Photo taken by contributor Mike Wacht, a 50-year-old professional photographer and communications consultant from Orlando, Florida, who lives with Type II Bipolar Disorder and Anxiety. He is married for the third time with daughters from his previous marriages. In his spare time, he rescues pugs, who then provide him with much needed “lick and snuggle” therapy. He considers himself a storyteller, and uses photography as a primary medium. He completed a personal project in 2013, documenting his feelings during his wife’s deployment with the military through photography and senryu. He is starting a second project in which he is collaborating with models to interpret a variety of emotions.

About this photo: “I don’t like looking in mirrors. I despise my reflection. Yes, I’ll use a mirror to examine my teeth, pluck unsightly ear and nose hair, make sure my hair is acceptably coiffed … things like that. But I don’t like to look at my face as a whole. I just don’t like to see me. This shot seemed a metaphor for my broken relationship with mirrors and my own reflection. I look into a mirror and I see the brokenness in my soul, the cracks in my mind, the flaws in my personality and the failures that haunt my present, the grain that marks my age. In its brokenness, the mirror seems alone and discarded — as I do when my brokenness rears its ugly head.”

Find more from Mike at his website.

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