I’ve been stuck in the camera roll recently. It’s painfully embarrassing. I’ve been finding excuses to go looking. Since leaving home, any delve into nostalgia was off-limits. Explicitly prohibited. And that was on other people. I wasn’t going to be nostalgic. My life was moving forward, with pace. My degree was always so close to being left in the dust there was nothing behind worth looking at. At least, not with a swoon and a sigh. And now, the months grind to a halt. I’m reminded of school days, simply because in weaker moments I am desperate for a day to go by.
In my teens I constantly railed against taking pictures until I had none and then started taking pictures of everything; documenting my life and the lives of those around me became an almost burdening task. The point in a friendship, relationship, etc. where I think it’s now okay to pull my camera out is always so relieving for me. I can now finally make sure my senile ninety year-old self will never forget you. I’ve been looking back on those first photos of people recently. Sorry, I’ve been traipsing through the photos and coming across those first photos (must admit the embarrassing). They are mesmerising. Because the memories are so disentangled with the image. A face changes the more you look at it. The face I see in those pictures is the face I see now but it’s not the face that I saw then. It’s a nauseating sort of time travel that’s been keeping me up long passed (or past? passed? I really don’t know. it’s scary how little I can explain when my mother asks me to help teach my brother english) my bedtime.
I was on the phone to a friend the other day and they opened up their photos on their laptop for a reason I don’t remember and the screen was filled with their most recent ex. “Oh no,” I said. “I don’t miss them,” they replied. I laughed, kind of chokily. Not that I didn’t believe them; I did. I probably should have told them in that moment that I’m dying in my own camera roll. (I’m also pissed that I call it a camera roll now and that I’m probably not using brackets right because my brother is learning to use brackets and I don’t know how to answer his questions about brackets.) I didn’t tell them, but also maybe I did and I’ve already forgotten because I didn’t get my camera out to make sure I remembered.
I’m also very unhappy with how many photos I’ve taken. And videos. I take a lot, but it hasn’t been satiating. It’s not enough. I wonder whether that means I’ll start taking more. Even more. I can’t forget things just because they are boring. It’s a bad reason to forget something, I haven’t found a good reason to forget anything yet though.
A dead horse can be beaten, and beaten it will be. I feel like I’m beating a herd of them at the moment. An occasional crass of electricity to ventriloquise for a moment. It feels vulgar when it trips and falls into nostalgia; head hung low, not a tear in sight.
A place I don’t want to see anymore becomes the bastard child of Mordor and The Shire. I recently returned there to be sleepy with people now so far away that I don’t know when they’re sleepy anymore. Maybe the air got tighter, constricting on a ledge until the days edge into the next. Maybe the slats under the mattress finally grew a backbone and
There were balls on stabilisers, dead, dead and dying like every part of it I don’t want. Thing is, the memories I see on my way to work barely feel relevant anymore. They’re so far away they are almost helpful. The self-loathing can’t stretch so far right now. It’s all trapped in that three-hundred mile train ride I spent so much money on again to see five am and lie to strangers like a birthright and a doll a lost sibling pulled the head off of. You’re not away from it, and you’re not ready to go back, and you’re not dead, dead, or dying. You’re sick and convincing yourself of things you want others to. It’s so awfully draining to do it yourself.
I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t.
And so, as a friend tells me I’m not as dim as I think and another tells me I am and another doesn’t try to put theirs into words, the clock I only noticed on my last day is a mess against a sky that looks so much colder than the one I’m stuck with.
My now ex-housemate tells me I’m trying to be sophisticated ordering a cocktail that isn’t fruity. I am. I tell him to talk more. He plies himself with fruit and does. He used to always get mentioned in these tid-bits I advertise on an app designed to make me suicidal. Now I know this is likely the last time he’ll get mentioned for a while. I wonder if he’s got this far.
On four hours sleep and failing the breathalyser, we replace nature with Austen on the screen I used to stare at weekly. Lizzy frowns and Darcy flexes. I gasp and dry the roof of my mouth to dust.
In between trains home I have a bad phone call.
This week, I’ll visit a city for the first time. The one further away than the other. The one I’ll return from and no doubt want to move to. I’ll feel guilty for flying there. Guilty for the six hours of sleep I will arrive there on. I’ll dress up as hot people. Shop for blood and tongues. I’ll go to a new cinema and tell overtold stories to people I haven’t met before. I’ll so deeply love it.
And then I’ll come back.
