I Opened an Old Photo Album from Iran and Felt Like a Dead Man Looking at His Life

Dear Delyara, I made a massive mistake at 2:30 AM tonight. I opened a cloud storage folder containing photos from my last summer in Iran before I moved to London. I saw pictures of us at a picnic in Lavasan—everyone was laughing, my cousins were playing music, my hands were clean, and my face looked completely smooth, free of the deep, dark lines that have settled around my eyes over the last two years. Looking at those images while wearing a cheap nylon security jacket with a heavy radio buzzing against my hip felt like looking at a life that belongs to a dead man. I feel like a ghost that has been marooned on a cold, grey island of gravel and wire, trading my youth and my sanity for a corporate dream that feels further away with every single shift I log.