A few days ago, I read the short yet phenomenal novel A Long Walk To Water. Set in South Sudan, the story’s focus on the link between access to clean water and education conjured up memories of my own time spent in East Africa.
Back in 2011, my high school partnered with a humanitarian organisation to send volunteering students to a village near Maasai Mara, Kenya. The goal across ten days was to break ground on a new classroom for local girls, while learning about practical and sustainable development in remote regions. The countless lessons I learned there – the value of water and what a privilege it is to easily source it + the young girls’ fierce desire to be educated amongst them – have stuck with me since. Kenya is a core memory, if there ever was one.
Suddenly, I realised I hadn’t seen photos from that trip in years. My iCloud photo storage has always begun in the year 2017, meaning a good 6+ years’ worth of photos have been MIA. Racking my brain for where they could be stored, there seemed to be only one possibility: a retired laptop collecting dust on top of my bedroom wardrobe.
Leaping up to retrieve it, I remembered that this dinosaur of a machine is so worn that it refuses to turn on unless it’s plugged into a power source. With the original charger broken or lost in a move, I ordered the oldest model I could find online and began daydreaming about the treasure trove that awaited me. I prepared for the reality that none of the photos remained on the hard drive, and gaslit myself into thinking I could live with evidence of those experiences being lost forever.
A measly 24 hours later and the charger was delivered. What a joy to live in the modern world! I ripped open the package, plugged the charger into the wall, and stuck its chord into the ancient laptop. Brushing a thick layer of dust off its lid, I lifted the screen. An excruciating 10 minutes passed as I waited for the device to come out of its long hibernation. I clicked the Photos app icon, only to be forced to wait another ten for its contents to load.
What happened next was sort of strange.
The pictures from Kenya were there all at once. I flicked through images of the building site, our camp grounds, the kind people who worked there, days spent playing games with the local school girls. More images from a water walk, close up snaps of various bugs, and shots of wildlife we were lucky to see on a day trip safari. I felt a sense of relief wash over me. My memories preserved, affirmed by millions of tiny pixels.
But there was more. The computer held photos from school days, summers and Christmases spent in Bermuda, a trip to Japan to visit two of my best friends, a family vacation in Jamaica, plus an almost daily documentation of all four years at university. These images, I had thought, were forever lost.
Watching a decade of my life play out on the screen across the entire evening, I noticed myself grow and change in various ways. My over-plucked eyebrows of the 2010s shifting into to fuller ones. My body, chubby to slim, sun-kissed to pale, and back again multiple times. Bouts of serious acne followed by periods of blemish-free skin, only pockmarks visible in certain lights to hint that my teenage years even happened.
It wasn’t just my own changes I noticed, but my family’s and closest friends’ too. I watched them switch hairstyles, develop new laugh lines, and saw tattoos appear on various parts of their bodies. Some people featured often or disappeared for short intervals. Others never came back into frame.
This prompted me to think about the way our relationships are always evolving and shifting, how complex and unexpected situations can sever close friendships and romantic relations. Most of the time, life simply did its job of pulling connections apart to make space for new ones. Many of the people I saw in the photos are practically strangers to me now.
This all sounds self-indulgent, but really, I’m not one to reminisce like this. I’ll listen to music that transports me back to a certain time or feeling, but I won’t dwell on the past too often, which is probably why I can’t remember a lot of the stories my friends bring up in conversation. When I do, I have a tendency to romanticise horrible times or believe that my carefree years have all but ended. For that reason, my trips down memory lane are more of a sprint than a wander.
Obviously, the act of observing yourself through photos is different. How can you not be amazed that the person you see is you, but somewhat foreign?
Despite all the time that had passed, I could look at any picture and know exactly what I was feeling – what was bothering me about myself, other people, life’s circumstances. I could remember what was most important to me at any given moment and recall what was causing me angst and excitement. It’s even more astonishing to acknowledge that hardly any of those things are relevant anymore. I am fundamentally the same, yet so much has changed.
Most of all, this unwitting journey through an old computer’s files sparked an overwhelming sense of compassion for my younger self. I could see when things were going great, and recognise signs of when things were just so completely awful that I didn’t know how or when they would ever get better. I noticed the glow that comes with a fresh start or falling in love (or at least, what I thought was love) and the visible-in-the-eyes pain that emerges when you’re forced out of it.
At times, I felt a serious urge to reach through the screen and hug myself, to remind myself that nothing – good or bad – can last forever.
Without this gallery serving as the atlas of my teens and twenties, I’ve tended to look back with a slight sense of judgement.
I’d probably label myself as “lost” in various periods in the past. I’d feel guilty about things I did, embarrassed about how I looked, or ashamed of the coping mechanisms I chose. Mainly though, I’d spare myself the trouble by dismissing it all together. The Stoicism module of my philosophy degree really sunk in, I suppose.
Flicking through these photos across several hours helped me understand that I was always following the path to where I am now, even if I stumbled along the way or took a couple of questionable detours. “Time heals all wounds” might be a bit of cliché, but it’s undoubtedly true. I’m in a pretty good place these days, and I have all those past versions of me – and the people who stuck around or newly entered my life – to thank for that.
My birthday is coming up in a week. The final year of my twenties. In a way, having this moment of reflection now feels meant to be, even if I had only really intended to reminisce on one particular event.
While it’s impossible to predict everything the next year will bring, I feel excited about the future to come – all the good times, the fuck ups, and new adventures. Because isn’t that what life’s all about?
Thank you for reading and speak to you soon!!!!
XOXOXO