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I'm sad I did not manage to take a picture of us together, dad. I wanted to get really good at taking portraits first, and that took longer than expected. Looks like there is actually something I'm not immediately good at, and that thing happens to be my dream job. It's honestly pretty funny.
I pictured myself coming to your hospital room, waiting for you to recognize me. Then, I would show you my camera and start talking about my passion, before asking you to smile for me. Now that I think about it, I'm not 100% sure you would have understood. I guess the bright side of this is that I can choose to imagine you would have.
Of course, I was not expecting this to fix anything. Time would pass and the memory of those years spent craving for your attention would not fade, nor the effect they had on me.
Deep cracks cannot be erased, and the chipped porcelain doll which I used to see myself as, she will always be looking at me from somewhere inside my soul.
However, broken pottery can be fixed by pouring gold to merge the cracks and become a more valuable product than what it was originally meant to be.
That's what happened to me: I met a person who poured gold into my wounds and helped me realize what I've wanted to be; what, deep inside of me, I always wanted to become but did not think it was possible. But he gave me strenght, and I dared to dream for the first time in my life, and it was worth it.
That picture, the moment of us together, smiling and sitting close, that would have been a chosen memory. To hold dear, and to triumph over all the bad ones that I will never get rid of. I found a way to prioritize the beautiful thing over the bad ones, and my life changed for good.
I used to think, when I met people for the first time, "Could this person be useful to me?". Now I think about how I would take a portrait of them. I can immediately see what their best angles would be, what part of them I'd decide to bring out. I look at their faces and I try to picture the soul of the person behind those features.
So I think "How could I make this person smile?".