Updated 2/5/25 with IPC results and images
It was seven or eight o’clock. I can’t recall the exact time anymore. It was night and it was fairly cool to be mid-September. The wind may have been blowing. There was only a streetlamp on a light pole to illuminate the very long driveway to my house. It was pitch dark otherwise. My front door was open, allowing the night air to permeate the interior of the living room through the screen door.
There was a single lamp in the den to provide enough light for the coffee table in front of the couch, where I sat staring down at a loaded .22 pistol. There was silence, deafening, ear-ringing, cold silence, yet my face was hot and damp from the tears and the silence broken only by sobs. I spent hours talking to no one. I spent hours shouting at the air. I broke the skin on my knuckles as I punched a hole in the wall earlier that day. Today I can only see a tiny scar, a reminder.
I placed my hand on the grip and picked up the gun, still staring down at it, contemplating, running through all of the events and emotions and constant back-and-forth of twenty-five years that had lead to that moment. It was a moment that lasted what seems like hours to my memory but could only have been a few minutes.
I lifted the gun and clicked the safety off as I placed the cold metal barrel against my right temple. I put my finger on the trigger, daring it to squeeze. To end it. To finally be free of this mortal life and be done.
The thoughts of everything that had fallen apart were loud in my head, like an out-of-tune orchestra whose members were playing a different piece on each instrument, growing louder and louder with each movement, echoing in the void of silence around me. Every second was a lifetime, every breath and heartbeat another waste of energy.
It has been nearly ten years since that night in September of 2015. The details of the events prior aren’t necessary for you to know. Only that it inspired this self-portrait that I entered into the 2025 International Photographic Competition hosted by Professional Photographers of America. The image, titled “Piecing Myself Back Together,” was selected as a Top 32 Finalist to be judged further at Imaging USA, PPA’s annual conference, this year in Grapevine, Texas.
I knew for a long time that I wanted to create this piece, although its actual layout composition and what I would have myself doing was always just out of reach. I knew I’d be holding a gun. I knew I would have multiple versions of myself. Beyond those ideas, it was kind of a blank canvas.
I was inspired by a friend in Golden, Colorado. She loves puzzles and every time I visit her house, there’s a new puzzle on the table. As I was sitting down contemplating what should go into this image, the idea of the puzzle popped in my head and I couldn’t move past it until I had a concept. I realized that “Piecing Myself Back Together” would be the title right then and there. Off to Walmart I went to hunt down a small puzzle that I could easily put together in an hour or so. Turns out it took me three hours and a lot of coffee.
In the meantime, I was conversing back and forth with the World Domination (iykyk) crew on what other ideas could be incorporated into it. Suggestions are always welcome, so long as it fits. For example, I had no intention of adding anything that told a different story than the one I wrote at the beginning of this post because it wasn’t just a story or the story of an image; it was real life. It happened. I did have to take some liberties, though.
I wrote the words and phrases down on white paper with a piece of chalk and used a Denny Manufacturing background (here) to mimic a chalkboard. I photographed the background angled so with the appearance of a left wall and then moved it to make the right wall. I went to the upstairs of my studio and photographed the wood floor. All of the background and floor photographs had to be measured, stepped off, and photographed with a tripod to make sure that angles and perspectives matched. It’s fairly easy when you know your light.
The images of myself were captured straight-out-of-camera. Most of my creative works are edited to give perfection. With this, other than facial blemishes, I knew it needed to be natural and somewhat gritty, so I didn’t clean myself up much or did any more Photoshop work than was necessary to create a composite. I did change the colors of my sweatpants and shirt. Blue being a calming color, the “Me’s” that are piecing together the puzzle needed to be soothing and reassuring.
I used a remote with a timer to photograph the different poses. The pose on the right with the “Me” in the back with the hand on the shoulder was going to be a difficult composite to get right; but wouldn’t you know it, it fit right in where it was supposed to. That’s when I knew that this was a piece that I was meant to make. The ease with which I was able to pull the poses together to look right told me God was definitely speaking, whether for me or for others, I cannot tell. The hardest pose was the one with the gun. I had to put myself back into that moment on that night nine years ago.
As mentioned before, the words I wrote on paper. There were a lot of those phrases. I may have teared up writing them all. Some of them were phrases or words that we all hear at some point in life; others were more sinister and darker and not all of them made the cut. The World Domination crew gave me some advice on making sure the words don’t distract – but they still needed to tell the story of what lead to this moment.
It’ll be ten years this year since that night. I think about it daily. It’s been the biggest struggle of my life.
I threw myself into my work, my art, and went after what I wanted. It gave me focus and turned what was negative into positive. I pursued my degrees through PPA and became a Certified Professional Photographer. I focused on telling my fantasy stories in competition and improved my work with each day.
