Defence mechanism - a usually unconscious mental process to avoid conscious conflict or anxiety. (The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary)

There were so many times in my life that I was so unhappy I just wanted to curl into myself and block out the world. There were many times when I did. Sometimes my behaviour was accepted mutely; sometimes I was berated, which made me withdraw more.

When I'm upset I make myself as small as I can, to avoid notice and to force out the world from my vision. When this photo was taken, it was the first time I'd let myself be seen undressed outside of the context of the bedroom. That was the first time I removed my clothing with someone that I didn't know if I could trust explicitly.

Terrified doesn't even describe the way I felt, although I tried, poorly, to hide that sensation.

I curled up and blocked it all out for a moment, the result is this photo.

Looking at it, I wonder if anyone ever did, or does, see me as anything other than a creature made of jumbled bits pulled into a human wall of flesh and a sprawl of hair.

If that's the correct analysis of myself, it's no one's fault other than my own. I made the choice to hide behind whatever I could. I hid what I thought and felt because I thought that it was the best way to avoid conflict.

We are all made of bits and pieces; my mom's hands and ankles, my dad's nose, my great grandmother's frame, my grandma's eyes, my grandpa's sense of humour are all bits of me. Or more accurately, I am bits of them. It's no wonder that I am a mish-mash of feelings and parts: that's a lot of history to absorb and a lot of things to figure out.

It doesn't matter if the photos are good or not (although many turned out extremely well), because I was forced to try something new. I stepped out on a ledge for a moment and found out that it didn't hurt. I trusted someone new and discovered that maybe trust doesn't hurt either.

It's me in that photo, just me. I was there all the time - if you could see around the wall of me and my parts.

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