I looked at the old photos without punishing myself afterward

Dear Delyara, They came up while I was searching for something else, and usually I would have closed the folder quickly, as if memory itself might undo something I had worked to build. Instead I looked. I didn’t stay there all afternoon. I didn’t idealise the past. I didn’t use the images to injure the present or myself. I just looked, felt what I felt, and then moved on with the day. That might sound ordinary to other people. It is not ordinary to me.