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Lake Erie Then & Now: The Strange Feeling of Returning as a Different Person
Yesterday, I shared some photos I took at Lake Erie on Instagram.
Then, because apparently I cannot look at five pictures without immediately needing to investigate my entire camera roll like three detectives in a trench coat, I remembered something.
I had pictures from this exact place in 2019.
So naturally, I went looking.
And there they were.
Blue water. Ridiculous fluffy clouds. The lighthouse way out in the distance.
And me.
Except it was a version of me from seven years ago.
Lake Erie in 2019
The first thing I noticed in the old pictures was the water.
We'd had an incredible amount of rain that year, and Lake Erie was so high that the water had spilled right over the edge and onto the concrete walkway.
Apparently the lake had temporarily decided property lines were merely a suggestion.
The pictures are gorgeous, though.
The sky was almost impossibly blue. There were huge white clouds everywhere. The water stretched out forever.
And in a couple of the pictures, I'm standing there barefoot beside it.
What you can't see in those photographs is James.
He was behind the camera.
He took those pictures of me.
And knowing that now changes the pictures somehow.
When a Photograph Holds More Than What's in the Frame
I don't think I realized until recently how much exists outside the edges of an old photograph.
We see what the camera captured, but when it's our own picture, we also remember everything the camera didn't.
Who was standing behind it. What the day felt like. What we were worried about. What we weren't worried about.
Who we were before we knew the things we know now.
Looking at these pictures, one thing stood out to me more than anything else:
I wasn't afraid.
Not of the lake. Not of James leaving. Not of being abandoned somewhere. Not of whether the person I was with actually wanted me there.
I wasn't analyzing the day while I was living it. I was just there.
There was a security in my life then that I didn't even know was security because I'd never had to name it.
It was simply my reality.
The Things We Don't Know We're Living
There's something strange about looking at a photograph of yourself from before your life changed.
2019 me wasn't standing beside Lake Erie thinking:
Wow, I really appreciate the stability of my current reality.
😂
Absolutely not.
She was probably thinking about whether James had taken enough pictures yet and whether she could get one where she didn't look weird.
She didn't know she was living in a "before."
None of us ever do.
We don't walk around knowing which ordinary Saturday afternoon will someday become a photograph we stare at seven years later.
That's what gets me about old pictures now.
They aren't just records of what things looked like.
Sometimes they're records of what life felt like.
I Was a Different Person Then
It's tempting to look at that woman in those pictures and think she's someone completely different.
In some ways, she is.
She hadn't experienced everything I have now. She didn't know how dramatically a life could change. She hadn't learned some of the lessons I've learned about grief, relationships, trust, boundaries, or herself.
But she's also unmistakably me.
She apparently loved dramatic clouds. Still do.
She took entirely too many pictures. Still do.
She could turn a completely normal outing into a photography expedition.
Very much still do.
So maybe becoming a different person doesn't mean we lose all the old versions of ourselves. Maybe we carry them forward.
Some pieces stay exactly the same. Some get stronger. Some get softer.
Some things we once took for granted become things we finally understand the value of.
We Only Know the Version of the Story We're Standing In
That's the part I keep coming back to.
The woman standing beside Lake Erie in 2019 had absolutely no idea what was ahead of her.
And neither do I.
That's slightly terrifying.
But strangely, I think it's comforting too.
Because I've spent plenty of time looking backward and thinking about everything I didn't know.
Maybe someday I'll look at pictures from 2026 and think the same thing.
Look at her.
She had no idea what was coming.
Maybe some of it will be difficult. Life has cured me of believing otherwise.
But maybe some of it will be wonderful.
Maybe there are people I haven't met yet. Places I haven't been. Projects I haven't started. Thrift stores containing extremely unnecessary objects I haven't dragged home yet. Gardens I haven't grown. Pictures I haven't taken. Versions of myself I haven't met. I don't get to know any of it yet.
We only ever get to know the version of the story we're standing in.
So I'll keep taking the pictures. I'll keep noticing the clouds. I'll keep wandering toward the water with my camera.
I'll keep becoming whoever I'm becoming.
And every once in a while, I'll stumble across an old photograph that reminds me just how far one ordinary life can travel. Same lake. Same clouds. Same girl, somewhere underneath it all.
Completely different reality.
And for the record, Lake Erie still appears to have boundary issues. 🌊😂
