Dear Camera,
The moonlight illuminated the hidden corners of my bedroom, shining its light and casting shadows of people and places that were once everything to me. I felt determined to find you again as my pensive mood created a desire to emulate what used to be, simultaneously saddening me that my neglect towards you has transcended my admiration.
After rummaging through my possessions I eventually found you, concealed in layers of dust and buried under a landfill site of overdue bills and unfinished books. I couldn’t help but feel a strange notion of affinity towards you. The majority of us don’t understand the privilege that you are; you get thrown, forgotten and replaced far too easily yet without you, it’s impossible for history to be created.
I glance at your creations hanging on the walls, exhibiting my life in snapshots, and a surge of loss floods through my bloodstream. The silence in my house haunts me as the echoes of familiar voices ring through the empty rooms, until the realisation that I can’t go back into the past hits and I’m left with nothing but the ticking of the clock. In an odd way, you and I are the same. We’re lost and forgotten and simply existing, not living. Pushing through life by force is not how I intended to live and the desperation to break the curse of my retrospections has reached its peak.
You’re a bitter-sweet notion; a reminder of deep and unforgivable wounds that refuse to fade as pangs of guilt linger, spreading in painful waves throughout my body. Juxtaposed by the warming comfort that you offer, embracing me when the weakening shadows of the witching hour strike.
My two-dimensional, black and white world changed the moment I picked you up, feeling instantly connected to that life again. You display a celluloid reel of flashbacks, reminding me of the day when you captured the sweet scent of candy floss and buoyant music, the blinking lights of fairground rides and the split-second flash of lightening in my mother’s eyes where she was truly happy. You rekindle that time when the sleepy sun was setting and my family and I stood in silence, simply admiring the vast lake before us and the pleasure of one another’s company.
I hope that someday, when your masterpieces become frayed, ripped and smudged, that you still remember me for who I truly am. That you can still capture my undermining flaws and my impulsive habits. That you still see beneath the cynical masquerade and understand the exhaustion that clouds my mind. That you find the power to revive my exhilaration over the smallest of things and remind me of my competence to think and imagine and believe. I thank you for catching my fluctuating identities before my nonchalance misses them. But most importantly, I thank you for rediscovering the three-dimensional girl that was hidden for far too long, getting lost and consumed by endless to-do lists and the mundanity that life so often brings.
With love,
Nabeela