Time machine in my camera roll

There were moments in my life when I wished that I could travel back in time. I have always pondered if men could possibly invent a time machine. How much more effort do we need to be able to bend the laws of space and time? Yet there is never really a certain possibility so beyond the thought of human capacity can that be ever fulfilled?

Taking photos has been quite a habitual thing of mine, especially on plenty of occasions and events in my life. It has been my sole duty to sometimes be the photographer to my family and friends. However, I can never claim myself to be good at taking photos, I am no professional; just an amateur wannabe.

The flash of light in my phone camera is not just a series of pixels, lights, and colors. I think every photo that is taken carries a voice, a sound that isn’t whispered through the voices of humanity—that allowed me to live thousands of days filled with memories in my phone gallery.

Whenever I would have the chance to open drawers in our house, I’m always greeted by hundreds of photos in various albums. A plethora of them are scattered in drawers and few are not arranged properly. Those gave me a chance to gaze through a lot of filaments, of which there were many at the time where few people I knew were still alive. Many of them were world war pictures of my lolo, a chapter of his life that I never got a chance to hear. Some were visions of my “tito” and “titas” at the pinnacle of their youth—unbothered with the flow of time. Others were my cousins who now reside in various parts of the world fulfilling the best of life, and my parents in the zenith of their youthful glow. Scrolling through many of the photos its appearance turned from color to a bunch of grays of black and white. It was like traveling through time, jumping from one moment to another. No limit, no barriers, just the thought of time slipping through.

Growing up, my mom would always capture countless photos of me. At every school program, she would be that mom who would coax you on stage. The one who will persistently call her children to stand up on stage and take a photo, assuring them of uploading it on Facebook, similar to a visual diary. For such a long time, I could never puzzle the pieces on why these were majorly significant on her part. It wasn’t until they gave me a phone that made me understand.

I had the chance to peripherally take every glimpse of my life under my myopic lenses. It was a newfound sense of liberty since I now capture moments like a bird caged free. Each of those glimpses annotates meanings, a piece of the past that could never come back. Like what you looked like when you were five, that picture of you lamenting because you didn’t get what you wanted. There were those pictures of me when I was eight wearing my elementary uniform, or that one pink shirt I frequently wore. Plenty were sentimental moments of spending Christmas and New Year with my family, as some members vanish year by year. And there were also triumphs in life, like how I wore a toga as I stepped toward commencing another chapter of my life, the achievements where I felt like I was at the top of the world, and instances of sated joy.

Looking back at my annual series of birthday photos that never fail to top the newsfeed every year, I notice slight changes in my height year after year. My face has slowly transformed from my juvenile pretense. The fashion style passed from the conventional pink to an atypical adaptation of today’s fashion. A lot has indeed changed and some things that never let time touch on, like the smile on my face; a gift time can never fade.

So it always led me to ponder the same question: could I travel back in time? Back to the days where I seemingly missed, to the moments that aren’t only stuck in the cortex of my brain? As I scroll past my gallery of pictures, I see not just pictures onscreen but vessels of stories, countless versions of me—floating in a capacious sea of what used to be.

Phenelopee Agulan, 16, is a Grade 11 student who is currently taking STEM at Wesleyan University Philippines.