Trace Elements

The fog’s beginning to lift. My mind contains a lightness that was previously absent, my thoughts string together more coherently, and I talk to myself less in the shower.

HK
2019—22
Compiled in 2024
Photography (B/W) + Text

Contact for use.

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I get out of bed, take my medication. There’s a deftness to my movements I haven’t felt in a while. The depressive period is coming to an end. Today, the world wants me in it.

I drink my coffee. A positive feeling trickles from the back of my mind and reverberates in small circles down my spine. What seemed heavy now feels light. It took me a long time to learn that depressive periods are just that, periods. That they, too, will pass. And that no matter what I do, even if I do everything the right way, I might still fall into the hole and bathe in the world’s runoff. This affliction is simple, in a sense. But, even within periods of depression, things are not all bad. Or rather, it’s not about sadness. I think that’s a common misconception when discussing depression. It’s more nuanced than that. There are more facets to it.

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I sit and watch the mountainside opposite me through the window. The greens shift subtly as the day moves across their surface. The trees move too, not always with grace, but with a kind of honesty I find comforting. There’s a particular kind of beauty that becomes visible in the slow hours of a depressive period, not in spite of feelings, but somehow through it. It’s not joy, exactly, but something steadier. A clarity. A moment of solace that insists gently: ‘even now, this is still the world.’
These photos were taken over multiple cycles of depression, coming and going like breaks in the weather, so to speak.

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On light and dark: my friend mentioned that when people approach him in dreams, they’re surrounded by an aura so bright they’re impossible to look at. He’s never sure who they are.
There are days when the sun drenches all the world’s details, like an overexposed photograph. There are days when darkness settles in, not with violence, but like a curtain drawn. Days like a room in twilight, where the darkness slowly opens up, details emerge, and I linger. This world in the shadows is one that I feel relaxed in. My eyes adjust, and I go to work. I’m comfortable.

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I’d like to live in a world of balance. And I think, sometimes, I can see a pathway to get there.

On days when I float through the world like someone else’s idea.

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And also on days when I don’t.

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Some images on this page have been sliced. In such instances alt text is included in the first slice of each image.