Let’s talk about Frank a bit more, because apparently my nervous system hasn’t suffered enough yet, and the lights go all bright and clinical in my head the moment I say his name, like I’ve wandered into a studio where humor goes to die, and I can feel my eyes rolling so hard they could qualify as a cardio workout, because Frank—the photographer—needs to be addressed properly, Frank with the air quotes so sharp they could cut glass, Frank who once described himself, without blinking, as a “light poet,” which is a phrase that should legally require a permit, Frank who said “digital intimacy” so often that I started flinching at anything with a USB port, charging cables included, and this man had a camera the size of a baby, I mean genuinely infant-adjacent, like if you dropped it you’d instinctively apologize, and paired that with the ego of a medium-sized planet, the kind with its own gravitational pull, because Frank didn’t just take pictures, oh no, he captured essence, he revealed hidden truths, he spoke exclusively in italics, and I can still hear him saying, “Tallulah, I don’t shoot people, I shoot presence,” and I remember standing there thinking, do you, Frank, do you really capture presence, or do you just zoom in on women’s lips while pretending it’s about “texture,” because the routine was always the same, the little lens adjustment, the performative concentration, click, click, “this one’s about shame,” click, “this one’s about contrast,” click, “this one’s about thighs—I mean power,” and he’d say it like the correction absolved him, like semantics were a moral cleanse, and once—once—he tried to make me pose in a claw-foot bathtub filled with black feathers, and when I asked, very reasonably, what the concept was, he said, completely straight-faced, “it’s about female rage and decay, also I just really like the aesthetic of wet birds,” and I stared at him in silence, because sometimes the only appropriate response to a sentence like that is letting it echo until it collapses under its own weight, wet birds, and this is the same man who made an entire photo series called Disposable, featuring women crying into napkins in parking garages, which he called “a meditation on late capitalist femininity,” and I call trauma porn with a filter, but sure, semantics again, and yes, I was one of his “muses,” which in Frank-speak means “woman I can gaslight about composition while asking her to take off her bra,” and I played along longer than I should have, because that’s what you do when someone keeps telling you you’re part of something important, but here’s the thing—and this still stings more than I’d like to admit—I wasn’t even his favorite muse, that honor went to a girl named Anya who smoked clove cigarettes and talked about her dreams like they were breaking news, like, “I dreamt I gave birth to a plant, it was a cactus, but emotionally distant,” and Frank absolutely lapped it up, nodded solemnly, said she “embodied conceptual contradiction,” while I, apparently, embodied punctuality and the radical ability to pay for dinner sometimes, which, tragically, does not photograph well.

Frank used to say I had “tragic features,” and even now, saying it out loud makes something in my chest tighten in a way that isn’t quite pain but isn’t nothing either, tragic, not beautiful, not striking, not luminous or arresting or any of the words that sound like they want to keep you alive, just tragic, like my face itself was in mourning, like my cheekbones were grieving something unnamed, like my jawline had known loss personally and decided to carry it forever, and he would tilt his head when he said it, like he was studying a painting he’d already made his mind up about, telling me I had the look of a woman who had “been through things,” as if heartbreak was a beauty regimen you could commit to, as if sadness were contour, carefully applied, blended just enough to make the shadows look intentional, and the uncomfortable truth—the part that still makes me shift my weight when I remember it—is that I liked it, I liked being seen that way, liked being his broken little masterpiece, his melancholy girl with the thoughtful wrists and the eyes full of ruin, liked how it felt to be framed as something delicate and damaged and therefore valuable, because when someone tells you you’re art, really tells you, with that low, reverent voice, you forget to check whether they’re treating you like a person, you forget to notice how quiet you’ve become inside the frame, how still, how carefully posed, and I let him do it, I let him arrange me like grief in a hoodie, like longing on a windowsill, like a metaphor that didn’t get to speak, and the irony is that I am expressive, I am theatrical, I am really, really good at looking like I’m feeling something profound while actually just wondering what’s for dinner or whether I left the light on at home, I have range, I have opinions, I have a whole internal weather system, but he never asked, not once, not how are you, not do you like these photos, not even are you cold, which I was, a lot, just “good, chin down, eyes hollow,” over and over, like an instruction manual for absence, until eventually it became clear, in that slow, undeniable way clarity arrives, that he didn’t want me at all, not the moving, talking, wanting version, he wanted the idea of me, the soft, wounded shape of a woman who would never ask for more than to be admired from a safe distance, safely framed, safely silent, safely tragic.

