2018 was supposed to be my year, but I committed the cardinal sin that derailed all of my best laid plans. I met a girl. For four months, I was involved in what the people around me described as an extremely unhealthy relationship. It was one that was hot and heavy at the beginning, then quickly unraveled at the end. I knew that I needed to end it, but my pride wouldn't let me.

About two months in, I came to the realization that I was more concerned about her well-being than I was my own. I got caught up in her and made compromises that I knew were not healthy for me and started to become a different person. It affected my self-esteem, my mental health, and my drive. At one point, my bosses and friends had to pull me to the side and tell me to get my shit together. The people closest to me saw how I was spiraling emotionally and how consistently stressed out I was and tried to step in, but I kept shunning their help. By the end of the relationship, the panic attacks had started in the middle of the night because I constantly walked on eggshells around her. When the day came that it ended, I was already torn down, not sleeping, hurt, and emotionally exhausted. Pretty much I was at the lowest that I have ever felt in my life. In the end, my friends described it as a four month long train wreck. I described it as a perfect storm with a ray of sunlight about to shine through.

That ray of sunlight came in the form of Kate Woodward. During the last month of this torrid romance, Kate came into my life in a major way. We’ve known each other for a couple of years through mutual friends, but never really connected until this summer due to the fact that she lived in Vancouver during the school year, and in Laramie during the summer to work. As soon as she came back to Laramie, we ran into each other and exchanged numbers and quickly became late night drinking buddies. One night while drinking and waxing poetic about our mutual affinity for gas station burritos, I had a breakdown and unloaded my relationship problems on her for an hour straight. At the end of the conversation, Kate sat there stunned and then said, “That sounds exactly like a relationship that I was in. You need to get out of it now before it gets even more toxic and unhealthy for you. Break up!” Something about our similar stories triggered Kate and she looked visibly disturbed. She then told me that I needed to cut my “Heartline”. As a look of confusion appeared on my face, she took out her cell phone and showed me the following video.

Yes, Kate animated, wrote, directed, and composed the music for this video. She made it for her final project for the school year as a way to cope with a relationship that was similar to mine. While watching this video, the hair on my arms began to stand up, there was a rush of adrenaline, and it felt like somebody gut punched me. In all of my years of consuming paintings, drawings, music, movies, books, etc., I have never had a piece of art shake me to my core the way that her short film did. Everything about it made me reflect on the past few months of the amazing times, intimate talks, dumb fights, making up, and being frustrated. A feeling of violation swept over me because it hit so close to home. I looked at Kate and said “I hate you for showing me this, because I’ve been seriously laying in bed like this every morning for the past month. Fuck that was intense…but it was seriously amazing. Like really fucking amazing”. All of our friends told me how talented she was, but this was the first time that I had seen it. It was also the first time that I felt inspired to really start losing myself in photography and produce more work as a way of coping with something that I knew was going to end terribly. If I had a bad day, I would schedule a shoot. If I needed to get my mind off of the relationship, I would edit. Keeping busy and channeling my frustrations became habitual. My output started to increase to a point where even I was astonished with just how much work was pouring out of me.

During that last month of the relationship, Kate told me exactly how everything was going to end, because she had experienced the same thing. And sure enough, it ended the way that she predicted, and I was not in a good place. The panic attacks increased in the middle of the night and I would only sleep three to four hours a day. Luckily Kate was there to help me through all of it. Day by day, week by week, she built me back up piece by piece just by showing me what it was like to be around somebody who cared, had empathy, and was giving. We quickly bonded and became close friends by talking about art, showing each other music videos that inspired us, making dumb ass Snapchat stories, and comparing break up playlists (mine is the superior of the two). All of this talking and hanging out led to us coming up with the idea of possibly collaborating on a video project shot by me, and animated by her. Only one problem…I don’t shoot video, like at all.

For the next few weeks while traveling and photographing, I started to experiment here and there with cell phone video. Luckily for me, I had work that I had to travel for to help inspire me and forget my troubles. It all started in Vegas for my brother’s wedding and continued to Denver, and then Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I became consumed with getting better at telling stories, almost to the point of obsession. Hell, even my snapchats became a way of practicing my storytelling as weird as that sounds.

My other Nephew walking his mom down the aisle.

Everything hit a crescendo when my friend Ivy, who I had been trying to photograph for five years, finally made her way back to Laramie. Kate and I had talked about doing a video of a dancer, but didn't have anyone to work with. Luckily Ivy was in town for a dance workshop and was willing to work with us.

My original cut of the video was a little over a minute long, but Kate found the perfect seven seconds of footage to animate over. When she showed me the final version, it hit me right in the feels. It made me remember the five month journey that it took to get to this point and how Kate picked me up when I was at my lowest. I looked at her and said, "I fucking hate you, because you're so fucking amazing". Out of all of the projects that I have ever done, this is my favorite of all time. And it wouldn't have happened without that little ray of sunlight shining through that perfect storm.

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