The Shell She Deserved
The 100 Days of Being Seen: Field Notes — Days 15–28
I hesitated. The painting was almost finished — a figure emerging from earth pigments I’d gathered from a cold mountain river four years ago during my birthday getaway to Upstate New York, balancing on a slippery rock, stuffing the deep pockets of my parka with the rocks and pieces of golden ochre. She had two shells floating above her. I kept on feeling that something was missing. I had an irresistible urge to place another one coming out of her vulva. She felt empty without it. It also felt utterly wrong.
What would people think?
I sat with that for a moment, watching imaginary scenarios unfolding in my head. Then I quickly picked up the brush and painted the shell. As soon as it was done, the figure felt complete. I loved her immediately. And by her, I mean myself, because she is my self-portrait from day twenty-five.
The second two weeks of my hundred-day project have been taking me places - from dissolving my face into puddles of shapes and clouds to shedding any facial signs altogether, to turning myself into an insect. The metamorphosis of it all, and I don’t even know what the new form will emerge next. What I know for sure is that the shell became too tight, and I don’t know yet if I’ll find a new one, emerge, or cut the pieces of myself to continue existing in the old one.
Something started shifting around day fifteen. I found a bottle of gray ink called Dove Gray in a busy stationery shop. I carried it home like a treasure. Black had started feeling too harsh, so I wanted something less rigid. The ink washed over the page like an ocean, turning my eyes into fish. Seagulls appeared above my eyebrows out of thin air.
By day sixteen, I wrote: my self-portraits are getting less and less representational of a human face in a traditional sense. They slowly move into a realm of shapes, clouds, and pulls of color. I want to relax to a point where I won’t think of nose, eyes, or cheeks, but will exhale the echo dancing between my thoughts.
A project called The 100 Days of Being Seen was slowly dissolving the creator’s face.
It wasn’t in the plans. It just kept happening, and I swam with it. The performing instinct wants a recognizable face — something to evaluate, to compare, to approve or reject, but my paintings kept refusing to give it one.
On day seventeen, I woke from a dream about war. My late grandfather was sitting on the terrace of a cafe, completely calm, watching the sky as drones flew overhead. I begged him to run. I know what to do, don’t worry, he said. Then I was transported above the city, watching clouds of rubble grow in different places. Then to the wooden benches in the neighborhood where I grew up. My dad, my grandfather, my mom, and I. We said goodbye. Mom and I started walking away somewhere. Let’s pass through the farmer’s market, she said. Let’s get some tomatoes.
In the spring of 2022, my mom fled the occupied city for Portugal. My dad is still living in a warzone. I don’t want to know what it meant that we left him there, and, honestly, I don’t have the nerve to know.
That evening, I painted elongated blue dots spreading around where a face would be.
My body kept insisting on being seen too, not just as the instrument of making but as the subject of it. On day nineteen, I was anxious and jittery; my pulse felt erratic even at rest. I blamed the new thyroid medication, or the worry about my mom, or both. I feel that my nervous system has gone through so much fear and keeps returning to it, even when there is nothing to fear.
On day twenty-one, I had a cardiologist appointment. Even though the doctor was nice and attentive, I burst into tears as soon as I walked outside. I thought I healed that part, but apparently someone who had heart surgery and months of not knowing needs more time…and healing…and another ocean of love poured into the bleeding wound.
I went home and started that day’s self-portrait with a thick wash of bright red. It became a big, juicy heart. My heart. My beautiful and hopeful heart that I love so much.
Day twenty-two: I spent almost two hours trying on glasses, finding the right balance between seeing what’s far away and what’s right in front of me. Turns out I needed multifocals. Interesting thing to learn a week before you turn forty. That day’s portrait looked back at me with a dozen curious eyes - no nose, no cheeks, just eyes.
Day twenty-four arrived without words. I didn’t write anything. Just butterfly wings full of color — the same butterfly that had been slowly dying in my throat on day three, back now with a body, with wings, mid-flight.
I didn’t plan that either. I just watched things appear from the depths of my subconscious with a brush in my hand, ready to give them form.
There’s a famous quote attributed to Michelangelo: I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. I thought about it on day twenty while I was trying to carve today’s version of me out of moving blobs of paint. Zero plans. Just rivers of pigment and curiosity to find out what lies beyond my anxiety.
What I'm finding is that the thing being carved free doesn't look like what I expected at all. It’s not more polished, more confident, or more composed. It’s stranger. Less recognizable. More itself.
She has shells where she needs them. She has butterfly wings growing out of her back. She has no face you could easily describe. Some days I don’t like her at all. But I am still looking forward to the new day and a clean sheet of paper in front of me.
On day twenty-six, I wrote: I hold multitudes, juggling them back and forth and sideways. I feel like a big mollusk, grounded in my own shell, fearlessly rising from within. I am growing new hands. The shell becomes tighter and tighter. I need to find a new shell, or to come out of it, or… cut the arms.
I turned forty on day twenty-eight. Something is growing, emerging, unfolding, even if I don't register it. The paintings keep dissolving the face, adding wings, refusing the familiar shape.
If you’re here, you already know what this project is about: a hundred days of painting myself, and trying to be honest about what that’s like. What’s behind this wall is the unedited version of that honesty - a short note from each day, written before reflection has a chance to smooth anything over. Sharing something this unguarded feels easier with a smaller audience.
