"Blurry Photographs" (Journaling)

By Asche Keegan

Some say love is invisible. It’s not.

It hides in the way two people look at one another, the way they talk and the lilting of their voice whether they stand in person or call across great divides. It shines in the teasing laughter and the caring acts that trace ways across the constellations of the unimaginable reaches of the human mind.

You can see love in the faces of those who have confided their heart and soul with one another—who have been left bleeding to death and stitched back together by the person who they love. The smiles are larger, the touches are gentler, and even in photos it seems like the edges of hardship and reality have been blurred just a little when they’re standing next to each other.

Some say love lasts forever. It doesn’t.

In fact, I used to think my parents never truly loved each other, but old pictures seem to tell a different story. In pictures, everyone is laughing, smiling, hugging and standing close to each other. The smiles are larger, the touches are gentler, everyone seems so loving and caring, and more than anything else the people feel like family.

The pictures show a family that hasn’t yet seen the trials of the world and splintered apart beneath them, unable to survive through sickness and in health. The world has twisted their features, and now even in the happiest of pictures you can see the forced attempts at a smile, the misery beneath every gaze, the heartache that evolved so quickly from the love that once flourished everywhere.

Acts of service and words of assurance have become a thing of the past, and the world that once stood aside before their love has kept on doing what it does best—dishing out hardships and strife before humanity has time to recover from the last challenge life threw at it.

Yet here in pictures preserved on digital profiles of twelve years ago, you can finally see why your parents have kept trying—hoping to salvage what is left of the love that existed so long ago. The message is hauntingly beautiful, but perhaps it is a warning of what is to come.

Is love worth it? I don’t know.

What should you do if nearly all love is doomed to fail? What can you do when no matter how strong you build your bonds, they will splinter apart and leave you with only a harmful shell of what was? How can you love when your own doubt holds you back?

These questions and a thousand others just like it plague my existence. I sit here sobbing, listening to the loud voices of beautiful children in digital videos, bemoaning the gradual deterioration of happiness and the establishment of hard lines into the faces of children and parents alike.

 Old pictures share hope and tragedy, and the comment sections echo of a patient, happy life that once was vibrantly lived. So be wary oh lover, for perhaps the world will gape in wonder at the beauty of your devotion, but more than likely it will shudder beneath the weight of your heartache and burdens, before moving on ambivalently.