I came across a box of Mum’s photographs earlier in the week and now I am standing in the space between then and now, noticing the distance. And it hurts a little, not just because the world has changed, but because I have, too. It feels like i’m remembering a world that was slower, softer, more real in some ways. I can recall when mornings weren’t dictated by alarms but by light, chores, or birdsong. When I stepped onto wet grass without thinking about shoes or my inbox.
When laughter filled open air, not comment sections or message threads.
But somewhere along the way, the world changed , or perhaps I did. Mornings now arrive as alarms. Grass is something to be trimmed, not touched with wriggling toes. Laughter still exists, but often behind screens, flattened into pixels and echoes instead of carried on the wind.
And I find myself caught between those worlds: the one I remember and the one I live in. Wondering if the change is irreversible, or if that barefoot child, that open sky, still lives somewhere beneath the noise. Maybe the world hasn’t lost its softness, maybe I’ve just forgotten how to feel it
Yet in remembering, I take the first step back.