I always joke that I keep the photobooth at our mall in business.
I can't go a trip to the mall without going in one. I have huge collection of photobooth pictures, just sitting around my room. Each one reminds me of a certain day, a certain time in my life. I see all the funny faces staring up at me, and no matter who I was with in that photobooth, it always looks like we're having so much fun.
I have pictures with people I'm hardly friends with anymore, with people I haven't seen in what seems like a lifetime. But looking at those pictures, it looks like we?re the best of friends, the kind of friends that will never be separated.
Our moments are forever captured, and even as the times change, these images never will. These moments at one time existed, but some of them will never again be.
It shows me something about life. As I lay them out in order from oldest to most recent, I can see so many changes already. Some of the faces change, grow older, some of the faces disappear altogether. New faces interject into the pictures.
It's as if it's a timeline of my life. It shows the friends I've lost or gained, and the friends who have always been there.
Things change.
Nothing will ever stay the same. That's one fact I'll never forget.
There are people you think you'll be friends with forever, and in these brief moments captured by this photobooth, the look on my face says that's what I was thinking. I never expected these people to change so much. I never expected us to grow apart the way we did. I never expect any of the changes that occur in people.
I remember the day we squeezed so many people into the photobooth that we were piling on top of each other and standing on things just to get in the pictures. We look like we're having so much fun. We look like we're laughing and these good times could never end. But they did. Our times together are over. We've all changed, some for the better, some not so much.
It's taken me a lot of time to accept the fact that people won't always be the same. The people I know and love can change so much. Sometimes it shocks me to see the changes in people. Sometimes you don't talk to someone for years, and then meet up with them again. Sometimes I can be so happy by the way things are going for them, or sometimes I'm so disappointed by how much they've changed.
People grow up. They lose their innocence. Their values and life goals change. They meet people who mold their lives. It's not possible to stay the same.
Everything will eventually change. Nobody can stay the same forever. We have to adjust to these changes, live with them, no matter how much we may hate them.
And as the people change, these photos may be the only thing I have left of them.
