Storage Almost Full

originally published on Medium.

It begins when there’s a notification pops up on my phone, Storage Almost Full– I immediately thought of deleting some of my photos on my gallery because I know lately I have been slacking on filtering which photos deserve to stay or go, either shaky or too dark or wrong angle.

So, I opened Gallery on my main home screen, where the colourful circles after circle create shapes to some sort of flower. I scrolled up and up, until it reaches the top. The first photo is my father and brother on his graduation day, I remember I kept it for the journey back to Bournemouth in Summer 2013. And that, exactly what follows.

Strings of pictures of Bournemouth. Of me, in Bournemouth. Then, there’s this pinch at the centre of my chest. Like, maybe one of my veins intersect with, I don’t know, clashes, with something else, like there’s a thunder there or a mild car crash. Maybe it’s the muscle tighten, oxygen can’t get through. I don’t know, I’m not familiar with science, carrying this on will make me look stupid.

There’s one at Sixty Million Postcards, the hip pub in town where I had my first Bloody Mary cocktail, and my first kiss. Then there’s a picture of a pair of feet, it must’ve been Joe’s, the boy I dated many Summers ago, when I was too shy to take picture of him. I swiped left for more, there were Tya, Ratih and Omri, the home-blood relatives away from home, smiling ear to ear in front of the Winter Wonderland. I had my red reindeer hat from HnM on. We all looked incredibly, happy.

Right there, aside from an intense sense of longing, I cannot help but think, that those times were the best time of my life but how I wasn’t much aware of it when it’s happening. I know I had a great time, but I did not know yet that it’d be, or it was the greatest time of my life was happening before my eyes. In the low temperature, warmth in glass of pint, the arms of friends thousand miles away from home.

If I could go back in time, and tell the past-me that the next three years would be the greatest time I’d ever have, I probably won’t do anything differently. But I might just take more time to take a moment between the shifts of the day, at the beach, at the whiskey bar, at the bus stop, at the lower gardens, even in my bedroom to take a look around and inhale everything in, how pretty and in place everything was–

***

I had the option to shut my phone and put it somewhere far from my reach then tuck myself in under the duvet, but I get on. I scroll down deeper, deeper into the Nostalgia abyss. Forgetting I’m here to delete some of my pictures to have more space for now.