Yesterday I was showing my youngest son some old photographs.
Nothing particularly remarkable.
Holidays.
Friends.
Faces I’d not seen in years.
Some of those people aren’t here anymore.
Some just aren’t in my life anymore.
Funny how one photograph can quietly undo forty years in the space of a few seconds.
I’ve realised memories don’t arrive in order.
They don’t politely queue up waiting for their turn.
One photograph becomes a festival.
The festival becomes a conversation.
The conversation becomes a person.
That person becomes a smell.
A song.
A kitchen.
A feeling.
Before I know it. I’m somewhere completely different.
For years I thought there was something wrong with that.
I thought I was supposed to think in straight lines.
Start at the beginning.
Stay on topic.
Finish the story.
Simple.
Except my brain has never worked like that.
I’d start writing about one thing…
…and halfway through realise I wasn’t writing about that at all.
A memory would lead to another memory.
A tiny detail would unlock something I’d not thought about in years.
Sometimes I’d end up understanding something I’d never intended to write about in the first place.
I used to fight that.
Now I don’t.
I’ve started thinking of them as breadcrumbs.
Tiny pieces scattered through life.
Most days I don’t notice them.
Then one appears and, almost without thinking, I follow it.
Sometimes it leads somewhere beautiful.
Sometimes somewhere painful.
Sometimes somewhere I’d forgotten existed.
The tricky part is learning that every breadcrumb tells the truth.
Sometimes my mind joins the dots because I’m frightened.
Sometimes because I’m grieving.
Sometimes because I’m overwhelmed.
Sometimes what feels true in the moment needs a little more time before I understand it properly.
I’ve learnt not to believe every thought.
But I’ve also learnt not to ignore them.
There’s usually something underneath worth listening to.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt over the last few years has been accepting that this is simply how I process life.
Not through timelines.
Through connections.
Through feelings.
Through tiny moments that don’t seem important until they unlock something much bigger.
For a long time I thought that made me too emotional.
Too much.
Too disorganised.
Now I think it just makes me… me.
I’ve also realised why writing has always felt easier than talking.
When I speak, my thoughts arrive faster than my words.
By the time I’ve explained one thing, my brain has already connected it to ten others.
People hear the conclusion.
They don’t always see the path I took to get there.
Writing lets me slow everything down.
It lets me retrace my own footsteps.
It gives me space to ask myself…
“Is this what happened?”
“Or is this what happened?”
“Or is this what it felt like?”
Sometimes those are different conversations.
Both matter.
For most of my life I’ve been terrified of being misunderstood.
Not because I didn’t know what I meant.
Because I couldn’t always explain how I got there.
Writing has become a way of translating myself.
Not perfectly.
Just a little better each time.
Maybe that’s all any of us are doing.
Practising being understood.
I don’t think writing helps me remember.
I think it helps me understand what I’ve remembered.
I’ve stopped trying to force memories into straight lines.
I trust the breadcrumbs now.
Not because they take me exactly where I expected.
But because, more often than not, they lead me back to parts of myselfI’d forgotten were still there.