GALE
GALE
If I look for a word to define what I’ve felt this past week, the most fitting is GALE. A gale of emotions and contradictions.
I saw Pralad’s work a long time ago and didn’t hesitate to write to him! Without knowing him, I felt he was the right person to live this experience, so intense for me.
We had been trying to coordinate this session for a couple of months without managing to make it happen, for different reasons. Maybe that’s why I still saw it as something far off and was super calm.
But the day came when we finally managed to align our schedules, our universes. When I saw a message saying “next Friday?”, a real storm began in me. And I don’t mean it was a stormy week, quite the opposite! It was like an electrical storm. All the time, every day, I felt butterflies in my stomach, the “good nerves”.
I like taking photos of myself; I always have. I like showing skin, feeling sensual in my photos. I like looking at myself through my camera and feeling a warmth all over my body that tells me “go on, take the photo, you look so hot”. Photos I sometimes share with others; some I send to my boyfriend as a game, and some I simply keep for myself. It’s something that has even helped me love my body more, to eroticize it both for myself and for my partner, and that has also made my sexuality explode, with more games between us, more desire to try new things.
But this time the camera would be someone else’s.
At first my anxiety and need to plan everything, organize everything, have everything under control, made me think that something so new for me (posing in front of someone else’s camera) and so far outside my comfort zone would overwhelm me and I’d regret it, or that I wouldn’t be able to relax and give myself over the way I wanted when the time came to take the photos. I imagined every worst-case scenario. It wasn’t easy dealing with all those emotions; my mind sometimes betrays me. But as the day got closer I felt calmer, more confident, more at peace. I realized I couldn’t let an experience this special, something that could be so lovely and even mark a super positive before and after in my life, generate negative feelings in me like doubt, insecurity, shame or frustration with my own body. Something changed in me: I decided to enjoy it and enjoy myself, and the whole process inside me was wonderful.
And when the day came, the experience was perfect from start to finish. From when Nan made me look beautiful with makeup (thank you <3) until we got to the place with Pralad to take the photos. I simply took off all my clothes and we began. I didn’t think about it. Not even how freezing I was could dim how happy I was!
All I can say is that this will definitely be the first of many experiences like this that I want in my life <3