Long Before It's Gone

Sometimes, in the middle of living, I realize I am already remembering. These moments in time when the only thing I want is to freeze them: not just to remember what happened, but to hold onto how it felt. The texture of the air against my skin, the softness or sharpness of it depending on the night. The sound of a familiar voice, half-lost in laughter. The quiet rhythm of walking down an empty road, where the world feels like it belongs only to us for a brief, suspended second. The chill of the late-night air settling into my bones, and the comfort of the faces beside me: the people who, in that moment, feel permanent.

I want to gather all of it—every detail, every feeling—and keep it somewhere safe. To bottle it carefully in a jar, sealed tightly, so that one day, when life no longer looks or feels the same, I can return to it. So I can open it again and remember exactly who I was, who we were, and what it meant to simply exist in that moment without thinking of what comes next.

Because the truth is, no matter how much I try to hold onto it, change is inevitable. It comes quietly at first, almost unnoticeable, and then all at once. And we have no choice but to accept it. Our lives shift, our routines dissolve, and the people we once saw every day slowly become voices we hear less and less. The friendships we have now will not remain untouched; they will grow, drift, reshape themselves into something different. The places that feel so familiar today will one day feel distant, like scenes from a life I can no longer step back into. Even the air, the same air I breathe right now, will feel different in memory.

And maybe that is what makes the present moment so unbearably valuable: because it is already slipping away, even as I am living it.

There is something deeply ironic about feeling nostalgic for something that is still happening, to miss a moment while you are still inside it. And yet, I find myself doing exactly that, trying to memorize everything with an almost desperate kind of care.

The way my hand was held, the way they looked into my eyes and spoke from the heart. The way the voices softened when we closed our eyes, as if our truths did not need visibility. The quiet, blind faith we placed in each other’s words. Sitting side by side, thinking, admiring the world around us without needing to say anything at all. The absent-minded brush of their fingers against my sweater, and how it meant everything anyway. The way she held me as I sobbed, as though she could carry the weight of my life for me, even if only for a moment. The way we laughed at the most absurd things while walking, or simply looking up at the sky, finding something so simple and yet so impossibly beautiful.

One day, this version of my life will become a memory I return to in quiet moments. I will think about these nights, these conversations, these walks, and feel that familiar ache, the kind that comes with knowing something was once so full, so alive, and is now just out of reach. And maybe I will wish, again, that I had held onto it a little tighter, paid a little more attention, stayed a little longer.

But for now, all I can do is be here. To feel everything as deeply as I can. To let these moments imprint themselves onto me in ways I may not fully understand yet.

So that when I look back, I won’t just remember that these moments existed, I will remember how it felt to live them.

University of Toronto, Scarborough | March 25, 2026