I saw this structure on an aimless walk and stopped to wonder.
Not because it was remarkable, but because it resembles life.
Well… at least mine.
A dystopian construct, cold, mechanical, brutal in its design.
A tower not meant to be climbed easily, maybe not at all.
Its first warning is the lock, sealed and distant.
To me, that lock has always been the chaos I came from.
The violence of the Middle East, the protests, the bombs.
The years of watching my world bleed.
It wasn’t just a barrier, it was the thing that kept me in.
Locked into a path. A geography. A profession. A trauma.
Then there are the thorns.
A crown of metal, bureaucratic, sharp, and senseless.
Each point a checkpoint. A passport stamped with suspicion.
A file confiscated. A night visitor pounding on the door.
The years I stayed just sane enough to keep documenting,
just mad enough to know I had to leave.
And I did leave. I climbed.
And for a while, the way was clear.
A straight ladder, rung after rung.
And now I’m close. Close to the top.
A new country, a good job, a quiet life.
It’s good. It really is.
But still I find myself asking:
What comes after the top?
Because we can’t fly.
There’s no platform up here. No wings.
Just air, and the quiet realization
that once you’ve escaped the thing that shaped you,
you’re no longer sure what to do with the freedom.
So we fall. Or we jump.
Or we climb back down.
Or worse, we go in circles.
A never-ending loop of successes and failures.
And that’s what haunts me.
The full circle.
These days, I walk alone, camera in hand.
The same Canon 5D Mark II I once carried into smoke and fire.
Now it’s just me and it, wandering quiet streets, wooded paths, stairwells to nowhere.
I don’t shoot with purpose anymore. I don’t chase headlines or history.
I walk, aimlessly sometimes. It's strapped across my shoulder.
A weight I welcome, the only thing that feels genuine in this new life.
This camera is the only witness I have left.
The last thread connecting who I was to who I’ve become.
It knows where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, what I’ve survived.
It was there when the shouting started.
There when the bullets came.
There when I bled.
And it’s still here now.
A friend in exile.
A ghost that sees me.
A silent companion that reminds me,
Not just of what was, but what should have been.
And in that moment, standing beneath this tower, I raised the lens toward it.
Was I trying to see myself beyond the metal crown?
Or should I have looked down?
Finding the version of me still bleeding at the base?
I didn’t feel like a photographer anymore. I felt like a fraud.
Like I was borrowing a language I used to be fluent in.
That camera once gave me purpose. Now it gives me questions.
I don’t know what I’m trying to capture anymore.
The present? The past? proof that I still exist between them?
But I clicked the shutter anyway.
Because maybe standing in that tension,
between who I was, and who I’ve become,
is the only truth I have left to frame.
I don’t know what comes next.
But I know the tower is real.
And for now, I’m still standing.
Somewhere between the base and the top.
