Letting Go (Pieces of Myself Disappear With Time)

I’m having a lot of currently complicated feelings about… big changes. I’ve been wrestling a lot with feelings of regret as I learn the art of capturing moments into stills and trying to be kind to myself about those missed chances. I’m trying to divorce my hobby of photography from an obsessive need to capture every single moment, from kicking myself with every instance I miss.

I’m not a photographer, not really. I was once a filmmaker but nowhere is quite built for sharing small slices, small pieces of me and the things that I see. So I pivoted. Past an aching nervousness, past feeling like an absolute imposter and despite all the discouragement of an old teacher (yikes, ten years ago, now).

I like to think that my voice in my photos has become stronger. I am enjoying the push and pull, the thrill against my own social anxiety and convention. Instead of worrying about missed moments. I take the time to make moments, to make my space in the world. To occupy instances of time I might be too shy to insist upon. If I don’t take these moments… I miss my chances. Sometimes I am okay with that. Sometimes the chance is not worth taking. I think these small lessons have taught me that it’s alright to make the mistake. To miss the moment. I will grow my eye for these moments with every chance and every missed instance.

I think there’s something to be said about this, even in our lived experiences. In all of my time, both childhood and adulthood, I’ve missed chance after chance to document these spaces up north, the moments I’ve spent time there. I have a few to speak for. Certainly family members can pull up old files. But I sometimes lament the thought of missing the last chance I had to take in my grandmother’s old home.

I took these knowing I’d feel this way if I didn’t take the chance, even if the moment seemed strange. Even if it perhaps looked a little strange to those who didn’t realise I was into photography as a hobby in the first place. I took the moment inside myself to trust my eye, and take this time and this space.

Just these last two years I can feel the ways in which I’ve grown up. But somehow I feel like I have so much growing to do, still. Maybe that’s just a feeling that sticks with you forever. Honestly, that would have scared me once, to know that I’d never really feel ‘grown up’. That there’s not a particular age that determines this. That I’ll always be learning and changing and growing and becoming something different with every stage of my life.

I’m not scared of that now. I’m definitely more scared of not getting to experience that full ride though.

I took these photos during the small get-together after the funeral of a man who was the life and soul of this place. Of every place I knew up here in Lac-Des-Plages. He was a grandparent to me, his big jovial smile is distant in my memory already. It’s been years since I’ve seen it proper even when he was still with us. It’s sad what illness and ailment can do to a person.

Change is exciting, but change can also be just as terrifying. I’m used to change being a crushing weight in my life as of late. I’ve lost a lot of family, and a lot of memories with them. I’ve lost a lot of places that were once dismal escapes as a kid. Being ‘forced’ to go play outside and make the memories I look back on fondly now. Sometimes I wish I could experience them just one more time.

I don’t really know what to feel very much these days. But I know that change is inevitable, and a lot of it is out of my control, and losing this control is terrifying, but I’ll adapt and change, and one day grow from it. Become a more well-rounded person, become a more jaded and sharp personality. Who really knows until it happens to me in real time. I think either of these happening is okay. I’m allowed to be a rough personality, to be disliked from time to time. To be disliked by certain people. To have hard feelings to decipher and build a hard shell that softens only with time. I’ve been giving myself permission to feel these emotions, but not to dwell on them. The second part is the hardest.

I also know that a lot of change comes from within, from decision I make going forward. People say life is short, but really its the longest length of time we have. I’ve come to notice the stillness of time taken in small moments. In breathing fresh air, in centring myself in moments of bliss, and happiness. Acknowledging these moments as strongly as I (unfortunately) dwell on things that hurt and take pieces of me with them.

Its been difficult, but I think I’m doing okay all the same.