M+E2
I withdrew, came back, and as I danced with the idea of my own risks of relapse, I stare waiting. Praying that when I walk in, I can honestly deny my dependence. I would soon find out, only the oppisite was true. “ I’ve missed you” falls out of your mouth and you begin reading the script I wrote in my head the months since I’ve seen you. I don’t believe you, but your touch sends a chill up my spine, that leaves me immobile. I try to catch my breath and, I’m blindsided by “Where are you staying tonight?”. I already know this will be a mistake. You find yourself in strange places as an addict. It consumes you slowly and you find yourself making compromises with yourself, for things you didn’t even know you wanted. Later the next day the butterflies returned and left no room for my appetite. All the work would began again; the sign in my head would now read “Elias Gurrola - an accident free environment for (1) day”.
EG TEE'S
The process you begin when developing the idea of your city, your home, and your life, starts slowly when the concept of your environment feels so abstract. For so long I’ve been running from the person that I think I am here. My mom farms in the very southern parts of Miami. So I never really got to enjoy the kind of lifestyle people think of when they think of “Miami”. The lights, the action, and the scene were always in sight but just out of grasp. So, I created a line of tee shirts that would be the wardrobe for the pseudo- Elias, this person that had manifested from experience in other large cities after I left Miami. In a strange way I almost feel handicapped here. As though, when I live here, I can be no other person then that same helpless kid I was high school. The line acted as a bridge that I could use to see what it would be like to be my new self here. I suppose I created a new meaning to “fashion therapy”.
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Irma Salinas (1970), Susanna Alvarado (1973), Jeremiah Dumuran (1976), Elias Gurrola (1988), Ammar Shahid (1991).
When growing up it is understood that you adopt your idea of what a home should be based on your environment. Your life can begin to mold itself around the factors you find most important. Though if you’re using my visual references, you may find that you instead decide to throw your life together and choose an endless landscape of 24 hour chaos. This includes but is not limited to- spending recklessly, using poor judgment and assuming unhealthy ways of dealing with your emotions. As I make the transition into my own life, I can already see the cracks in the foundation. With the credit card debt from the casino, the two years of experience as a couch potato and the warrant for my arrest it’s easy to think that some were I made a wrong turn. There is a light at the end of the tunnel though, because my older siblings used a similar life model. By no means are their lives sane, but neither do they seem to regret the paths they’ve taken, I can tell from the stories tell.
