Oxford Foglift

My Scholarship entry - Oxford Foglift

United Kingdom | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 | 5 photos

Six months ago, I got into Oxford University as a visiting student. Six months ago, I also thought about killing myself.

The morning after I had been taken to a hospital for passive suicidal behavior and discharged, I set out looking for a way look at the world differently so I could want to live in it again.

That was when I picked up a camera.

I started with my cat; then I moved to cacti. I picked up photography books; I read National Geographics. I packed my bags and flew to Oxford, where I roughed it in the wilderness around the city with my camera: mornings in the meadows, afternoons at abandoned nunneries, evenings by the Thames. I’d post my photos up on my mental health blog with little captions, in hopes that my photos would help anyone else who needed help.

And, last month, someone I don’t know contacted me and said my amateur travel photography/mental healthy blog helped him get help.

Photography restored the incredible view I had of the world before my mental illness, that of a skydiving history major coffee enthusiast who was saving up money to travel and who clung to the idea of getting paid to share my nomadism (fueled on adrenaline, activism, and conservationism). I want this scholarship because I want to recapture the beauty in this world that people – depressed or not – usually forget about. I need the technical skills and instruction to realize my dream.