The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Week after week passes, and one feeling becomes increasingly clear inside me:

I need to let go of certain people.

People with whom there is no longer anything real to talk about.

People with whom warm conversations have turned into awkward silence.

People toward whom I keep opening, while they remain closed.

And people I cannot even open toward because the word TABOO already seems stamped across their foreheads.

Letting go.

It is an essential part of life, and yet sometimes it makes everything so painfully difficult.

Attachment to another person is a deep emotion.

It cannot simply be cut like a loose thread.

We need time to understand loss.

And then time to accept it.

Still, the contradictions raging inside me prove something I already know:

My path with these people has ended.

I have to release them.

I know that I am damaged goods in some ways.

Fragile too.

Life has brought me countless disappointments.

I am naive.

But I learn from my mistakes.

Slowly perhaps, but I learn.

And along the way, I have also learned to accept myself.

Including my flaws.

In earlier relationships, I was suppressed.

Rarely understood.

I often felt more like an outsider than one half of a whole.

Still, I tried not to lose myself.

I held onto my ideas and dreams.

Sometimes that meant leaving people behind because they no longer fit the picture I had of myself and my life.

I had one enormous dream.

They kept repeating that nothing would ever come of it.

That I myself was nobody special.

Just one person among millions.

And “nobodies” do not deserve great dreams or extraordinary fulfilment.

Maybe to them I really was just one among many.

But despite all their efforts, they never managed to kill the small sparkling ray of hope inside me.

My colourful personality was too much for them.

And yet I was the one who kept running away.

From them.

From the entire world.

Countless times.

Sometimes I ran home to my family.

Other times I left an entire city behind.

Anything, as long as I did not have to look back.

I wanted to move forward.

Do not drag me backward simply because the image of me inside your head does not match reality.

They did not believe in me.

Worse, some of them used me.

You know the pattern.

Sweet compliments delivered drop by drop.

Promises.

Praise in front of friends or before a party:

How beautiful you are.

How talented.

Then behind closed doors, where nobody can see what is happening, the emotional terror begins.

Argument after argument.

Most of my relationships were like badly designed roller coasters.

Far more falling than climbing.

Far more discomfort than pleasure.

There can be a disturbingly subtle overlap between pleasure and fear.

The compliments worked for a while.

I tried to please them.

Tried to become what they imagined.

Then eventually the thread snapped.

I packed my things.

Moved abroad.

Opened another chapter.

Started from zero again.

My aching soul, desperate for love, attracted yet another wounded man.

I believed it was my job to rescue him.

Make his life better.

He will be different, I thought.

It is the same every time.

The naive little girl inside me still believed in fairy tales.

I imagined the two of us would somehow save the world together.

That did not happen.

If anything, we suppressed one another.

And still it took years before we had enough.

My expectations toward myself became higher and higher.

His message remained the same:

“You won't manage it.”

Only later did I understand what a useful tool I had become for other people's egos.

It took me twenty-seven years to finally say:

Enough.

Did I run away again?

No.

I think this time I simply understood:

First I have to find myself.

Independent of everybody else.

I have to identify what is genuinely good for me.

What makes me happy.

Something that has nothing to do with pleasing another person and arises entirely from inside me.

Photography.

Drawing.

Writing.

It does not matter which one.

I simply need to create.

Something lasting.

Something that can also make other people happier as a secondary effect.

I returned to Hungary.

Once again, I left behind somebody who did not complete me.

And I accepted that before I look for somebody who feels like a soulmate, I first need to become whole by myself.

Alone, I am already a whole person.

I know what makes me happy.

Everyone else comes after that.

Within only a few weeks of forming that thought clearly, opportunities I had always dreamed of began knocking on my door.

Because other people had suppressed my belief in myself for so long, I had never truly expected those opportunities to arrive.

It all started with a simple CV portrait session.

That was followed by a conversation.

Then came an opportunity to learn from a professional who loves exactly what I love:

Photography.

I was unbelievably happy.

I also found work quickly after returning home.

I could feel a small flame beginning to burn inside me again.

Other people noticed too.

My male colleagues increasingly commented that I seemed to be blossoming.

Some flirted with me even though wedding rings were clearly shining on most of their fingers.

I even felt a sudden attraction toward a younger colleague who was already in a relationship.

I stopped myself.

I blocked every desire and avoided him.

I rebuilt walls around myself.

After all, I told myself, I am whole alone.

I do not need anybody right now — especially not someone who is already taken.

The cold, empty winter landscape of my life began changing into a warm, lush, almost humid spring moving toward summer.

In the sunlight, the silver-white scars healed across my soul began to shine.

And now I can smile at them.

They are the raised traces of years, experiences and lessons behind me.

They will always remind me where I came from and how far I have travelled.

Finally I felt:

Everything is all right.

Everything has fallen into place.

Days and weeks passed.

I even found a model for a photo shoot.

I could hardly wait to begin creating.

I was practically at the studio door when the model called and cancelled.

Once again, I broke.

Not as completely as before.

But it hurt.

I wanted to create, and the subject of that creation had suddenly disappeared.

I want to keep moving.

I know this is my path.

Yet life keeps placing obstacles in front of me.

But I have already overcome so much.

Why would I give up now?

There will be another person, I tell myself.

Someone ready to become part of the creative process.

Someone who stands at the other end of my lens and allows me to reveal something they themselves may not yet recognise.

I have also been the model inside a studio.

And I was there because I wanted to be.

I wanted to see myself through another person's eyes.

To experience something I had never experienced anywhere else.

I want to keep going.

I want to shine.

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And I want to help other people shine too.

I will not leave my path.

I will not give up my dreams.

A well-designed portrait session aims to create genuine, confident presence in the final photograph.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.