The BIG PICTURE - A Camera, A Young Woman, An Uncompromising Ethic

Guilt’s a worthless emotion but recognizing that didn’t make it go away. Freyja felt guilty and inadequate and resented her father for making her feel that way. This wasn’t being ‘master of her fate’ and ‘captain of her soul’, this was more being ruled by the ‘fell clutch of circumstance’.

She wanted recognition and praise for her photos. To relate and relive the experience gave it substance, made it real. She wanted validation that what she was doing was important. She needed comfort and sympathy for the setbacks. Instead the situation demanded these things from her.

Her loser, sycophant, over indulged, spoiled to the point of being rotten, baby brother was responsible for her being here and feeling this conflicted. Again, BB was getting the attention and again not for something he’d accomplished, but for another of his calamities.

Back in her bedroom Freyja searched a box in the closet for some abandoned clothes. She found a pair of Arni’s jeans, a T-shirt and hoody sweatshirt. She took a pair of panties from her mother’s dresser. She shirked off her pajamas and walked into the shower.

Her family was a liability not an asset. Her fascist mother, her handicapped father, her drug addict baby brother, her psychopath oldest brother, her sainted, compliant sister, all victims of a working poor mentality. An ethic that said it’s not so bad, when it was, you couldn’t do better, when you could, a stultifying complacency that killed the spirit and numbed the soul. Was it wrong to want more?