I’ve always had trouble letting go of things. Even as a child, I’d hate to throw anything out. Questions always popped up, what if I needed it? What if I wanted to see it again? It was very unprogressive when my mother would help me clean out my room and throw out all the unwanted stuff. I’d sit across from my mother, in between us, a pile of papers probably larger than myself, and to the side, a huge plastic bag to hold all the stuff I was throwing out. We’d go through the pile, piece by piece, trying to differentiate trash from treasure. “Do you want to keep this?” she’d ask. “Or should we throw it out?” I’d take the paper from her hand and hastily say, “Keep,” and place it on the pile of other things I wanted to keep, that pile, unjustly, growing larger by the second while the pile for the garbage remained thin and frail. By the time we had finished working, it looked as if the pile of papers we were originally working with had just moved a bit to the left. Over the years I have an accumulation of useless stuff that I can’t bring myself to let go of. It’s even worse letting go of memories. But maybe part of the reason why I can’t let go of the stuff is because they connect to a memory, whether it’s a sheet of paper that vaguely refers to my general childhood or a sheet of paper that was written on during the best day of my life. It’s like an artifact from a famous war or an ancient civilization. Those notebooks, those sheets of papers, they represent a real part of a memory, something solid that I can see, touch, feel, and smell. It’s almost ironic that I haven’t always been this into photography. I had never given a second thought to photography. A camera, so what? A photographer, who cares? The idea of photography came and went like specks of dust that were shushed away with the flutter of my hand. I had always been an big thinker. Since I was a child, I was creative; I think there’s truth in me saying that. I’d almost always have a little idea going in my head, especially when I would lay restlessly in my bed. I don’t know if my soft little mind was trying to express itself, but thinking was the way it leaked out. I would always try to let it leak out into words, but I could never find the words to compare to my thoughts. I think I’ve lost whatever skill I had with words, if any. I think I’ve become quiet. There’s always a lot I want to say, a lot I could say, but I can’t because I don’t know how. After I gave up on try to convey my thoughts though words I drew everything that popped into my head. I would draw things that could not be understood by just looking at it. I know what I see in everyone of my drawings, but nobody would see the same thing in my art as anybody else. Eventually, the points on my pencils became blunt, and the ink in my pens dried up. I still draw sometimes, but not as much as I want to. Once I began to slow down with my drawings, I picked up a camera because photography looked easy. A click of a button and that was it. Is there a need to mention how wrong I was? I liked photography, but there were so many times when I got frustrated with what I couldn’t do and so many times when I just wanted to stop. Blatantly, I sucked at photography. I just didn’t know it, but anyone who knew something about photography did. When they’d critique me, I’d get angry like the child I am. I started to love photography, growing attached to it like a vine. I first noticed it when I was in a really bad mood, took my camera into my room, started shooting, and felt so much better. Taking photos calmed me down, capturing things calmed me down. So curious, I wondered about my love for photography. Why? Why did it seem to be my niche, something I was so comfortable with? And then I realized. A photo captures the moment, it saves it. I like having things, especially little memories to play with, even if I don’t need them. A photo secures a moment that will only happen once. I realized that once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. I can’t tell you how much that thought scares me, of anything being gone forever. It might make sense though, if you’ve read this. A photo’s truly worth a thousand words. I can write about it, I can describe it with immense detail, but it will never be the same as a literal image. A photo is blatant, it shows the uncensored version, something you can’t hide. Ultimately, for me, it’s truth, as cliche as it sounds. But in all truth, a photo is just a rectangle of colors that creates the illusion of reality.