Learning to See

When I was a child, I lived in the shadows.
Noise wasn’t allowed in our house. The TV couldn’t be too loud. I learned to tiptoe through life, to keep my presence quiet, to follow every rule. My mother lived by them, and so I learned to survive inside them.

I remember the little black-and-white box TV I found one day — small enough to hide in a closet, with dials that clicked through the channels. It became my window to the world. I’d sit there in the late ’90s and early 2000s, watching Everybody Loves Raymond, One on One, The Parkers. That last one I got to see in color because my mom liked it. We would sit together, silent, watching people laugh on-screen while our house stayed still.

I didn’t realize it then, but that silence was shaping me. I learned to hear what wasn’t said, to notice every flicker of expression, every shift of light across the wall. I was studying emotion, studying presence — without knowing it.

When I found the camera, I didn’t understand how it gave me a voice. I could see others clearly — what made them unique, what made them come alive — but when I turned the lens toward myself, I couldn’t find me. Maybe it makes sense. I had never been seen, and for a long time, I didn’t want to be. I used to turn off the lights, sit on the floor in the dark, and listen to the quiet hum of the world.

I hated the light as a kid. It made me feel exposed.
So when I became a filmmaker, I avoided it. For nearly a decade, I shot everything as it was — natural light only, no fixtures, no setups. I didn’t own lights. Maybe part of me still feared what they revealed.

But the camera — this small piece of technology I carried everywhere — started doing something I couldn’t: it made people look at me. It made them invite me into their stories. Through it, people asked for my opinion, trusted my vision, shared their imagination. It was like being at a friend’s birthday party for the first time — something I never got to experience as a kid.

I didn’t have many friends growing up. For my first seven years, it was mostly just me, my imagination, and the quiet. But now, through film, I’ve found a way to turn that silence into something else. I reflect others. I help them feel seen.

Maybe this is how I finally learned to see myself too.