Bradley - the boyfriend- knows how much I love iced coffees, so he makes it a mission to incorporate an iced coffee trip whenever we go out together - a sentiment I appreciate greatly. On Saturday, we dropped by Brickwood Coffee & Bread and ordered two iced lattes. Immediately after stepping out of the shop, Bradley holds up his coffee in front of him; like clockwork, he knows that I want to take a photo, even if it’s a shit one. I just want to document it.
*click* *click*
My camera roll is packed with selfies from 2013, awkward poses with my mum in Italy, endless scrolling of food, blue skies, trees, and excessive dog photos. I have to pay an extra £2.50 each month for more iCloud space to back it all up. Could I go through and delete old ones, ones that don’t matter as much? Sure, of course. But to do so would feel like I’m deleting a memory, a piece of me.
Dramatic, I know.
I’ve become one of those memes where everyone is waiting for that one person to take the photos so they can eat their food. I carry my phone around religiously even when I don’t need to, just in the event that I see something beautiful. It’s a semi-unhealthy habit that I can’t seem to quit. Though if we’re being honest, there are worst things to be addicted to.
The reason I do it isn’t to be annoying or to starve everyone at the table, it’s because I want to savour that one moment. I have this what-if-I-forget? fear that sits with me constantly. What if this memory just fades away and I don’t remember in a few years time? It would be like it didn’t even happen. I want to remember everything. I want to be able to retell it with clarity when I’m 80-years old and with grandkids. Photos are memory joggers. They are hints and glimpses into the past that remind me of tiny bits of life. And you might say that the small, unimportant events are not worth remembering, that they are just sucking up space on the brain hard drive, but to me, it’s the small things that matter most. We have far more little moments than we do big ones - dancing in the kitchen with a loved one, movie nights with family, a regular Tuesday date. As technology develops, those experiences are becoming even more relivable. With ‘live’ mode turned on, I can get that few second's glimpses of a photo being taken just before the shutter clicks, sealing that moment in time forever.
I don’t plan on posting it all on social media, I just like to keep it. To look back on it and think of that time, that specific moment and relive it. I argue that it’s similar to my parents’ volume of photo albums lined up in a cabinet in the living room. Sometimes I look through them and it’s photos of me as a baby - the day I was brought home, when I turned 1, my first holiday. Other albums are filled with photos of my parents together, with friends, at dinners, and on the day of their wedding.
And I’m not completely unaware of the way we doctor photos nowadays to reflect what we like most - not necessarily the way it was captured in our memories. I’m guilty of editing photos - sunsets that look a little pinker, selfies that give me a little bit more of a warm glow, blue waters made bluer and brighter.
There are raw photos - some of which I don’t necessarily love, but I keep them because they're a reminder of an event - a moment that would otherwise be lost behind shadows of newer memories.
I have this one ugly photo that I took during a trip to Vancouver with my Dad - a blurry, bright neon blue photo of Orca whales. He lost a hat on the boat and I had to squint to see the whales. I could have easily forgotten that memory - it’s small and insignificant in the grand scheme of everything else, but it triggers an emotion - remembering what it was like to be 16 and travelling with my dad. I remember that I wore a blue scarf and a giant ‘Trinity College Dublin’ hoodie because I thought that’s where I would go for University. I’ve lost both of those items over the years, but I have that photo to remember it.
For all the moments I’ve captured and stored forever on a flimsy piece of technology that threatens to break at any moment, I could never give it up and replace it with mental capacity alone. There are too many moments that feel too precious, too fragile to leave up to my brain to remember. There are days when I’m scatter brained and can’t remember where I left my keys, and though I’d hope to treat an important memory with a bit more care, I can’t help but feel like I may lose them as well.
PS. Here’s the blue Orca whale photo - for reference.
Five things I consumed this week:
Farrah Storr’s - The Philosophy of Gardens
Michael Estrin’s - Truth, Lies and Coconut Water
Barbara Sher’s - Are you a scanner? (recommended by a fellow On the Verge reader, thank you Mark!)
The Cut’s - My Mom has no Friends
James Breakwell’s - I Almost Died