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Dejection: according to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, is a “feeling of being unhappy, disappointed, or without hope.”

A few months after my best friend passed away from mental illness after I had turned seventeen years-old, I took this self-portrait photograph in 2018 (initially through using a “Selena Gomez Lose You To Love Me” filter that was widely available on Instagram’s platform). Editing and layering the image on top of itself in different values of greys, over and over again, playing with the contrast on Photoshop until I reached a composition and depth I thought conveyed what I was feeling, I was able to create something I was proud of today. Although Selena Gomez’s song conveys a heartbreak from her breakup with Justin Bieber, at the same time, I was going through a platonic heartbreak. One of losing your best friends before their time, a future robbed, while dealing with a new kind of survivor’s guilt. I had, and have, outlived him. No words could describe how that felt, except maybe these drawings. I was drawn to the filter, not just because of the changing movements, but because of the way the song made me feel. It was perfect: a need to move on, but not wanting to—just having to do so, not just for survival, but for the healing of the self.