Weathered Soul
The Comfort That Breaks Me
by Marion van den Ende
In my hand the bottle, on my back the pack I can set down nowhere. It comforts me for a moment, and it breaks me slowly — and still I reach for it again. I know it, and I do it anyway.
- TechniqueHahnemühle · Dibond
- Size100 × 75 cm
- EditionEdition of 24
- Price€995
The burden and the bottle
Addiction rarely begins with the drink itself. It begins with what a person carries — the pack on this woman's back, heavy and impossible to lay down. The bottle is not the cause; it is the last resort, the brief numbing that makes the weight lighter for a while. Therein lies the cruelty: the thing that comforts is the same thing that destroys.
The chain running forward from the pack ties the past to the glass in her hand — what she carries and what she reaches for have become a single chain. Her gaze is lowered, not from shame alone, but from exhaustion: the fight that no one on the outside sees.
This image does not judge. Addiction is not a lack of willpower, but an attempt to survive what became too heavy. The fresco treatment lays open the cracks beneath — and shows, without judgement, a person who sought comfort in the only place she still knew.
