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my photo library has 285,332 pictures. they contain almost every version of my life since 2014: people i no longer know, things i no longer own, rooms that changed after i left them, and faces that evolved outside the image. they have followed me from one phone to another, transferred and backed up without being asked. an accidental archive of a life i carry everywhere and rarely look at.

every few months, i decide that i am finally going to sort it. there are duplicated screenshots, accidental pictures of the floor, five versions of the same flick, and images i saved without remembering why.

i could delete thousands without losing anything important. honestly, if i lost most of them, i don’t think i would care that much. but deleting them myself is another thing. i have a thing about holding on. to pretty much everything. you’ll probably read that a thousand times here. i know i say it too much.

but i am bad with confrontation, even when it comes in the form of a photograph.

i can delete twenty screenshots in seconds and then lose an hour to one image. i have a weakness for nostalgia. i revisit the past more often than is probably useful, even when i know exactly where looking will take me. something i once owned and had completely forgotten about is enough to keep me there. then there is my father, looking younger and happier—or perhaps only younger, and i have decided that youth must have meant happiness.

by then, i have forgotten what i opened the library to do. i’m trying to remember what happened before the picture was taken, or what happened afterwards.

out of sight, out of mind is something i have always believed in, or at least practiced. when something is no longer directly in front of me, it becomes easier to continue. i used to worry about things constantly. everything has always been a little all or nothing for me, and somewhere along the way, being overly anxious became being overly avoidant. i haven’t quite found the place in between. putting something away allows me to stop thinking about it, even if i haven’t actually worked through it.

the photographs interfere with that arrangement. they bring things back into sight before i have decided whether i want to remember them.

a photograph gives me evidence and leaves me to build the memory around it. sometimes i recognize everyone in the image but cannot remember what we were talking about. sometimes i remember how i felt but not where i was. sometimes i cannot tell whether i remember the actual moment or whether i have looked at the photograph enough times for it to become a memory.

the image often feels more stable than the event itself.

my photo library has no understanding of importance. a family photograph sits beside a screenshot of something i wanted to buy. someone i loved appears next to a picture of food. a painful day is separated from an ordinary one by a swipe. the phone doesn’t know what changed me or what meant nothing.

perhaps i don’t always know either.

recently, i went to the fair and added more pictures to the collection.

i had wanted to properly go to a fair since i was young. i had visited smaller ones before, but there was usually only enough money for one ride. i had to look at everything, choose what i wanted most, and accept that the rest would remain something i watched other people do.

i also had an idea of what going to the fair was supposed to look like. families spending an evening together, playing the games, leaving with a prize. i had seen it around me and in films often enough to find it familiar, although i hadn’t experienced it that way myself. it’s strange to recognize something so well and still feel outside it. for other people, this was just something they did.

being able to take part recently made me unexpectedly emotional. i could spend money on something unnecessary simply because i wanted to try it. there was room for another ride, for a game i had always passed by. i played hook-a-duck for the first time.

it was simply a plastic duck floating in water. i knew that while i was doing it, and i was still happy in a way that felt difficult to explain. i had wanted something this ordinary for a long time.

i believe childhood can be revisited. you return in an older body, with everything you have learned, and encounter something you once wanted. there is familiarity in the wanting, even when the experience itself is new. i was doing it for the first time, but the excitement had been there for years.

i had to grow up early. sometimes i wonder how much of what i call nostalgia is a longing for things i never actually got to do. i can miss the childhood i remember and still want the one i kept seeing elsewhere. at the fair, i could let myself enjoy something i had spent so long imagining. it mattered that i finally got to be there.

i’m drawn to childlike things and often find myself collecting them. a plushie, a particular color, something cute that i have no practical reason to own. i enjoy letting myself be childish. there is a part of me that responds to these things very easily, before i start questioning why i want them or where i will put them.

i think some of my innocence was lost too early, but there is still a piece of it in me. i feel it in those small, uncomplicated moments of excitement. i want to give that part of myself more to do. more things to enjoy.

