The Photograph
This is a photograph of who I could’ve been. It’s simple and not much seems to be going on, but there’s more if you just look closer. I obviously didn't know it was being taken, or perhaps I didn't care. I am in the middle of a laughing fit; my face is red from the hysterics. You are beside me, finding much amusement from my current state. You’re smirking, yet your mouth is slightly open, as if you are about to say something. Your eyes seem to be on the camera, but there is something about the shine in them that suggests you are truly looking in the corner of your vision. You are aware of the coming photo and are trying to alert me, but I am so out of it that I don’t realize your attempts. You have a hand on my upper arm, like you're nudging me, and I suppose that’s exactly what you’re doing. I am hunched over from laughter, with one hand running through my loose hair, and any endeavor to get my attention will prove unsuccessful. My other hand is on your knee, as if I am trying to steady myself. You’re the fortress, the unmoving rock, and I trust you to keep me standing.
Except we’re not standing. We’re sitting cross-legged on a faded green couch against a wall of red brick. There’s a black floor lamp to my left and a movie poster behind you. It looks like a basement, though not one that I am familiar with. Your hair is pulled back into a messy bun and there are bumps in the front, but we are obviously not dressed for our looks at the moment. I’m in dark blue jeans and you’re in grey sweatpants. Our t-shirts are just for casual wearing, in fact I recognize mine, and your feet are bare while mine are in light blue socks, the bottom of which are splotched with dirt. The circumstances of this photograph are not entirely unknown, though certainly they are mostly unidentified. I don’t know who’s taking the picture. Could it be someone we are already close friends with, or who we have seen around but never come to know? Or they are completely new, perhaps the owner of the basement. I don’t know why we are gathered there. For a movie marathon? A spontaneous sleepover? Maybe even for a studying session? And what exactly am I laughing at? Did you make a sarcastic comment, did someone else? Was an actual joke told or am I just finding amusement in something even unknown to you?
These are things that I will never be acquainted with, because those people in the photograph are both strangers and close friends at the same time. There was a point in my life, and in yours as well, where I could’ve known them, could’ve been one of them. But that point has passed. I took a different road and was forced to leave you behind. I have met different people and have had different experiences which have come to mold and change me into who I am today. Had I not gone down this path, I would know exactly how the photograph had come to be taken. Maybe you know of this basement, you might even know it well, but you are sitting on that faded green couch with someone else. You are wearing that smirk because of someone else, which is okay. This was my choice. I left you, and I know it was the right thing to do, yet I am still compelled to think of the world where I had not done so. It certainly wouldn’t have been inherently wrong, just different, and I think I would’ve been happy either way. I would regret not leaving just as I now regret leaving.
Still, I am comforted by the knowledge that the photograph exists. I am holding it in my hands and I know that things happen for a reason. I cannot discern how the photograph came into my possession; I only know that it did. But I suppose that’s how life works. There are certain aspects of it that I can want very much to understand, and I can and will try to do so, but there is no telling if I will ever be able to. Truthfully, I am both frustrated and content with this fact, and I have no idea how that is possible.