On Sadness and Old Instagram Pictures and Light-Soaked Joy

I was looking through the old pictures I had posted on Instagram when I came across a shot I only vaguely remembered taking, it’s dated December 17th, 2017. In the picture it’s nighttime, I’m on the Top of the Rock Observation deck smiling next to the man I was dating at the time with New York City aglow in the background. I don’t remember many details of that day, but I do remember feeling like a grown up when I posted that picture. It had been roughly 6 months since I had graduated from Syracuse University. I was living in Manhattan, working as an assistant to the C-suite at a tech start up and also as a live-in-nanny for two small children. I was 22 years old. I had a boyfriend who was 25 — an age that felt markedly mature to me at the time. I felt as though I had entered my adult life in earnest. I thought I had it mostly figured out. I couldn’t have imagined that just 4 days later, my youngest brother Cameron would die suddenly and unexpectedly of a heroin overdose. The girl seen in the picture is carefree, the caption reads “on top of the world with you” next to a pink heart Emoji. The girl in that photo had no idea of the ways in which her life was about to change so dramatically and permanently. She had no idea what the years to come would hold.

I recently watched a video by author John Green, in which he talks about an old picture that hangs in his home. It’s a picture of John and his wife, taken a week after their engagement in 2005. He talks about how now, when he looks back, the people in the picture look like kids — kids who had no idea what was to come. A quote from that video resonated with me deeply. John says, “Yes there were hard times coming. Some very hard times. And these two didn’t know. But they also couldn’t know about the light-soaked joy that awaited them. And that awaits all of us.” This quote makes me think of the girl in the picture, 2017 Kelsey, smiling on the top of the Rockefeller building.

I can hardly recognize that version of myself. Just 4 years younger than I am right now, but living a life, having a reality that is so different from the one I currently call home. The girl in that picture didn’t know heartbreak, though she thought she did. She didn’t know the pain of attending her 18 year-old-brother’s funeral on an icy December day, just 2 days after Christmas. She didn’t know what it was to hold her father’s hand after having made the decision to take him off of life support, following a massive heart attack from which his body wasn’t able to recover. She didn’t know that she would lose her mom to kidney disease amidst a global pandemic, that she’d say goodbye alone, over the phone, from her couch in Manhattan. She had no idea of the unimaginable loss and grief that would characterize the next years of her life. I would imagine that 2017 Kelsey would never believe that she could survive what was about to come.

But there was more that 2017 Kelsey didn’t know, more than just loss and suffering. The girl in the picture didn’t know that the years ahead held joy and accomplishment and love beyond her wildest dreams. She didn’t know that in the wake of her brother’s passing, more community would show up and support her family than she even knew existed. She didn’t know they’d show up each time she suffered the loss of another family member. She didn’t know the lengths her best friends would go to ensure that she’d survive, the love that they’d pour into her each and every day, that the loss she suffered would solidify those childhood friends as chosen family. She didn’t know how much love she had to give. She didn’t know that she’d become a full time caregiver for children she’d adore as if they were her own and she didn’t know she’d find herself feeling like a loved, valued member of several families as a result. She didn’t know she’d teach preschool at a Jewish Community Center in Harlem filled with people and community she would keep in her life forever. She didn’t know she’d become a high school special education teacher at a public school in the South Bronx, finding yet another crew of people to love and cherish. She certainly didn’t know she’d do any of these things during a global pandemic. 2017 Kelsey didn’t know the resilience that she had in her, the power that the next 3 years would unleash.

Two days ago I posted a picture of myself smiling next to the man I am currently dating. It’s a new relationship and it feels full of hope and promise and opportunity. It’s the kind of connection that makes you feel like you’ve known someone for much longer than you actually have. In the picture, I am smiling genuinely. We are drenched in sunlight, standing on a random street corner on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I look at the version of me in that photograph and cannot help but wonder what 2025 Kelsey will think about her. I picture what the upcoming years might have in store. I have no idea what’s to come. I am keenly aware that there might be more hardship, more deep blue sadness. But I am more certain than ever that there will also be warm, golden, light-soaked joy. And I cannot wait to stand in that sunshine.