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Like Remembering Through A Broken Mirror
The Inconstancy of Nostalgia
One of the worst things I can do, anytime I’m even remotely near the gravitational well of a depressive episode, is go back and look at old photographs. I try to avoid it wherever I can.
Except for my selfies, which are snapped at pretty much any random time, good or bad, most photographs of myself — along with most of the photographs I take in general, are of the good times. Those moments, few and far in between as they are, that keep me going along.
There’s a bittersweetness in looking at old photographs, especially the oldest ones I have, the ones that center around the aftermath of my senior year of high school. The friends who are no longer friends, memories that are no longer memories, they still manage to hearken back to a better time.
Don’t you remember when so-and-so was your friend? Don’t you remember when you were happy.
And I was happy. At least, I think I was. In that photograph, in that moment.
But it’s so easy to conflate that moment to that entire era. I was happy back then. I was happy when I was friends with them. I wish I could be back in that moment again.
It’s so easy to cling to those moments, to pray that life will return to that moment, to that slate…
