'Cake' Mixed Media Original

'Cake' is a collection of different bits and pieces I created and then tore apart and mushed back together to form a cohesive piece. This 10in x 30in piece is the physical form of my attempt to process the long term "situationship" I had with a 38 year old man when I was not of age and still in highschool. It is the pain of desperately wanting to be loved, and instead being groomed and used, and learning patterns that would saturate my life for the next seven years.

It is the grief of wondering what my late teens and early twenties would have been if it had not been instilled in me at such a young age that care is transactional and needs to be begged for, or is only received in times of desperation and crisis. It is the anger I hold towards all of the adults in my life, including not one but two therapists I had at the time who knew everything and did nothing. It is feeling like I should have known better, yet knowing it's not my fault. It's wishing someone would have helped me. It's wishing it didn't take me seven years to help myself. It's consciously working to release the shame and the guilt that have made a home inside of me and some days refuse to move out.

Materials: broken ceramics, acrylics, one of the many cds he gave me, torn canvas, watercolors, resin, part of his itchy sweater that I shredded, magazine cuttings, clay sprinkles, shells, wax, birthday candles, condoms, charms, beads, nails, screws, glues, amethyst, quartz, buttons, pearls, sea glass, chain, spackle, and a poem I wrote when I was 17.