MIDYEAR PHOTOSERIES: MEMORY
This time next year I will be outside of high school, and by law an adult. My entire life has been documented by shirts, stuffed animals, drawings, and patches, and carefully saved by my mom. I haven't set up still lives in a while, so decided to flex my old muscles while also sifting through the years I have spent as a child. This year is for reflection. It is for questions and new beginnings and uncertainty. My whole life has been consistent; family, address, school, art. In the coming months and years I will be constantly thrown for a loop, and the only skills I have to tackle them are some I gained from minor hiccups in a fairly even path. The best I can do is look to the past and realize how far I've come, and use that as proof to how far I'll go. |
PORTRAITS
Negative automatic thinking comes with these types or "styles" of thinking that drive your brain. A type of automatic thinking style is black and white thinking- where something is one or the other. Everyone hates me or nothing is worth it or all of this is bad. I struggled a lot with black and white thinking throughout my life. This is about how not everything is black and white and bad- some things are gray and confusing and full of mixed emotion.
Gender has always been difficult for me. When I was younger I preferred to be referred to as agender, or they/them. I wasn't comfortable with femininity- breasts, makeup, anything traditionally "girly". Having a brother, my gender always was fairly undetectable. I liked "boy" things as much as or even more than "girl" things. In a culture that has tried to battle gender constraints and roles, I was lost in what I should be instead of what I am. But mental illness doesn't need gender. Art doesn't need gender. Music doesn't need gender. And that's what I became infatuated with.