Content note: This piece discusses domestic violence, trauma and PTSD
Erosion developed from my own experience of trying to recover from domestic violence, and from the strange disconnect that can remain after you have left. The feeling that your body is technically yours again, but does not entirely feel as though it belongs to you. You can leave a situation and still feel as though parts of it have followed you. There can be a sense of being broken apart, rearranged or made unfamiliar to yourself. Your body can begin to feel strange. Wrong. Almost like walking body horror. That feeling became the foundation of this piece.
The hands in Erosion are not only about the violence itself, they represent what continues afterwards. The person who hurt you may no longer be there, yet your mind and body can continue reacting as though they are. Memories drag things back into the present. Sometimes it can feel as though phantom hands have been left behind, still grabbing at you long after the real ones are gone.
Recovery also means having to learn autonomy again. To understand that your body belongs to you. That your choices belong to you. That you are allowed to exist without constantly anticipating somebody else's reaction. At the same time, there can be an expectation that once you have escaped, the story is over.
You re-enter the world carrying experiences that the people around you may never completely understand. You learn which parts are acceptable to talk about and which make people uncomfortable. You become familiar with questions like "Why didn't you leave?" and sometimes silence feels easier than trying to explain why leaving is rarely as simple as somebody standing outside the situation imagines it to be.
To reflect the memories and the ongoing feeling of danger, I wanted that darkness to feel dangerous rather than empty. If you look into it, there is the suggestion of more hands waiting beyond the ones you can immediately see. The threat does not have a clear boundary.
I wanted it to feel claustrophobic, vulnerable and slightly wrong. The distorted body, grasping hands and darkness turn something psychological into something physical, making visible the kind of damage that can otherwise remain completely hidden.
Domestic violence does not necessarily end at the moment someone escapes it. Sometimes the person who hurt you disappears from your life while the shape of what happened remains. Erosion is about that shape.