Hit Delete

So, my family and I are all getting new phones tomorrow, and today, I had an experience that I felt was worth documenting. As some backstory, we are upgrading our iPhone 6es to the iPhone 7, but the deal we’re getting means that I in particular will lose half of my phone memory. I knew it would cause some problems when trying to transfer the data to the new phone, so I had to make some decisions. I went through and deleted pretty much every app I don’t use every single day, but even then, I was still using over the capacity of what my new phone was going to have. And I realized what was taking up so much space. My photos.

I had around 37,000 photos saved on this device, and obviously, that’s a lot, even considering that I’ve had this phone for three years. And of course, it’s not like I look at all of them all the time. I save them, return to them a few times in a month, before they’re lost in a fresh wave of new photos. It’s the circle of life. So, obviously, I had to remove them. I chose to plug in my phone and back it up on the computer, but it said it couldn’t save them all, which meant that I would be losing... a very good many, to put it lightly.

At first, I just hunkered down and went to work on selecting them (because on my phone, there is no “select all” feature) when I realized that if I tapped, held, and dragged, I could select a ton at once. This... is where things got weird.

Watching my camera roll scroll at high-speeds through three years of saved photos is something akin to seeing your life flash before your eyes. It was slow enough that I had time to take in chunks of pictures at a time, identify them, recall them, but still too fast to slow down and acknowledge them. Too fast to say goodbye.

You see, as I watched this high-speed scroll, I started to realize that every little file I selected represented a moment in my life I felt I wanted to remember or something that I once held really dear to my heart. I started to recognize the years. 2015, with my inability to take selfies and my obsession with groups of memes that completed a set. All the pictures of youtubers and actors and all the weird videos I saved. 2016, when I got into Undertale and remembered that phase I spent in middle school where all I could think about was Five Nights at Freddy’s. 2017, my senior year, my year of healing. And these months of 2018, where I started nurturing myself, becoming my own person, not to mention all the photos I preserved of my friends and loved ones, to keep them close. I spotted pictures of my dog Lilo as a newborn pup, glanced at images of quotes and old ex-phone wallpapers, and even got to reminisce about those simpler times spent chatting on Omegle and Kik with all the screenshots of funny conversations I had. The years just flew by... literally and figuratively.

Hitting the delete button was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. Not because I feel I can’t live without those pictures or anything stupid like that.... but because... they -along with this phone- were there were for me when nobody else could be, for so long. When I was sick... and it was three A.M.... and all I could do was stare at a screen to distract from how much it hurt... my phone had my back. It was my friend when I could depend on no one else to be - not because I didn’t think anybody wanted to be there, but because I knew that was unfair, that I’d be expecting too much. Those pictures... I never deleted them because when I ran out of new YouTube videos to watch, I knew that I could open up that photo album and revisit those things that made me smile and laugh when everything else seemed so hopeless. It was my connection to the outside world when all I could do was lay in bed and feel awful. They represented things that inspired me or amused me, and some of those images were of good experiences that were so few and far between during those times that if it weren’t for the pictures I took, I might not believe they really happened. Some were even bittersweet... good times tinged gray with bad memories or heartbreak... images I saved because they were relatable, but not necessarily positive... photos of old friends that I haven’t spoken to in ages. But those things, even if they weren’t perfect, they were still a part of my life. I didn’t want to let go. And losing them... even if they aren’t critical to my survival... it still makes me cry.

But... but.

But, I am better now.

I’m healthier, I’m happier, and for once, my life is looking up and not down. Those three years of massive changes, from suffering, to recovery, to thriving, not only paid off, but will one day only be a snapshot in this life of mine. Hah... do you see what I did there? “Snapshot?” Anyway...

I hit delete.

Not because those memories don’t matter, but because... it’s time to move on. It’s time to let go. It’s time to start over.

So... here I go.