I have submitted my first college application. I fail to reflect on the fact and recognize its significance after two years of anticipation. I have a week to submit my portfolio, and another two until my interview, and then another month until a decision. Maybe then I will have understood. But this week, I have a portfolio to submit. Having prepared some music, it is the art section that’s left. I’ve decided to send in a few pictures. My trusty film camera, as I called it in one of my essays, is next to me. I’m comfortable with the stills I have, but I remember – what about Paris, what about Berlin? I look at my trusty Voigtlander. Though the trip took plenty, there’s a few pictures left.

I arrange with my friend to walk around after school and use up the remaining shots. I do not see how many are left, but I feel it must be ten or so. Having walked to the store and still feeling the photo click working, I lose patience and take three lazy pictures of my friend. We walk in. I always forget how to unload the film with a broken reroll button, so the employee has to go open it in the dark. She comes back. There’s a disappointed glance. I wonder what might have happened. The film roll is empty.

What?

What?

I trust you no more! I curse you, Voigtlander! The camera is open, and I look at it like a bird would a breadcrumb. The film roll sits silent and still as it did in August, when another employee carefully put it in saying “this should work!”. It did not. Having joked away a part of the disappointment, my friend suggested I should’ve asked for a refund. I didn’t notice saying “yeah, probably” as I was still thinking about the idea. So, I figured I should have. For some reason, I couldn’t understand what I felt.

The week felt like there was a full moon. Though the days kept their form, it was their presence that threw me off. As if the week shouldn’t have been. The room is a little too warm for fall. The cheese on my bread is off-center. The table is where it was yesterday but feels divergent from its past purpose. It’s a distant gut feeling but not of something to anticipate, but something to remove from the past. A gut feeling that something either happened that shouldn’t have or didn’t happen that should’ve. That someone in the world should’ve changed their mind about something but they didn’t. With the universe moving, I stood still, changed but unchanging.

I fear I’ve failed to reflect for most of my life, only seldom reaching the evaluating stage. Like a pros and cons list that evokes no feeling. The college application – a fact that I consider but haven’t yet felt. It’s probably just the fake full moon.

This is a reflection, however. I have come to understand the feelings I couldn’t grasp before. I didn’t feel the need to ask for a refund but it had crossed my mind. My memories still stay, just without photographic reference. The empty film roll wouldn’t become any more appealing. I trust my Voigtlander. I will double check with that employee next time. I will go to Paris and Berlin again. The college application will hit in.