When the World Blurs Past

The photo below was taken on an August morning in 2016.

It was my final semester of university. I remember my best friend picking me up, and we went for a drive.

We were supposed to study, but instead, we just kept going—out of the city, past the familiar streets, into the suburbs where the lawns stretched wide and the air felt lighter.

We loved driving through neighbourhoods we’d never seen before, admiring the houses, daydreaming about the lives unfolding inside them. The worlds that existed behind each window. The stories hidden in the colour of the shutters, in the way the flowers grew in the garden.

We told ourselves it was productive—scope for the imagination, she’d say. Finding inspiration for our film scripts, tapping into our creative flow.

Four days before this photo was taken, a relationship had ended.

It was unrequited love—so in reality, I was only mourning something I had already known would break. But isn’t that just how we are with love? We bargain. We convince ourselves to look the other way, again and again. Stubborn in the ways we resist letting go.

But that day, with the wind in my hair, singing with the windows down, I laughed for the first time in days.

And, as always, I took a photo.

A moment I felt myself missing before it had even passed.

I stared at my reflection in the side mirror—my face in focus while the world blurred behind me.

Sometimes, life feels exactly like that.

When it does—focus on the wind in your hair. Try to laugh, or at the very least, smile when you catch your reflection.

Because you will return to centre.

Remember that when you feel untethered, when you’re angry, when you’re dizzy from the world spinning too fast.

Always meet your own gaze, even if she looks lost, even if she feels unfamiliar.

Look a little longer.

You’ll see her. You’ll find her. And you will love her.

You will return to centre. You will return to love. Every time.

Trust in that.