The Room Behind the Eyes

When I was seven, I spent an entire rainy Tuesday hiding in the back of my mother’s wardrobe. It was dark, smelling of cedar and old wool, and for the first time, I realized that I could be entirely alone without being lonely. I watched the dust motes dance in the sliver of light that cut through the door, and I felt like a secret I was keeping from myself. As children, we are always being looked at—by teachers, by parents, by the world—but in that small, cramped space, I was the only witness to my own existence. I learned then that there is a version of ourselves that only comes out when the house is quiet and the doors are shut. We spend the rest of our lives trying to find our way back to that solitude, that specific stillness where we are both the observer and the observed. Does the person you are when no one is watching feel more real than the one who walks out the front door?

Maria Magdalena Vladu-Popa has taken this beautiful image titled Self-portrait. It captures that exact, quiet tension of turning one’s gaze inward to find the truth of the room. Does this stillness feel like a sanctuary to you?