Elene’s Reviews > Old Flame > Status Update

You miss it. The feeling of not knowing whether something will happen. That time when the question is more important than the answer.

If I were to see those pictures now, I know I would feel nostalgic. Not because I was happier then, but because Wes had captured, with those photos, something essential about the way I was back then: in all of the photos I looked slightly different; I was still malleable, changeable, and open to that change; I hadn’t solidified yet, and there was freedom there; I could be anyone I wanted to be, in any moment.

I knew what it felt like to be alone in the world, yes, but my response to that aloneness was to surround myself—with friends, lovers, anyone who would fill up the emptiness. I already knew Wes and I were deeply different in this way: my defense mechanism was togetherness, his was separation.

I noted how easy it was for Wes to give compliments, remembering how he’d praised the writing of Zoe’s friend at the park. It took a certain kind of confidence to be so free with flattery, and also a touching kind of devotion

I didn’t actually like the feeling of smoking itself, it was the choosing to smoke that I liked, the tiny act of rebellion that felt like freedom, or at least a gesture toward it.

We were asked to follow so many rules, to be so many things. To
follow our conscience but follow our heart, even when they conflicted with each other. To be desirable while disregarding our own desire. Sometimes, just sometimes, we wanted to not have to choose how to be. We wanted to be told to feel a certain way, to be hypnotized into feeling held.