I’m flipping through photos on Instagram, finding shots of my friends baby-faced and reckless. Eyes glazed from UV Blue. Grinning while holding a bowling ball. Half-blurred and screaming in a close-up. I am tempted to call all of them, feeling those images like I’m living them. I miss the life I had at these times. I think Nothing is as fun as it used to be when I was younger. I tell my friend this and he narrows his eyes. Are you kidding? You’re in the prime of it. At that age, everything was awkward and uncertain. You have it better now.

I like to believe that as people age, they develop a sense of internal recognition, that they can discern the pattern at play when remembering the past. At the age of say, fifteen, it feels easy, almost instinctive to act in a polarized way to a lost boy or girlfriend, a lost friend. I remember being on the phone with my now ex around that age, sobbing, swearing I would never be with him again, let alone speak to him. Not three weeks later we were holding hands and sucking face in the front seat of his mom’s borrowed car before a movie. Now, I am not so easily swayed. While I’m sure my teenage self would swear that she feels these hurts more, I think I now feel them longer. Relationships that I leave behind in search of better seem to keep screaming out Remember that time…A younger me would have turned with practiced drama and open arms crying Yes, I do. When I hear that nagging voice calling out to me now, asking me where my heart is, I hang up the phone, hoping to preserve those memories for a later date once they have aged into sweeter ones. When going over past conversations, it is easier to forget faulty things said or done. In the same way, it is harder to forget hurtful things said or done to us. We remember the unexpected gifts we purchased, the feet we’ve rubbed, the meals we’ve cooked. It makes us feel better about ourselves to heighten these moments and turn down the volume on the less flattering ones. And I don’t blame us. Who could handle remembering it all, exactly as it was? Fifth grade (when I lathered thick layers of black eyeliner and thought Seventh Heaven was a good TV show) is a blur for a reason.

Nostalgia—that pink cloud that settles over our memory, making the edges of our recollections softer. My friend tells me he can’t write about the places he’s lived until he’s left them. He tells me that in order to be honest with what they were and his experiences in them, he needs distance and time to gain perspective. I think of my own home, my family. Over the few years I’ve been away for school, my relationship with each of them has gotten better. When writing about them now, I find myself misting over some of the bitter interactions we had—lifting my littlest up by her collar, telling my mother that she was responsible for my anxiety, hiking up our mile-high hill in a blizzard. I ask myself, That wasn’t so bad, was it? And the truth is that they were, in those moments.

But like a snapped photo, we all like to smile for the camera. We deny the world the opportunity to see us slipping because we are afraid of being seen for what we are: unhappy, afraid, vulnerable. Our identities are comprised of our memories; so why wouldn’t we gloss over the less pleasant ones? Basic psychology backs this up. When traumatizing events happen, many reject them, keeping themselves from having to live with these occurrences. Why? Because not to do so would cause them to change their idea of self, the generally steadfast center to our being. We keep smiling for the camera, hoping that the happiness we exude will become genuine. And in twenty years when flipping through that album, many will feel their heart warming, assuming that when the photo was taken they were happy. Because that remembered moment is inaccessible, the viewer will feel the fond hand of nostalgia wipe clean the slate of their memories, leaving only the best and brightest. We live in a world of greys we misconstrue for blacks and white because when things aren’t bad we like to call them good.