Spring Cleaning? Woman Deletes 50 Photos From Camera Roll that Already had 10,000

It's happening. She took a deep breath, and opened her camera roll.

11,965 photos.

“Holy shit” said brain,” It’s worse than we thought.”

She scrolls through the Days, the Months, and then the Years. Her eyes glazing over the numbers counting down from

2026, 2025, 2024,2023,2022

2022,2021,2020,2019,

2018,2017,2016

She shut her eyes.

A snapchat video, 2017. 13 years old, and she is twerking in a game of truth or dare and of course, this is her dare. Or maybe she isn’t remembering it wrong, and maybe this isn't a dare, but entirely her choice, her own volition, a creative risk. Maybe she even asked somebody to dare her. Hmm. She was a pretty attention starved middle schooler. Everyone else in 8th grade had boyfriends that were freshman in highschool, or smoked juul pods in the bathroom. And she? She would stay up late every night watching SkyDoesMinecraft, and listen to the Heathers soundtrack. She did play softball with all the popular girls, hence this is how she got invited to this party. Hence, now she is shaking her ass, to prove that she is worth a good time at these parties. “Hence, I don't think I was invited to a party ever again.”

She scrolls to 2018. Awwe, homecoming. There she is, with her freshman year boyfriend who is actually gay. At the time she had a strong inclination that he was of the other side, but she also had the strong hope he was just deeply a bi-sexual, but no. They broke up in three months, but to both of their surprise, they remained extremely close friends. She smiled at this photo; his royal blue tie, her royal blue dress that she got from Charlotte Ruse that morning.” Awwee, look at me. Hot, confident, and with a gay boyfriend! Damn. I thought we were going to have sex that night.”

She scrolled to 2020.

“Oh.”

An interpretive dance video. Some pandemic-era content from high school Theatre on Zoom. Their gay 72 year old acting teacher had them make masks out of household items, pick a song, and read some random lines from a devised play/poem that was “really telling of the times we are in right now”. The video plays, and her 16 year old, over the top higher register voice stabs her ears.

“The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence has been so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal. There were sharp pains. Sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding. The scarlet stains, upon the body, and especially upon the face. Shut the victims out from the aid and sympathy of their fellow men-”

Damn, this video really is from the Pandemic.

Down she goes to 2024. Damnit. A photo of her ex. The main one.

“Damnit woman, scroll! Scroll!. Don’t look at him!”

But she does, and she laughs. Because it’s a photo of him pissing at Grant Park, Chicago. It was Easter, and they just made themselves an Easter dinner of Hawaiian rolls, deli ham, and a 1.5 liter bottle of cheap white wine from Target.

In April, the city was a ghost town with its persistent windy and freezing evenings, and they would take advantage of the empty streets with nights upon nights of getting insanely wine drunk, chain smoking cigarettes, yelling at pigeons by the big ole fountain, and treating the city like it was theirs and only theirs. Now she is no longer in the city, and neither is he. Whatever that version of their lives was, it stayed in that city. Oh, the image is a live one. She plays it, and she can hear his piss hit the ground and herself giggle.

Now she is deeply sad.

“Bitch get a grip. You are doing this just to rage bait yourself.”

And the brain is right. She should not be watching this, and she doesn't want this on her phone anymore. If she is going to look at 11,965 photos, it better be all things of her life that she is able to keep without too much pain. Her interpretive dancing can stay, even though it is embarrassing. Her twerking at a middle school party can stay, even though that video actually might be incriminating against hers. Even her ex gay boyfriend can stay! Even though she really thought she could make him change sides!

But him, no. He does not need to stay. He was important, yes, but she can’t keep him anymore. She shouldn’t. They are not the same anymore, not the same drunken fools who thought that Chicago could be theirs.

So she deleted every photo of him. And it was only 50 photos.

“Damn. Just 50?”

And her camera roll remained to be 11,915 photos. But it’s lighter, it’s clean, and there is less likely to be a jumpscare “Memories” photo montage that her iPhone will generate in her camera roll..

And that brings her peace.