I hear my alarm. It's 4:35-- time to start training.
Swim, bike, run, run, run.
I get back at 7:05. Shoot. I'm late. I fumble with the keys, my fingers still laced with ice from the run, and stumble inside. I take 7 minutes to shower, 5 to pack my bag, 10 to eat, 2 to brush my teeth, and I jump in the car.
Essay in first period, lab in second, presentation in third, test in fourth, club meeting during lunch, ASB meeting during fifth, pop quiz in sixth. I can breath in seventh, but then I'm hit with rehearsal-- and six classes worth of homework.
Day after day, I'm hitting the grind. I love it at first-- the activity, the fast-paced movement-- until I start slowing. Marathoners call it "hitting the wall"-- the point of utter exhaustion when every muscle begs to stop. "Don't be such a wuss," I tell myself. "Pull yourself together. Work through this." But I'm so tired. I get up and go through the motions, but I'm made of paper mache.
I cry, and the paper weakens, becoming thinner and thinner until almost ripping.
But then I pick up my camera and look through that 18-55mm lens. The lighting is terrible, but I'm determined to get a good picture. I adjust my ISO, aperture, white balance-- and I shoot. I look and the image and smile.
Photo by photo my life slows down; I don't do fewer things, but with each photo, life becomes more manageable. I capture that raised-eyebrow look he gives me whenever we disagree and start to argue-- how his nose crinkles when he laughs too hard at one of my blatant fallacies; I capture how she rolls her eyes whenever someone says something particularly stupid; how she chews her thumb when she's reading and thinks no one is watching; how he struggles to stay awake watching my favorite movie.
These are still, soft, silent constants in my ever changing life; these are snapshots of who I am. I'm painstakingly stitching my life together-- all the good, bad, ugly-- each time the shutter closes, because if I can capture this moment, I'll remember something other than the hustle and bustle-- than the monotony and incessant repetition of each day.
I am not a single picture. I am stage-jitters and race day adrenaline, pirouettes and obnoxious laughter, stars and far too many organs. I am everything I have ever done, every person I have met, every emotion I have ever felt; and I can't just sweep the things I don't like under the rug, because as much as I sometimes hate to admit it, they're still me. And my camera—my 18-55mm lense—captures it, maybe not all of it, but it's a start.
I'll take these moments and hold them and hide them so that when I am empty, I can fill myself with the brightness and vitality that come with each stolen instance in time; my pictures are frozen, but they're still alive.
I'll keep taking pictures, because these pictures tether my life together-- the runs, the theater, the textbooks. They're what remind me that when life gets tedious and my spins turn sloppy and I can barely beg my legs to run and I get everything wrong, if I take it slowly-- picture by picture, spin by spin, step by step, question by question-- I can get through it.
So I'll keep moving forward and taking pictures, because there will always be something to capture.
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