I final­ly print­ed off my pic­ture of the glass­es on the sill and framed it, which is quite some­thing con­sid­er­ing the fact that I have bare­ly any dec­o­ra­tions in my room. I was lucky enough to have been giv­en a nice met­al frame as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but have not had a decent pic­ture to put in it. Since I don’t have a career going yet, I try to keep a min­i­mal­is­tic amount of fur­ni­ture until I can afford to invest in long term sets, and for now the pic­ture rests on my cof­fee table. I want­ed a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the image because of the poignan­cy it evokes in me.

Every time I look at it I can’t help but think of the morn­ing sun seep­ing through the cracks of blue venet­ian blinds, of the flour­ish of green leaves out­side the win­dow. I think of lying on a swollen bed with my back to the wall, notic­ing the bright­ness of the sun fill the room, talk­ing well past the break of day. I think of sleep­ing next to some­one, hold­ing her head, draw­ing on her face, see­ing the ear­ly light bring out the sun­flow­ers in her eyes. I remem­ber how we’d go to sleep, plac­ing our frames on the win­dowsill before suc­cumb­ing to exhaus­tion.

Perhaps I’m so affect­ed by this image, this bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ry, because of how much I rel­ish the act of sleep­ing next to some­one. One of my favourite parts of a rela­tion­ship is being able to hold some­one before los­ing con­scious­ness. I sup­pose it betrays a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, a cer­tain unpar­al­leled inti­ma­cy, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is some­thing that I’ve always been attract­ed to.

But how odd it is that this may mean so much to me, yet mean so lit­tle to anoth­er. That even some­one shar­ing this expe­ri­ence with me may think of it in pass­ing, as some ephemer­al expe­ri­ence, not worth remem­ber­ing.

What do we take with our­selves when we fall apart? Do we keep the mem­o­ries or the emo­tions? Do we only take the good and leave the bad?

With this pic­ture I try to take every­thing. I don’t want to hide from hurt, I don’t want to neglect any feel­ings. I choose to see the image as a beau­ti­ful thing, a frame in time when I felt some­thing greater than most things I’ve felt in my life. I try to turn the pain into pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and gain from my expe­ri­ence. I look at this pic­ture and become affect­ed by every­thing it means to me.

Even if it means noth­ing to any­one else.