This series explores the hidden nature of domestic and family violence and how surface appearances can be deceiving. The artist uses her personal experience of her first relationship at age sixteen, characterised by domestic violence and significant coercive control. After escaping this relationship at age twenty, many of Drey’s personal belongings were either left behind or destroyed. The only photographs she had remaining of this time in her life were of her and the man who had abused her. The artist tore each photograph in half, only keeping the image of herself, tossing the images of her ex-partner away in a cathartic act of rebellion. These original photographs of the artist’s sixteen-year-old self were layered with hand drawn self-portraits of her adult self. The silent subject directly gazes at the viewer, urging them to look closer, to see layered complexities. Nostalgia is a complex emotion, it is sentimental but not necessarily joyful, it is a longing for a different time and place. These works represent a longing for a time before this relationship. For a time of innocence, of freedom, before maturing beyond one’s years. They also represent an ambiguous kind of grief for teenage years that feel cheated, for they were not as they should have been and never will be. The artist held onto these torn photographs to hold onto her sixteen-year-old self, who endured these years of control and abuse. The young person who became the adult she is today, who survived to live a life that is free- spirited and who stands in solidarity with other victim-survivors of abuse.