beneath my feet

We are but plastic and wood. No, not in the way one might think. Apart from the myriad wrappers we throw away, the glossy temporariness of the devices we’re so addicted to, and the very structures which hold up the walls around us and hold down the ground beneath our feet, we are but plastic and wood.

by SWETHA BERANA

layout KIERA DIXON photographer ALYSSA OLVERA set design DAVID GARCIA

I was content looking outside in. Everyone was but plastic and wood in this house. The trials and tribulations of life were mere orchestrations, and I was the maestro.

But plastic never grows — it stays content with its smiling, painted-on face.

And so my decision to try and embrace my plastic-ness began — my journey of living through the machinations of the world.

I turned into one of my dolls, playing along to the machinations of someone else, letting the world control me and my self-worth as emotions coursed through me ... I was trapped in the world of rules and what’s okay, trying to let it all out through parties and distractions and people and a cold hard plastic smile to cover up my true alone-ness.

The dollhouse. It was the strange largeness I felt, touching an object I knew meant the world to me when I was little, but it was so small and insignificant that I couldn’t understand why. Yet I felt a strange sense of nostalgia: the desire to be on the outside looking in.