I’m a very nostalgic person. It’s a big reason why I feel such a draw to capture our memories. Reading old notes, looking at old pictures, it creates that ache of nostalgia that I can’t necessarily say is a good feeling, but almost a feeling of loss. It’s the feeling of missing the past. I think about the past too much, sometimes to a fault. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the early years of COVID. It genuinely feels like a fever dream. My life is so different than it was in 2020. I’ve become a full time photographer, I’ve found my person who I love and get to travel the world with, and we’ve both chased our dreams and passions and have ended up in a really great spot in life. For all that I am so grateful. But the pull of nostalgia gets me.

I was recently cleaning my old room and I found an old tattered journal that I haven’t touched since 2021. It may have been a mistake, but I started reading. I started reading about one of the most incredible trips of my life. My friends and I took a road trip from Massachusetts to California. We saw ten national parks, and I will never be over the sights we saw, the mountains we climbed, the super interesting desert “commune” that we stayed at…that part honestly still feels like a funny dream. Time went on, friendships blossomed and ended, and I left college wishing to get as far away as I could from all the memories I created. The good ones were lumped up with the bad ones, and I wasn’t able to separate them, no matter how hard I tried. I genuinely never processed losing some of my best friends during my college years. Whether from distance, time, or whatever else, it hit me really hard when I started reading my journal, and looking at those pictures.  I was immature and avoidant, and the only way I knew how to react to the pain was the run.

That’s the power of a photo. It doesn’t have to be good or bad, it doesn’t have to have perfect composition or lighting, the fact that it exists is enough to evoke a feeling. And that’s the entire point. I spent a lot of my early twenties ignoring my college memories. Because they were so intertwined with feelings of sadness, I avoided them all together. When these memories first came back through the photos and journal, I felt sadness and nostalgia. Then came the yearning. What could my life have been? But I’ve finally settled in a place comfortably in between. I can look back at those times and remember how much fun I’ve had. I remember laughing harder than I ever had, exploring the world as it was shutting down with confusion and chaos, and just adventuring with my best friends. I guess without all that I would have never gotten to the place I am, which is exactly where I want to be. I’ve gotten to the point where I can look back at all these photos and feel joy, which is something I couldn’t do for a long time. 

There still is sadness when I think about the friendships that have faded. I hope they know that I am rooting for them, no matter where they are in life. I hope they too can look at these photos and remember the time that we took off in my little blue prius, put our foot to the gas, and never looked back. 

Photos with me in them taken by Dawson Tozier.