So I bought a camera—and I don’t mean metaphorically, I don’t mean spiritually, I mean I actually walked into a shop and handed over money for a real one, with weight to it, with dials and buttons and a strap that immediately made me feel like I was impersonating someone more competent than I am, and it came with this manual written in seven languages, six of which were just anxiety, like every page was quietly whispering you’re already doing it wrong, and I remember standing there holding it for the first time, really feeling its weight in my hands, thinking, okay, this is solid, this exists, this doesn’t disappear when someone looks away, and then I started taking pictures, not anything ambitious at first, just strangers on the tram when I pretended to be adjusting settings but was actually trying not to make eye contact, faces reflected in the glass, hands gripping poles, people half-asleep or half-angry or fully somewhere else, then windows—always windows—because windows don’t move and they don’t care if you’re nervous, and then fruit, because apparently you have to photograph fruit when you’re learning, like some ancient rite of passage, like if you can’t make an apple look sensual you’re not ready for the human soul, and I took photos of oranges and bananas and a bruised pear that felt a little too on the nose, adjusting aperture and depth of field like that alone might explain something about me, and eventually—slowly, without any big cinematic decision—I turned the lens around, just to see what would happen, just to test the light, just to check the framing, and suddenly it was me, my own face in the viewfinder, my own body occupying the space where everything else had been, and at first they were just test shots, blurry, accidental, half-cut-off, then experiments, moving the camera an inch, changing the angle, sitting, standing, and then—without me planning it—they became statements, those carefully arranged look at my sadness in this soft lighting images, no poetry in shadows, no performative bruises, no visual shorthand for pain, just me, tired, messy, confused, real in a way that felt almost indecent because I wasn’t translating myself into something palatable, I took one where I was brushing my teeth, foam at the corner of my mouth, eyes unfocused, one where I was crying in my car, red-faced and slumped and very much not having a revelation, just crying because that’s what was happening, and one where I looked—genuinely—happy, which surprised me enough that I almost deleted it out of reflex, and the strangest part was that I didn’t edit them, didn’t retouch, didn’t filter out the pimple on my cheek or the chaos in the background or the laundry or the clutter or the evidence that I am a person who exists over time, because for the first time I wasn’t trying to be art, I wasn’t trying to make something meaningful enough to justify my own presence, I was just trying to be seen, and here’s the kicker, the part I didn’t expect and definitely didn’t prepare for: I liked what I saw, not because it was perfect, not because the lighting was divine or the framing sublime or because it suddenly made sense, but because I was there, visible, whole, mine, and I remember holding the camera again, lifting it like muscle memory had finally kicked in, steady for once, and thinking, quietly, deliberately—click, that one’s for me.

So Frank invited me to his solo exhibition, which is already funny if you pause on it for even half a second, because inviting your ex to your solo exhibition is a very specific kind of confidence, or delusion, or unresolved emotional theater, I’m not sure which yet, but it felt a little like being invited to a wedding where you’re not only the ex but also somehow part of the décor, like, please enjoy the ceremony and also this tasteful reminder of what didn’t work out, and I walk into the gallery and the lights are that cool, white, clinical kind of lighting that makes everyone look like they’re either about to be judged or preserved, and I’m strolling slowly, miming holding a wine glass because of course there’s wine, there’s always wine at these things, and I’m already in performance mode because galleries do that to me, but this time it’s mine, I’m not borrowed, I’m not framed yet, and I see the title on the wall—Disintegration: A Study in Light and Regret—which honestly feels less like an exhibition and more like a very long voicemail you shouldn’t have left, and I can practically hear the unspoken welcome speech, welcome to my feelings, wine is in the back, misery is on the walls, please don’t touch anything except maybe your own unresolved longing, and there I am, suddenly everywhere, image number five, me on a staircase in profile, looking like I’ve just murdered my own hope and hidden the body somewhere tasteful, image number twelve, me in shadow with my forehead pressed against a bus window, titled Departure, Part II, which immediately makes me squint because where exactly was Part I, Frank, was that the part where I believed in you, was that the part where I thought this was collaboration and not quiet documentation, and I keep walking because standing still would mean acknowledging the weird vertigo of seeing yourself flattened into meaning by someone else, and people are standing around murmuring in that low, reverent gallery voice, the one people use when they want to sound like they understand pain abstractly but not personally, going mmm she’s so raw, mmm I love the tension between light and abandonment, mmm are there olives, and I’m standing there listening to strangers emotionally dissect me like a polite autopsy, and not one of them asks who I am, not one of them wonders what I was thinking when that photo was taken, or whether I’d even wanted it taken, because that’s the thing about being a muse, you’re not meant to speak, you’re meant to inspire, to haunt, to linger silently while other people project eloquent suffering onto your cheekbones, and I stop walking and really take it in, this whitewashed room, these clean walls, my ex-boyfriend’s vision of me framed and hung like sacred failure, like an offering, like proof of something he survived, and then I laugh, softly, genuinely, not bitter, not cruel, just amused, because the strangest clarity hits me all at once: it isn’t me, it never actually was, it’s his version, his composition, his narrative, his lighting choices, his regret arranged at eye level, and I don’t feel stolen from so much as released, because I’ve got my own version now, one with different lighting, and better framing, and—this part matters—consent, and for the first time in that room, I’m not on the wall, I’m standing in it, fully present, unexhibited, and entirely my own.