Lost within myself, lost within the years.

On the overfilled camera roll & nostalgia.

The app I scroll through the most is my camera roll. I am obsessed with looking back. Who was I July last year? Who am I now? What did the track I walk look like in May? Each week passes and I with it. There’s versions of myself littered throughout this collection of photos, and versions of the world along with them.

Some moments in time are so vivid in my memory that an image can completely transport me to who I was when it was taken. Some photos are forever tangible, and just by opening up my camera roll and scrolling my way to them, I am welcomed into my life, I can see it. Hear it. Feel it. Live it.

The photos of me at nineteen I look at with love, like I am looking at my own child, so young, so naive, so silly, so bold, so brave, so lost. I am twenty-two now. Young still. I like most of the photos of myself. There seems to be a window. I can easily hate photos of myself in the moment they are taken, but after some time has passed the photos of myself I used to hate, the ones were I swore my smile looked awkward and my eyes droopy, I no longer notice those things. I am no longer hypercritical, I wish I let them get shared, I wish I never hated them.

A picture from a camping trip. The lens dirty, covered in a film of dust. It’s unfocused, blurry, over-exposed. The image stands still but my mind makes it tangible. I can smell the dust, and the rain that fell the night prior. The image is silent but I can look at it and hear the sounds that filtered through the campsite in the early hours. The laughing, the talking, the making of coffee for a loved one, a kettle boiling over a fire and a spoon stirring.

I believe every photo is worth taking, even the ones that take me to a different time, one that wasn’t so bright and joyous. A time where the four walls of my bedroom were all I knew and the comfort of my bed lost all warmth. When I had cried so much that I took photos of my puffy swollen eyes because I couldn’t believe someone could cry this much.

You never realise how important an image you take will be until the time passes by and you need the reminder of days well spent.

The years of my life have thrown me against a wall and softly returned me to myself. My cameral roll showcases nearly every week since I first got a phone. How magical is it to be able to see all of this, all of the time.

Please share your favourite photo in the comments or a story about your favourite photo. I would love to see and hear. xx

-Love, E.