DEAD GIRL OF THE YEAR

“MY SELF-PORTRAITS ARE A PLACE TO DEMAND THE WORLD TO LISTEN TO ME.”

On the night of December 7th, 2019, I told the first person I ever fell in love with that I would remember them until the day I died.

They did not feel the same.

The abrupt (and very public) dismissal of love left me with severe trauma. I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping, I stopped being able to exist. Mr. Freud said “I think this man is suffering from memories”—and yes, yes I was. How does one deal with the happiest moments of their life becoming ones of terror? For months after I lived in a loop of misery—drinking, cutting, puking my brains out as punishment for the endless recurrences of these memories. I could do nothing to stop them. I was completely at the mercy of memory, and hourly suffered paroxysms of intense inner pain. It is hard to describe the state I was in; I could write metaphor after metaphor of the deep mental anguish my mind played out for me, but how can one know the depth of misery when one has only gone knee-deep?

I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD and Anorexia Nervosa, two diagnoses I was too ashamed to admit to anybody. I suffered for over a year completely silent except to my close friends, too embarrassed to admit a mere relationship could have such a horrific, devastating effect on me. Because of this, I needed a way to show the world to see how this single relationship destroyed me. It felt as if my words and actions did nothing to persuade my peers of the intensity of my suffering: why else would they continue to interact with this person if not for something wrong with me? Why wasn’t anyone listening to me? I had a 96 lb scale reading and enough new antipsychotic drugs for a doctor to listen to me—and yet still, I would kick and scream in the throes of an attack and feel helplessly alone in my belief that I was in such excruciating pain. My self-portraits thus became a place to demand the world to listen to me, an avenue to validate the trauma when it wasn’t reflected in the faces of “friends”.

I was once a prolific writer. I stopped being able to write immediately after that night. I have always needed the evidence of my insanity in a physical form: photography is an alternative that is not destroying my brain or body. It is the pen and paper of the trauma survivor. How else do you capture an illness so defined by image?

This project explores the deterioration of my body from my nearly deadly eating disorder, my casual sex work despite deep sexual trauma, and the slow loss of my transgender identity. Because of this mess, I am inspired by the surreal, the grotesque, anything weird and senseless. Like many with histories of trauma, there is understanding in physical incomprehensibility. At the same time, I am drawn to the grounded, constant narrative in my head as the helpless, naive girl—the virgin caught in first love and at the complete mercy of her male lover—the one and ultimate victim. Amidst this was the incongruence of our gender identities, the confusing and brutal reality of being the indefatigable “mistress”, and the fruitless stakes of trying to love a stranger as your own child.

It has nearly been over two years since I met this person, and still, I cannot look the girl that I used to be in the face. She is an innocent little girl, and I am the muck leftover. I trudge on, time once a cruelty, now the sweetest balm.

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I’d like to thank my classmates for creating a safe and artistic environment to experiment in. I’d also like to thank my professor and mentor Res for believing in me to finish this project despite its difficulty. Their belief in me as a photographer is a gift I will use to the end of my ability.

—Eavan McNeil, July 2021