Elena, Venezia, 1988*

This happened a long time ago. But after this period of my life, I never really took the time to think about all this at all … Relatively long relationships and a lot of chaos in between, frustrating jobs with a few attempts at creativity … I never really took the time to be with myself in a healthy way.

Therapy helped but it didn’t quiet or dissolve my anger and my habit for passiveness. I wasn’t being loved because I was not good enough and that was the problem. And it could not be solved or fixed.

My mother did not hurt me intentionally... and yet she has hurt me. Eventually she would hurt me again, she did not see me and she refused to see my pain.

And yet in my experience, this deeply self destructive suffering was only stopped by forgiveness.

Nikon F2, double-exposure, Roma/Capri, 2016

“... this deeply self-destructive suffering was only stopped by forgiveness.”

I can’t say whether there really was a turning point. I don’t think it happened like that for me. At some point I just looked back and did not feel angry anymore. I think it happened with reconnecting to what is it that I wanted, and the things I could do to have it.

Photography and writing, meditation and yoga, poetry and music, books and food, magical cats and the sun of Portugal have been important steps in the journey of making friends with myself.

Without realising it, I finally crossed that door and took my frowny little self by the hand and began taking her places, showing her how beautiful the world is and that we don’t need to wait anymore.

I see you. You can trust me.

“it happened with reconnecting to what is it that I wanted, and the things I could do to have it.”

And this quiet change gave me hope. It is indeed possible to change our mindset and find that legitimation and approval within us. Allowing everything to take on a different colour.

And so I’ve started to see things differently. If we think that something must be out to get us, why not think that something must be out to help us? Support us? Why should we believe that everything is against us but still find it so difficult to believe that something, maybe a magical force, is instead out there to support us?

These open questions have helped me to get to know myself, allowing me to “meet” people and situations in a different way.

It is hard when the people that are supposed to love you by definition are incapable of doing it. It is hard to be grateful and it is hard to find a reason why we are here.

And yet … if we really think about it, isn’t it amazing that we are here despite all this inability to love?

What incredible succession of events brought us here, despite the fact that we were not planned or wanted? To be born, in fact, is not the likeliest of events.

And so I tell myself in the darkest days.

It’s amazing that I am here.

“It is hard when the people that are supposed to love you by definition are incapable of doing it.”

Maybe it’s true that, for people who haven’t grown up surrounded by healthy love and support, it’s more difficult to trust themselves and others. I certainly find it hard to let go in relationships. When I am in a blissful crowd I usually feel out of it … concerned with so many things.

The thing is trust, as I understood it, cannot exist. Trust in and from others cannot be the safety boat that brings us to the shore. It has to start with trust in ourselves.

We can’t find that unconditional love that was promised to us in anybody but ourselves. It is not fair to ask others to be more reliable and more responsible so we can feel safe and sure. Nobody can fulfill an expectation like this. I couldn’t.

No matter how many promises I’ve made to myself and broken, I’ve always found it very difficult to accept that other people do too. It made them unreliable, even liars in my eyes. And little Francesca could not take more broken promises.

“Trust in and from others cannot be the safety boat that brings us to the shore. It has to start with trust in ourselves.”

Maybe trust in others does not have to be based on rigid promises but on honest commitment. However, it is very hard to be able to trust that commitment and see it in the eyes of someone if we don’t love ourselves first. Nothing seems true, nothing seems honest. People are going to hurt me. That is simply a fact.

But what if it is not about people hurting us? What if it is about people being people? And what if, again, the only way out of this is faith and love? If we as humans can only live in the present, why try to project ourselves so desperately into a future on which we have no control?

Are we going to get hurt by someone we love and we trust? Are we going to let this define us?

“Are we going to get hurt by someone we love and we trust? Are we going to let this define us?”

I have hurt people I loved. I did it by not being honest. They would have stopped loving me and that I could not take. I’ve hidden the truth so that I could be loved. To be authentic with anyone we have to know and accept who we are.

And to trust someone, we have to be able to love ourselves first and believe that we deserve to be loved. We must have the courage and the strength not to let others’ feelings for us define who we are, whether good or bad.

Only so can we be free to be true.

All the Polaroid were taken from David between 2015 and 2017
All the family album photos were taken from my grandfather, who was a passionate photographer and family man.

Francesca Faulin

I See You

Authenticity, Forgiveness & Trust

With 35mm Film Photo Series & Family Album Images

Finding Gravity

Beyond a Metre Radius