Nineteen
2020
I turned nineteen and I stayed home all day. I didn’t really mean to make it a thing, it just happened that I didn’t go anywhere and then it was already afternoon and too late to pretend I had plans.
I was looking through my laptop and found this old folder buried under everything else, just random pictures from years ago. Basement flash photos, Atwater Beach, mirror selfies where I can tell I was trying to figure out how to stand in my own body, screenshots, blurry group photos, all of it. I didn’t even remember half of them existing.
And it kind of started there. Like I just kept scrolling and it made me think about how much I used to care about making things look like moments. Not even real moments, just… ones that looked like they were supposed to matter. Like if I could capture it right it would prove I was actually living something.
I dropped out of college a few weeks ago and I still don’t know how to say it without it sounding either like a disaster or like nothing happened at all. It was more like I slowly stopped being able to function there and then one day I just wasn’t in it anymore. Now people are mad, or disappointed, or trying to be calm about it in that way where you can tell they’re holding back what they actually think. And no one really asks why in a way that feels like they want the real answer, so I don’t really give one.
I think I lost my mind a bit, or whatever version of “lost my mind” actually just means you stop feeling like yourself but still have to keep moving through everything anyway. Everything felt off, like I was watching my life happen instead of being inside it.
Back then I was really obsessed with aesthetics in a way I wouldn’t admit at the time. Like I thought if things looked right, I would be right. Basement photoshoots with the flash too harsh, trying to make cheap walls feel intentional. Standing at Atwater Beach thinking too much about framing and light and whether I looked like someone who belonged in an image.
I listened to Lana Del Rey a lot, which I know is obvious in hindsight, but it made everything feel like it had a soundtrack. Like even normal sadness had a shape to it that I could borrow for a while.
Franks and the barn still feel like their own separate timeline. Weekends there, hay and cold air and that kind of quiet that doesn’t care about your internal life at all. I remember noticing her falling into something dark when we were thirteen and not having any way to respond to it except just witnessing it. She had what looked like a life I used to think I wanted and it didn’t protect her from anything, which I think I understood too early but didn’t know what to do with.
Y and E happened in this weird skipped way, like we didn’t really earn the closeness, we just arrived there. With E especially there were all these long text conversations that went on forever, about the dumbest things and also things that felt huge at the time. I tried to find those messages recently and couldn’t, which is probably for the best. I already know I’d read them and feel embarrassed by how seriously I took everything I was saying.
And then I’m sitting here on my nineteenth birthday looking at all these images from different versions of me and it’s kind of funny because they all look like moments I thought were important enough to capture. Like I was constantly trying to prove I was becoming someone new.
But the strange part is I don’t actually feel that different. I keep thinking I’ve changed a lot, and maybe I have in all the obvious ways, but underneath it still feels like the same person moving through different rooms, just with different lighting.
