Melancholy was created on the edge of a major turning point in my life. I stood on the Blue Ridge Parkway, looking out toward the North Carolina Piedmont Region just days before leaving home for my first year of college at High. The sky opened with a massive towering cloud that felt almost impossibly large, and in that moment, it mirrored the emotional landscape inside me.
 
There was a sense of freedom drifting in the air, a lightness that comes with stepping into something new. Yet mixed within it was a quiet weight, the heaviness of leaving the familiar behind and stepping into a world that wasn’t yet mine. The land below felt grounding, roots still holding me, while the sky carried the pull of possibility.
 
This photograph is a reflection of that duality. The storm and the sunlight, the shadow and the glow, the comfort of home and the thrill of the unknown. It captures a threshold moment where past and future meet, where a single breath can hold both fear and hope.
 
Melancholy is a reminder that growth rarely happens without complexity. Sometimes the storm is what shows us just how much sky we have to fly into.