When asked to choose a picture to represent myself, I found it to be very hard with the chosen guidelines. After a couple of days of searching and several dead ends, I found a picture of a pink rose sitting behind rows of thorns that are black & white, where the rose is the only part of the picture in color. I think I have found an accurate depiction of my inner being in this picture. I say “inner being” meaning the part of me that is inside, that hardly anyone ever gets to meet. I would be completely confident in saying that three components of this inner being would be how I view myself, how other people view me, and how other people's depictions of me determine how I act around them.
The picture of the pink rose behind black & white thorns says a lot about me when I look at it. The first thing that comes to mind is that I am the rose. I am very feminine, as are the rose and the color pink. The rose in the picture looks unfinished. Only some of the petals are completely developed off of the bud of the flower. I feel like only a few pieces of me are fully developed, too. There is still so much that I want to do or experience, like the flower wants to fully bloom. The fact that the rose is in the midst of a black & white world is extremely accurate to me, because I feel oftentimes as though I too live in a black & white world. I say black & white in a few different respects. I feel as though the world is run by black & white people, that people are very narrow-minded and only see the world in black & white, and that the world only concentrates on black & white, that there is no color, no chance of anything being different or unique. I think I am the rose in the world I live in. I am the splash of pink to the picture that I live in; I am the pink rose in my life. But what I see and what others see are two different things.
I do not think most people see me as the rose. I think a lot people see me as the thorns. I can be sharp and cruel and scary sometimes, like the thorns are, particularly if I am scared or mad. If I am being blunt and am able to admit that I do not like someone very much, I do not try to hide it from that person. I am very open and sharp, like the thorn is from the vine. I have a talent, one that I am not sure I am very proud of, of being able to really deliver a sting to people who get close to me, like the thorn does when one touches it.
The thorns in the picture also look like they are protecting the rose, which means that when I act like the thorns, I am protecting the part of myself that is the rose. I think that others may view me as the rose, the thing being protected. People who do not know me see me as a weakling, someone who lets her guard down a lot and needs protection because she can not protect herself. The rose in the picture is in the background and slightly blurry. I feel like some see me that way; they see me as someone in the background, just another person. They see me as something that, even though colorful, does not need a lot of attention. The way people view me gives legitimacy to how I feel I need to act around and interact with them.
The rose and the thorns in the picture work together to produce a powerful image. If the picture were of just a rose, it would not have the same effect as it does due to the thorns. Even though sometimes black & white work better by themselves, in a picture they are more powerful when paired with an additional color, like the pink in the photograph; the colors work better together than they do apart. I feel as though that idea is accurate for the way people treat one another, too. If I am the color to the black & white, the black & white world then feels threatened.
Since I am the color, the black & white scares me. According to the picture, the black & white either decides to capture me, so that I am not able to show my color to anyone else, or I put up the black & white to blend in because I am ashamed and scared to be different, so I do not want anyone to see my color. The way I think people see me automatically affects how I act around them. I either show my color off, or I try my best to hide it and put my guard up. This picture could be showing either side, and that is why I chose it. I chose this picture because there are not just two sides of me, one that is black & white and one that is color, there are several different sides. This picture seemed to show all of them at once when I looked at it for the first time.
The picture of a pink rose in the midst of a black & white world is so compelling because it shows a hint of good and evil, the two sides of a person, and the two sides of the world. The picture says so many things about me, but specifically it expresses how I feel about myself, seeing myself as the rose. The picture shows how I think others think of me, as either the rose or the thorns. And the picture depicts how the two can clash or work together. I think that the picture captures the world as a rose and the thorns that surround it. The picture makes me feel safe, yet insecure. The picture makes me feel peaceful, yet scared. All of these emotions come just from looking at it. So that gets me wondering, what emotions get evoked just from looking at me? Do people see the thorns or the rose? I could tell you, but the answers are already there, in black & white.