ignorance is bliss is an expression i understand mostly as relief. i know how exhausting it can be to think about everything too much. with out of sight, out of mind, i can put something away and leave it alone for a while. at the fair, my attention was occupied by something i actually wanted to be doing. for a little while, that was enough.

i don’t need to understand every feeling while i’m having it. i can enjoy the game and realize later why it made me emotional. or leave some of it unexplained.

of course, i photographed the fair. those pictures are now somewhere in the 285,332, already backed up with everything else.

i wonder what i’ll notice when i find them again. whether i’ll remember how it felt to hook the duck, or get distracted by something in the background that i barely noticed at the time. there is always something in an old photograph that i wasn’t trying to keep.

for now, i know why i want these ones. i had a good time. something i had wanted to do for years became an actual day i could remember.

i keep the pictures because i’m afraid to forget.

i seem to forget every single thing i do because of the medication i take. but today, while i was walking, i remembered something from my childhood.

i’m happy fall is here. cliché, but i love the leaves. every time i see one that looks crunchy enough, i step on it. extremely satisfying. i was thinking about how we probably won’t get much snow this winter, just like last year, and that made me think of the braemblokken, where i grew up.

we lived on the tenth floor. i remembered my mother taking me downstairs to play in the snow, just behind our flat. the first and last time i remember her taking me out like that. she was wearing a poncho. she loved ponchos.

but what came back really clearly was the smell of the corridor leading outside. musty, like a basement. humid, almost like soil. i don’t really know how to describe it, but i can remember it so well.

i wish i had a perfume that smelled like that corridor. i don’t think i’ve smelled it anywhere else.

i’ve never really liked the whole good weather / bad weather thing. it feels too decided. some of my favourite days are the ones people complain about.

when it starts raining, everything outside softens a little. i switch on all the small lamps in my apartment and suddenly it’s orange inside, grey outside. i open the windows because i wanna see it properly, hear it properly, sometimes touch it too.

then i put on whatever cd is sitting on the little rack next to the player. usually one of my favourites. hum, far, bikini kill, depends.

when the cd ends i get up and change it. i like the rhythm of that.

i move around the apartment in between. clothes, writing, half a film, something i should finish, nothing in particular. sometimes i dance and test if i’m still as flexible as i was at 8, back when i thought i was going to become a ballerina.

it makes me nostalgic. a little sad too. not because i still wanna be a ballerina, more like briefly checking in on a life i could once imagine having.

i’m probably wearing one of my big t-shirts. i have over 40 of them. band tees, good blanks, random ones i picked up somewhere, some tied to old connections. most of them mean something to me, so naturally i keep all of them.

i’m bad at getting rid of things.

objects hold memory too well.

but if i had to leave town with almost nothing, i already know what i’d take: my mp3 player with all my music and headphones, a picture of my dad, and the necklace he gave me.

i don’t think i ever really outgrow things. they just become part of whatever comes next.

i had to grow up fast in some ways, so maybe i hold onto curiosity a little harder.

i never wanna lose that.

i’m surrounded by people who keep it alive in me too. young spirits, old souls, all different in their own way. connection feels sacred to me, with other people but also with myself.

maybe that’s part of why i like being home when it rains.

everything outside feels a little slower. i like knowing other people are probably hiding from the rain somewhere too. somehow that makes staying in feel less like i’m missing anything.

when the sun comes out, it changes.

i don’t hate the sun. i like warmth. i like opening my curtains and laying on my yoga mat in the light. it’s more everything that seems to arrive with “good weather.”

terraces full. people meeting up. everybody somewhere.

suddenly staying home feels different.

sometimes i think i like being isolated, sometimes i think i’m just comfortable with it.

probably both.

this year i found a kind of silence i didn’t really have before. i grew up around a lot of noise, so i think i notice it more now.

the lamps are on, music is playing, it’s cold outside and i’m warm inside.

i still get guilty sometimes. like i should be seeing people, working, doing more, becoming more. but staying in can be part of that too. i think it’s about balance, whatever that ends up looking like.

sometimes i just wanna stay where i am.