I once captured everything through a lens.
Not for survival, not at first. For wonder. For memory's . I remember being sixteen, lying on the rooftop of my childhood home, The camera sat on my chest, warm and steady. I'd point it at the sky, wait for a bird, or maybe a perfect cloud, and click. That sound of the shutter, that little sigh was how I used to know I was alive.
But somewhere along the way, I forgot how to breathe.
Not in the literal sense. My lungs worked fine. But there's a kind of breathing the soul does when it feels safe. When it's not rushing or shrinking in too much. That kind of breath? I hadn't felt it in years.
Until now.
It was the middle of the week, and spring had started to show off. Spring flowers pushing through cracks in the pavement, sun slipping lazily across rooftops, and air that smelled like grass waking up. I walked to the bookstore with my camera bouncing against my hip, like it was finally part of me again and not just equipment I carried.
Noah had the front door held open by a small stone.Wind curled inside and Shuffled the pages of the books on the sale table. When I walked in, he looked up from a softcover book, smiled like he'd been expecting me, and said, "You look lighter today."
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
He set the book down. "Like your shoulders aren't holding up the sky anymore."
I laughed, embarrassed by how accurate that felt.
"Maybe it's the weather," I offered.
"Or maybe you're remembering who you were before the deadlines," he said.
I didn't answer. Because maybe just maybe he was right.
That afternoon, I sat in the back of the shop, curled up in the soft armchair near the window. I had my notebook open on my lap, but I wasn't writing. I was listening. To the pages turning. To the low hum of Noah humming a song he didn't know he was humming. To the wind outside tapping gently against the window like it wanted to be let in.
I couldn't remember the last time I sat still without a reason. It felt like healing.
Noah came by a few minutes later, holding two cups of tea this time, peppermint. He placed one beside me and leaned against the shelf closest to my chair.
"I have a question," he said.
I raised an eyebrow.
"What's the first photo you ever took that made you feel something?"
I sipped my tea, letting the mint settle behind my teeth.
"I was twelve," I said. "It was raining. My mom had just lost her job, and we were sitting on the porch eating soup. She didn't know I had the camera. She was staring out at the trees, and something in her face sadness, strength, peace, I don't even know hit me. I snapped it without thinking."
He nodded, quietly, letting the story settle.
"Do you still have it?" he asked.
I hesitated. "I do. But I haven't looked at it in years. I was afraid it wouldn't feel the same."
"Real things don't fade," he said.
I wasn't sure if he meant the photo or the moment. Maybe both.
Later that evening, I walked to the cliffs alone.
The sky was pale purple, bruised slightly by clouds. I didn't bring my camera this time. Just my eyes, my breath, and a quiet ache I didn't feel like ignoring anymore.
I sat on the edge of the world and let myself feel everything I had tucked away the exhaustion, the grief, the loneliness that no number of likes or travel stamps ever cured.
And when the wind picked up and the sky deepened into something darker, I finally let myself cry.
Not the loud kind. Not dramatic.
Just soft, slow tears that tasted like truth.
When I returned to the bookstore the next morning, Noah didn't say anything. He just handed me a paper bag with a single flower inside a yellow flower, bright and upright and yellow like sunlight had been folded into its petals.
I didn't ask what it meant. I didn't need to.
It was Day 36 when I started photographing again with intention.
I didn't wake up and decide to. It happened naturally the way spring finds its rhythm after a long winter.
I took my camera to the narrow bridge and captured a father tying his daughter's shoe. I caught a teenager writing music on the back of a pizza box. I photographed the sky mid-yawn, stretching orange over the hills like it was proud of itself.
Then I found a mirror in a thrift shop window, caught my own reflection, and clicked.
No pretending. No pressure. Just a girl with hair kissed by the ocean breeze and softness in her eyes.
And for the first time in a long, long time, I liked the photo.
Not because it was perfect.
But because I looked like someone who had started breathing again.
That night, I returned to the bookstore and showed Noah the picture.
He didn't say much.
He just looked at it, then at me, and nodded like something had fallen into place.
"You're not running anymore," he said.
I tilted my head. "You always say things like you know me better than I know myself."
"No," he said, smiling softly. "Just enough to know when you're coming back to you."
The shop was quiet that evening, so we sat on the floor again. I asked him to read anything to me. He chose Neruda again. Read slowly. Like each line mattered.
I closed my eyes and let his voice wrap around me like a blanket.
"Tonight I can write the saddest lines…"
"…To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her."
I opened my eyes."That's sad," I said.
"It's real," he replied.
"Do you think all great love stories end in loss?" I asked.
He looked at me, long and steady.
"No. I think some great love stories never even get the chance to begin."
It stayed with me in that line. It followed me home. It sat with me as I showered, as I cooked pasta I didn't eat, as I curled up in bed staring at the ceiling.
Some great love stories never get the chance to begin.
I didn't know if he was talking about us. I didn't even know if there was an us.
But it stirred something in me, a longing that scared me in its quiet intensity.
Because I was starting to feel like home in this town.
Starting to feel safe in Noah's presence.
Starting to breathe without effort.
But nothing lasts forever.
And I knew that soon, someone from my old life would come knocking at my agent, a magazine editor, a deadline, an opportunity I "couldn't miss." Something would call me back. The question wasn't if. It was when.And what I would do about it when it came.
The next morning, I pulled out the photograph of my mother on the veranda, the one I took when I was twelve. I hadn't looked at it in over a decade.
Her face was just as I remembered soft, distant, full of quiet pain and fierce grace.
I looked at that photo and realized something I hadn't until now:
She hadn't just lost a job.
She had been letting go of a dream. One she carried silently, gently, the way mothers do.
And I had captured it. Not because I understood it back then.
But because even at twelve, I had known it mattered.
That day, I brought the photo to Noah.
"This is the one I told you about," I said.
He studied it like he always did with intention.
"She looks like she's making peace with something," he said.
"She was."
"And what about you?" he asked. "What are you making peace with?"
I didn't answer right away.
But eventually, I said, "The idea that I have to be extraordinary all the time to be enough."
Noah didn't respond with a quote or a poem. He just reached out, gently touched my wrist, and said, "You're enough even when you're quiet."
I looked at him then really looked.
And for the first time since arriving in this town, I felt entirely seen.
Not as a photographer. Not as a success story. Not as someone in need of fixing.
Just like me. Elena.
The girl who forgot how to breathe and was learning how again.