By Zara, TIWP Student

Sometimes I function as nothing more than a camera lens. The image is captured with the fluttering of a flash and a click. Pictures are developed in a dimly lit red room. They are hung on a fraying string, blowing softly from the gusts of breath. They develop overtime; the lighting accentuating each stray hair and forgotten laugh, every crease of worry and squint from smiling. The shots dry; laid out on a table to collect dust. Days of months of albums that form collections; that form you.

Some never stop hanging. They circle me like a merry-go-round, entertaining toddlers riding rainbow-colored unicorns. I see them again and again and again; an endless orbit of the things I wish I hadn’t said.

I’m haunted by demons of a selfish moment, ghosts of stupidity, the vampires of an unfortunate choice. “Forgive and forget,” we’re told as we hold a grudge heavier than maturity against our classmates. We are nine and mad. Nine and unstoppable. Nine without enough hours spent living to shackle us to the past. So we forgive, and we forget, and we are back on the swings and slide playing make-believe. Just like before.

Is there a person on the Earth who has actually forgiven themself for the little things? A joke in the serious moment or an outfit that stood out in the wrong way. Tell me you don’t organize an anthem of songs of mistakes that everyone else has long removed from memory since it hit the radio. There was no apology ever made; it wasn’t necessary, you were told. We all have our moments.

Moments.

Of anger hot like the iron and nickel core of the planet, cold as the glaciers that carved valleys out of stone. Of the recklessness that fuels the speeding of cars or the hopping of fences. Of hope that to be silly is acceptable and judgement has no more fuel to keep flaming. No wonder you didn’t remember that sitting in the front row seat for all your blunders is the critic we don’t take into account. It’s too expensive to pay.

It’s you, when you got the grade. You, when your hair curled in the way you wanted. You, when you defied expectations. You, when you felt the strongest and prettiest and maybe even skinniest. You, when you were celebrated. You, when you were confident for the right or left or wrong reasons. You, at your happiest or so you thought you think- you don’t know. She now only has room for disappointment, only has the time to frown, the patience to remind you what you’ve done, you could’ve been, you are.

She is the tightest knot around your ankles, the thickest rope. The layers and layers and layers of self-scrutiny that paints a portrait of your own mauling. The reds and oranges of fear and yellows and greens of comparison and blues and purples of grief and you must be missing a shade of pink because you’re somehow, someway, somewhere never able to beat it. 

Now the pictures we took for fun have ceased to remain the accuracy of the hot-off-the-press form. They have been smudged, mutilated. Their edges are sharpened into swords, opening up wounds that you’ll never let heal. To forgive ourselves would be thievery because pain is the captive that holds us back. 

I think I could go to the moon without it.