The idea of this photonarrative was to tell a story within six photo frames.
My photonarrative was called “Child’s Play.” 
It depicts a girl who wakes up in a strange place and is trying to get out. She soon realizes, however, that all of the doors and windows are locked, which forces her to explore her new surroundings in order to find an alternative means of escape. In the last frame, there is a child, meant to be the girl’s younger self, looking at a dollhouse. And trapped behind the window of the house is the girl herself.
The purpose of my photo-narrative is to illustrate the concept of not wanting to grow up. The photos are supposed to show that often many people are stuck in the past because they never actually matured and stopped acting like children. It is also meant to illustrate the difficulties with getting out of this habit and how this childish behavior easily becomes the norm.
This meaning has a personal relevance for me as well, because I tend to have problems with taking responsibility and acting like an adult. It is definitely a struggle and a lot of times I find myself trapped in my own sort of dollhouse, trying to get out so that I can finally make the transition into adulthood.
The photonarrative was inspired by a short story I wrote called “The Dollhouse,” which addresses this idea of adults who never grow up.
The Dollhouse
I got the call again last week.
It was my sister, calling my house at one in the morning from a payphone outside of a 7-Eleven. Her babbling was incoherent as she screeched into the phone, saying that she was getting evicted again. That the landlord was the biggest asshole she’d ever met. That he wouldn’t even let her default on her rent for a few months. That he wouldn’t even cut her a little break, even after she had batted her eyelashes and swayed her hips.
“I mean how the hell am I supposed to pay 700 a month on a waitress’s salary?” She blubbered. “I can barely even afford to go out now.”
I massaged my temples, the fluorescent lights irritating my eyes still heavy with sleep, “What happened to that two thousand I lent you last month? I gave you that to help out with the rent.”
As usual, she ignored my perfectly reasonable question, undoubtedly sensing my annoyance.
“So now I’m sleeping on Niko’s couch, but he says I have to leave soon and I don’t know where I’m going to go because I’m—.”
“Wait, what? Why do you have to leave soon?”
I heard a loud thump as she dropped the receiver and picked it up off of the ground.
“Oh uhm,” she murmured as she recollected herself. “He’s kind of, uh, pissed that the dollhouse takes up like half of his tiny living room.”
I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut as I held my head in my hands, “You brought the goddamn dollhouse?”
She’s just so immature sometimes. I mean, she took that stupid dollhouse instead of her clothes or her credit card over to her boyfriend’s house. She took the dumb thing everywhere. The dollhouse came with her to college, it came with her to her first apartment, and it came with her to her first husband’s house (and came with her to yet another apartment after the nasty divorce). The dollhouse is probably the only constant that has ever been present in her life; because for some odd reason her most prized possession was that gaudy, pink plastic house she got for Christmas when she was five.
It was the Christmas our parents got divorced and the last one where we were all together and happy.
“Why can’t you just donate that thing to Goodwill already? It just takes up space.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not? It just takes up space.”
“So?”
“You don’t even have any space. You’re practically goddamn homeless right now,” I shouted into the receiver, having a sudden urge to throw it against the wall. I mean she woke me up at one in the fucking morning to bitch and moan about her “misfortune,” yet again. Maybe if she didn’t spend all her time partying and sleeping around, she’d get somewhere in life and stop calling me from payphones
at ungodly hours.
“What is your problem?”
I groaned in frustration, my problem? My problem?
“You are my fucking problem, if you weren’t so goddamn irresponsible you’d stop acting like a child and taking your prized possession from kindergarten everywhere!”
She was crying loudly now. Her dramatic sniffling didn’t make me pity her, it just made me want to shake her and tell her to shut up.
“Seriously, when are you going to grow up? I can’t keep babysitting you just because you want to have fun, fun, fun all the time.”
“Why are you so mean to me?” She blubbered, choking on her tears.
“I’m not, I’m just being real with you.”
And with that the line went dead.
