The pictures lay forgotten on the counter.

To everyone else, they are reminders of past events; times when they laughed, and smiled. Mere memories that didn’t seem fit enough to remember, but important enough to record with the photographs. They glance over the pictures and remember, but think nothing else of it.

To me, the pictures send a message. They tell me of the people, and why they are laughing, smiling and hugging each other. They spell out everything that I don’t have: the comfort of a loved one, the assurance of happiness. The frozen people look at me and tell me the things I already know. Their laughing faces suddenly seem deriding, and mocking, and they sneer at me what I’ve felt in my stomach for countless nights: You will never have this. You will never be happy. You will never be loved.

I wonder vaguely, as I study these pictures, if the happy people inside realize what they’ve found so easily, and hold on to so loosely. I wonder if they speak the truth. I know in my heart they do.

It scares me.

Everyone else passes the pictures by, not noticing the happy people, nor caring about the story they tell. Everyone else glances at themselves, frozen in the past. They see good times. They see happiness. They see love.

What they don’t see is me. They don’t see me because I’m not in the pictures. I’ve never been in the pictures.

I wouldn’t belong.