Mónica Riveiro
There are photographs that pull me deep into my childhood, as if time dissolves in my hands and allows me, for a few moments, to look back. In this image I took some time ago, three elements seem to encapsulate parts of my essence, as if each one whispered a different story about who I am. The sea, the doll, and that girl, silently observing. I will highlight two of those elements: the sea and the girl.
The sea has always been a disturbing presence for me. Its vastness provokes a fear that sometimes grips me without mercy. Throughout my life, there have been moments when the fear of the sea pursued me even in my dreams. There, a gigantic wave would rise before me, monstrous and terrifying, as if it wanted to swallow the entire world. In some dreams, that wave engulfs me, drags me into a chaotic swirl that leaves me breathless, disoriented, unsure of where to swim to escape. In others, I wake up just before it hits, as if my subconscious gave me a second chance to run. Sometimes, I see the wave slowly approaching, growing taller and taller, casting a threatening shadow over me, and I run desperately.
When I face the sea in real life, I barely dare to go beyond where my feet can touch solid ground. Panic overtakes me if I lose control of what lies beneath my feet. That feeling of being surrounded by an immensity I cannot master, that vastness hiding secrets in its depths, fills me with anxiety. I recently discovered that this fear has a name: thalassophobia. I never imagined that what I felt was a phobia, much less that it had a term to describe it.
And then there is the girl, that little observer who seems frozen in time. That girl is me, looking out at the world from a window, already asking myself what the purpose of life is. I have always been someone who observes, who analyzes, who finds stories in the faces of strangers. I am fascinated by walking through the city and recognizing those people who, for some reason, have captured my attention. I see them almost every day, characters who, without speaking to me, tell me something about their lives. If I don’t come across one of them for a few days, I become anxious, wondering what might have happened to them, especially when it comes to elderly people. And when I finally see them again, a deep sense of relief washes over me, as if the world, for a moment, returns to balance.
Sometimes I sit on a bench and simply observe, letting the stories flow before me. If I were a writer, I know I would fill entire pages with the tales of those lives that I only know from a distance but that move me in ways I cannot explain.
Discovering oneself, knowing who we are and why we react in certain ways, is an exercise as enriching as it is necessary. Through our fears and our passions, we learn to understand the roots of our personality. Facing what unsettles us, like the fear of the unknown, or appreciating what drives us, reveals who we are at our core. This process invites us to connect with those parts of ourselves that perhaps have always been there, waiting to be understood. Self-knowledge allows us to embrace both our shadows and our light, and in doing so, we find ourselves more complete, more at peace with our own essence.
