I come from a small village in Mersin province, Turkey. There was a time when I would sit on the rocks with my camera that had no name and try to capture the rarest moment of all: a still wave.
Everyone in the village called me Prenses. That means princess in Turkish. The whole village. It was both a term of endearment and an insult. I had always been a little girl. My hair was long, and pink was compulsory. My father is a sailor, and he spends months on the waves.
It was unspoken. What I am, it was never said. It wasn’t to be if no one spoke the hard part out loud. I was thirteen when my lips opened.