I went on adventures and met new people, rekindled friendships that I drove away, and discovered a better way to handle things. Certainly not perfection and definitely doesn’t take the pain away. It’s always there and it’ll always be there. But there are so many more good things in my life than bad. Got in church and found a new kind of peace.
I was alone, for the most part. There weren’t a whole lot of people I could talk to and no one knew about that night until around 2020 or so, when I opened up about it. My family never knew. My friends never knew Even now, typically, I don't get to talk to anyone most of the time.
I remember when I was going through chemo in 2012. No one visited. No one called or texted. It was an eye-opener. I decided to try and make some new friends and get to know people and I think that was also a big reason for the depression. I didn't have that kind of connection with people at the time and so the depression didn't really hit me until I did.
Being alone during your darkest hour isn’t pretty. It’s going to bed at two o’clock in the morning and waking up at ten o’clock in the morning. It’s being unmotivated on the couch watching tv and eating your feelings. It’s punching holes in the walls and shattering glass doors with your fist. It’s breaking mirrors because you don’t like what you see in it. It’s smiling in a room full of people so they don’t see it. The last thing you want is sympathy. I wanted to run and hide but when you have nowhere to run and no place to hide, that’s when you put the mask on. My mask is a smile, a nod, and a, “Doing pretty good,” in response to questions about how I’ve been.
Talking about it breathes life into it and there's only so many times I can hear, "Get over it and man up." My friends have their own problems and dumping this on their laps would just be another burden and another phrase to add to the wall.
So I kept my silence and fought the only way I knew how: focus on the art, the work, and disregard the rest of my life.
I don't date because of it and my circle is very, very small. The idea that I'm even writing this right now is quite scary and, in some ways, embarrassing, knowing it's out in the open and knowing how many people come to the Studio Stories of my website.
But it has to be out there.
It needs to be read.
Not for me. Not for the image. Not for competition.
There's a lot of hurt out there. There are a lot of silent-sufferers that have thought what I've thought and felt what I've felt. They've heard what I've heard.
"It's selfish."
"I don't understand how someone can be so stupid..."
"I'll never get why someone would take their own life."
"Why?"
"He/She was always smiling, though?"
"Why didn't he/she talk to me?"
"He/she never said anything."
"You have to be a real low life to commit suicide."
"What would drive someone to do that to themselves?"
Dear Reader,
These are all things I've read, I've heard, and I've seen. Maybe not directed at me, but I've heard it all.
It doesn't make me angry or upset.
I am relieved.
No one should ever think the things I've thought.
No one should ever say the things I've said to myself, to the man in the mirror.
No one should ever have the pain in the heart that has haunted me all my life.
No one should ever question their own value, or anyone else's.
No one should ever feel like they're a burden or a waste of breath.
No one should hate themselves.
No one should feel the way I, and so many others, have felt about ourselves.
So when I hear these things and read these things, it makes me grateful.
It means they've never felt it and therefore could NEVER understand it.
Therefore, I'm thankful. Because the above will never touch them.
To end this piece, I’ll tell you what happened after I put my finger on the trigger.
I sat there, breathing heavily, sobbing, and cursing. I was tired, physically and emotionally. I was hurt. I was alone. I was angry. I was done. I remember calling out to God and shouting, asking why and how much longer. What is the purpose of me being here?
Do I just exist? I’m a photographer; what kind of purpose could I be fulfilling? How much value could I actually have? Who could possibly love me? A woman? My friends? My family? My family, minus my grandparents, ridiculed me my entire teenage and adult life, unending and relentlessly. No woman would ever find me appealing. I had already driven friends away to the point where we went another two years without talking – and it was my own fault.
Cancer had taken away half of what makes me a man. The chemo hadn’t affected me emotionally during treatment but it finally caught up with me, adding in to the above and more. Anxiety attacks had happened so often that for a solid two weeks my muscles would spasm every few seconds, awake or asleep.
I was a broke photographer with no money, no income, no clients, but still had business expenses to pay every month. Add in the idea that I was undervaluing not only my work but the entire professional photographic industry (though I didn’t know it at the time), along with the bills at home, I had a recipe for disaster coming in hot.
I’d spent my time as a teenager looked down upon by people all around me. I had been forced to attend a special needs class in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades that everyone knew I was in. The teachers (excepting two or three) viewed me as a “problem student” and a special needs kid for no reason and my peers looked at me like an animal. This created anger and frustration that would follow me into adulthood. I stayed angry.
I’ll be keeping a few childhood details involving some instances that concern myself and my younger siblings to myself.
It all hit me when I was twenty-five.
For some of you reading you may be thinking, “Well there’s folks in this world who have it way worse.” You are one-hundred percent correct, for the most part. It’s all about perspective and what your own personal experiences present you.
My favorite is when someone says, “The Bible says God won’t give you anything you can’t handle!”
If you can point to where in the Holy Bible it is written I’d greatly appreciate it. I’ll save you the trouble, though, because you won’t find it.
