Skip to main content

While going through work photos for a presentation, I found myself looking at familiar faces, colleagues, teams, friends, how easily everyone smiled for the camera, how willingly they were remembered. And I noticed something. I am rarely in them. Even though I was there for almost all of it, I exist somewhere behind the lens or just outside the frame. Even in my personal life, I have very few photos of myself. Sometimes I tell myself I will regret it one day, for not having memories to hold onto, but does remembering truly need proof? So, I keep choosing not to be in them. I do not even keep my childhood photos. I do not remember seeing many, though I know my parents took them. Even then, it always felt easier to exist behind moments rather than inside them. But I do take photos, just not of myself. I capture life as it passes, places, fleeting moments, the feeling of a day before it disappears. Maybe I am just a private person, and perhaps I have always been this way. I do not think I want to leave a memory behind. When I am gone, there will be nothing to look back on, nothing to hold, and maybe that is the point. And as time passes, who will remember we were here at all? And yet, I do not know if that thought comforts me or quietly breaks something in me. M. | unframed April 2026


from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/Vo7a538
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I met my twenty-year-old self and said, "I can finally afford all the books you used to stand in the library holding for a little too long. The ones you memorized from the back covers because buying them was out of the question. The ones you promised yourself you would own someday." She smiled. Then she glanced at her phone. "Dad's waiting outside." In that moment, I felt the distance between her life and mine all at once. M. June 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/5UrbdXQ via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more

Perhaps the part of what's frightening me is not only the pain I'm feeling now. It's also the pain I'm not feeling. I keep looking at that wall and wondering what it's holding back. If this is how much I hurt with it still standing, what happens if it comes down? The thought follows me everywhere. It sits beside me at work. It waits for me in the quiet. It gnaws at whatever sanity I have left. But what if my mind is not storing all of this grief behind a dam waiting to burst? What if it is already doing what minds are designed to do? What if it is carrying the weight the same way a river carries rain. Not all at once, but as it comes. A little when I cried during my lunch break. A little when a song catches me off guard. A little when I am alone with my coffee and there is no one to distract me from myself. A little when a memory drifts across my mind without warning. Perhaps the wall is not hiding a flood. Perhaps it is simply teaching the water how to pass through me without drowning me. Not all at once. Just enough for today. M. June 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/GcUjDxb via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more

Father's Day always arrives carrying two versions of time. One tells me it has been eleven years. The other tells me it was only yesterday. I have lived entire chapters of my life without you. I have grown older. I have become someone you never got the chance to meet. There are stories I still wish I could tell you. Small things. Important things. Ordinary things that somehow matter because they happened to me. And every Father's Day, I find myself reaching across a distance that cannot be crossed. I wonder what you would think of the person I am now. I wonder if you would be proud. I hope you would be. I hope you would see how hard I have tried. How I kept going on days when I wanted to stop. How I carried the lessons you left behind, even when I was afraid, I might forget the sound of your voice. The truth is, I still miss you. Not only in the big moments. Not only in the milestones. I miss you in the quiet parts of life. When something good happens and I wish I could tell you. When something hurts and I wish I could hear you say my name. When I see fathers and daughters together and feel that familiar ache return. Eleven years later, love has not disappeared. It has simply changed shape. It lives now in memories. In photographs. In stories. In the person I became because you were once here. And today, more than anything, I hope you knew how much you were loved. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I miss you still. And I think I always will. M. 21 June 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/s1ovpS0 via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more