This photograph was taken in my sisters room, which during her mania, was an ever changing world of both beauty and pain. The shelves were decorated with candles and pictures, the wall was covered with huge posters of Janis Joplin, and the floor was scattered with my sisters writings, all scribbled on pieces of notebook paper or typed in different fonts on the computer. Yet what interested me most when I walked in her room to take this picture, was the army vest and sequined hat which were hanging on the corner of her bed, not because they were exciting or pretty, but because they meant so much.

During the day, my sister would wear these things as she acted out her mania to the world, as she walked to the park singing to herself, or as she sat on the sidewalk and napped in the sun; they would be on her almost everywhere she went. Yet now they were just hanging there, a medley of brown, green and shiny red, resting for a bit from the craziness of my sister's wanderings.