You will find, however, that the Bible says (over and over) to give your burdens to God and to trust and put your faith in Him.
I never knew what faith was and believe me when I say that, at thirty-four, I’m still struggling with it. I’m writing this on faith, I think. I never thought I’d share so much when I started laying out the details of this post. I never thought I’d sit here and be as vulnerable and as open as I am right now. It’s scary and it’s uncomfortable, perhaps more uncomfortable than you are reading it.
My hope is in God and in God is my faith. I think I’m being lead to be so open because I’m finally fulfilling a part of my purpose by writing this. If even one person can read this and say to themselves, “He’s right, I am loved and worth it and have a purpose,” then I have fulfilled it.
In this entire post you never heard anything about my dog, my girl, my best friend ever. My dad doesn’t care for her too much (she’s his granddog, though, and if you see him make sure to ask about his granddog). What he doesn’t know is what happened next – perhaps he’ll change his mind now.
This may seem simple and anticlimactic but every word is true.
As I was readying to pull the trigger, I heard her paws clicking across the floor as she made her way from the bedroom into the den. It was the first sound besides my own breathing and sobbing that had interrupted the anger that filled the room. The lights were too dim to see anything more than her black form making her way through the doorway and to the couch where I sat with a gun in my hand.
As I sat there, ready to die and end my life, she placed her head on my leg and this detail I remember clearly. Her brown eyes stared up at me, unmoving. She wasn’t wagging her tail. She wasn’t being overly excited or curious. She was just looking at me. She let out a sigh through her nose, as all dogs do for some reason, and I slid off the couch and down to the floor with her and held her close. Somehow the gun was no longer in my hand.
Here was this creature that knew nothing about what I was shouting and yelling about all afternoon and night. She was depending on me. Sure, she’s a dog, but she was still a living, breathing thing that needed me. Who would take care of her with me gone? Who could love her as much as I do (because who doesn’t love their dog?) and treat her the way I treat her? What would happen to her? How long before she would be in the street? I spent so much time with her and trained her. Starbuck was absolutely dependent on me.
I don’t remember how long we were on the floor, me at my lowest point and my dog being a comfort. I don’t remember what happened after nor do I remember how I went to bed but somehow I did. I had made it through the night because my dog, for the first time ever, had sensed something was wrong and intervened.
The way I see it, God knew I needed that dog when I first got her in 2013. Not since that night has she had any sort of sense of my emotional state. It was only that night.
My recovery to piece myself back together did not happen over night. It would be another six months before I began attending church and meeting a whole new family to help me through the darkness for several years. It wouldn’t be the last time I drove my fist through the wall, either. It wouldn’t even be the last time I would feel low to the point of my breaking point.
I haven’t held the gun to my head since that night, though, and I have no plans to.
I never would have achieved what I have achieved if I had, nor would my work be seen across the country, even on an international scale, as it is right now. I never would have seen the most beautiful parts of this country if I had pulled the trigger. I wouldn’t be sitting here recounting what may be too much to retell so that someone, somewhere can be touched by the words that could take their own finger off the trigger.
That’s the big ending to this story. It may not be the big finale that others with similar tales have to tell. It may not even affect you the way I intend it to, I don’t know.
This is my story and while I didn’t tell you everything, I told you enough.
Fastforward to Imaging USA in Grapevine, Texas (quite possibly my favorite of the DFW area) and I had a great time, if somewhat hampered by some medical issues. I made it home safely after leaving early - I had to miss out on watching some friends get their degrees at the Award and Degree Ceremony Tuesday night.
Over the last few days, as more and more folks have discovered the story behind the image, so many people have reached out both in person and via text or messaging.
On the one hand, I knew that this would become a thing but on the other, I'm very glad that the message and its importance is being not only understood but having the very impact that I had hoped it would have.
So thank you.
Here are the results of the International Photographic Competition:
Piecing Myself Back Together - Round of 32, Bronze Medal
Spirit - Round of 16, Silver Medal
Heroic Aspirations - Final Four, Platinum Medal
3 Comments
Feb 2, 2025, 9:06:16 PM
martha stuckey - Corey, thank you for sharing your story. I truly believe that God will use you to save many hurting people. I’m thankful that you put the gun down and stayed with us. God bless you.
Feb 2, 2025, 3:37:06 PM
Dana & Luke - Corey, I'm so proud of you for sharing your story. It's not easy to do. Those voices of judgement stop way too many people from getting help and sharing their experiences. You are admired and loved by more people than you'll ever fully know. I know what it's like to have a dog sent for a purpose and am so glad you had your girl when you needed her most.
Jan 31, 2025, 8:38:56 PM
Katlyn Saucer - Corey your words are beautiful. Your story is your testimony. Thank you for not pulling the trigger that night, for my greatest blessings would have never had you in their life. They’re your biggest fans, and we are so proud of your accomplishments.