Full storage
My phone’s been begging me to free up some space for a week now. Apparently, I have hit my 128GB limit.
I almost instantly tapped Not Now. It has become a habit. I’ve been avoiding my little phone storage issue like the plague. I know I owe it to my overheating phone to lessen some of its burden, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Wouldn’t. As long as my phone was running—I could watch Facebook reels while having dinner, I could send a meme to my best friend whom I haven’t seen in months—it was good enough for me. I didn’t care that half the applications I had downloaded were pending updates.
Then came a point that my phone was no longer asking me nicely to manage my storage. It was pressuring me—forcing me! Said I can’t record a video unless I clear up some space. It was either that or a life without filming a random sunset for the nth time.
Why, free will is an illusion.
I had a quick look at my apps, scanning from folder to folder, wondering: which among these apps would be chosen for the uninstalling game? Decisions, decisions.
Obviously, my social media apps were out of the question. I also couldn’t get rid of Spotify because I just paid my premium. Though it pained me, I chose to let go of my favorite mobile game. I thought that should fix it. Only two days later, the same notification popped up on my screen. I had insufficient storage. Again.
I went to Settings to take care of the hiccup, at long last. I checked in on what’s causing all this fuss.
It was my gallery. Woops.
My photos and videos occupied about 80GB of my phone’s storage. Of course, I pretended not to see that. There had to be another app I could uninstall—anything but my photos and videos. They were sacred to me. And so, I rummaged and scoured and searched for an expendable app for the next hour or so. There was none.
Like a man headed for the chopping block, I visited Photos. The first picture that caught my eye was of our family eating merienda inside the car. I was in the passenger seat holding a hard-boiled egg next to my papa, mama, and my two siblings at the back. We were eating arroz caldo in cups, which we got at a bancheto in Morong during Good Friday. The picture was a bit blurry because I was laughing at papa’s joke, but I didn’t want to delete it.
I scrolled down. I stopped at a photo of three iced drinks on a table: one matcha, another chocolate, and mango for me. I was with two of my closest friends from high school in a chic café in Maginhawa. We had just attended a birthday party earlier that night. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but when I sat down with them, it was as though no time has passed at all. We were giggling like the silly eleventh-graders we used to be.
I scrolled some more. I saw the pictures I took of the rock formations when I went island-hopping in El Nido for my birthday. I had a nasty cut on my foot after the trip, but it was worth it.
And more.
I landed on a video of myself and more friends at a diner in Tomas Morato. I’ve nearly forgotten the sound of our laughter together. We had pork chops and tapa. It was the afternoon of Feb. 29, 2024. A leap day. I remember asking them out of nowhere if they thought we would still be eating at that secret diner when the next leap day comes in four years. I don’t recall their answers. We haven’t eaten there since.
I spent hours going over my gallery, looking for anything I could dump. A screenshot of an old fling’s sweet message, maybe? I ended up only deleting receipts of bank transfers and a couple of selfies I looked bad in, but even those I hesitated to remove. I clung to each photo and video like a lifeline.
In a way, they were a lifeline. They keep my memories alive, no matter how small. I may forget, but my camera roll will always be there to remind me. It is a witness to the many persons I’ve become throughout the years. The pink-hair phase me. The campus journalist me. The religious me. But more than myself, my gallery is a record of all the people I have ever loved. I couldn’t leave a single photo behind any more than I could a moment with them.
I guess you never really know just how happy you were until the laughter has long died down. I never did—until my best friends went off to different universities and I found myself lying in bed at 3 a.m., alone, flipping through old albums. I wish I had stayed in the karaoke bar with them for one more song, or insisted on a sleepover, because now, all that is left of these moments are the fragments in my mind, and they scatter like leaves in the wind, only the photos to hold them in place.
It was in these seemingly trivial photos that I realized how precious every moment of life is. Once a moment passes, it is gone forever. But with a photo, you can relive it, if only through an observer’s eyes. My camera roll is the closest I will ever get to going back to the past.
I regret not buying a 256GB phone.
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Sir Chasse Aldouz Conde Garing, 19, is a mango-loving daydreamer and writer from Antipolo.
