Snapshot

I like taking photos. I always have.  I don't always like being in them because body issues and all kinds of fucked up excuses in my head. But I take them, and I will pose for selfies with someone most of the time. SelfieBeautyProject is a thing.

And of course, with the kind of headspin that makes the Exorcist look kinda lame, I have tried to figure out what I am supposed to do with all the photos I have of exes.

When my ex husband and I split, besides opening a bank account he had no access to, and reformatting the hard drive on our shared computer 12 different times to make sure that the chatroom (and the saved chats) he used to contact his girlfriend was no longer there, I also took care of our wedding photo.  You know the one.  The one in the crystal frame that was a wedding gift from some aunt.  The one where you are staring into each other's eyes,  wondering how lucky you got, dripping with happiness and promises.  The one you had in an 8x10 color glossy, sitting on your shelf at eye level for guests to see the first millisecond they walked in. The one you burned, after smashing the frame into little shards with a sledge hammer dropped repeatedly in the bottom of the trash bin. That one. Twenty four years ago.

It was easier then.  Photos were prints, and tangible, and semi-irreplaceable if you did not have the film negatives neatly sorted in binders to keep forever. There was one, maybe two of them to deal with, and you carefully put one print (maybe two, because the one with the puppy is just so sweet) into a box to never look at again.  Or it will be years, and by then you will be okay.

When my children's father and I split, after babies and almost 11 years together, the photos were also easy to deal with.  Sort them into the photos that had him in it, either digital or prints, pull them all onto a thumb drive and toss them in a box marked *save for H and M* and walk away.  Do it once, don't destroy anything, but never look at it again.  Keep all baby pics separate, and labeled, and I was good to go.

When my most recent partner and I split, part of the verbal vomit he threw at me was how he hated that I took selfies, and couples photos. This was news to me because while I knew he didn't particularly feel good in his body, and I had seriously curbed my public albums at his request, he smiled, kissed me, put his arms around me, and posed just the same anytime I asked. 

So  tonight, as I looked at the photos,  I started to delete the albums from Facebook so they wouldn't wreck me showing up on my memories, and wondered what do I do with all these photos now? Because reality is they are fucking everywhere.  They were on posts, and in my camera roll, and as part of cover photos and profile pics.  They were backed up in my cloud storage on three different sites, and on my laptop hard drive.  They were sorted with facial recognition software so I would never not be able to find them. One thousand, seven hundred and seventy three photos in the drive correctly labeled as him.  Him leaning against his new car.  Him at his desk at one of the six  jobs he held in the last five years. Him on the couch. Him at dinner.  Him in groups with my kids. Him with his mom, his daughter, his best friend, his brother.  But (and this is a big but),  one thousand, three hundred and eighty two of them are of him and me together. Nearly 1400 photos documenting our adventures, our togetherness, our lives. Seriously. Over,fucking,whelming.

So what the fuck do I do with them?  

I have no reason to believe they will ever be wanted. Not by him for sure, and not yet for me.  I can cruelly imagine all kinds of reasons for keeping them. Like for when he is indicted for fraud and murder in a very public trial and the news agencies want them, for large amounts of cash. Or maybe for the collage at his funeral after he is shot dead by some jilted mistress, or dead because of a fall from the balcony of his apartment that he was afraid to be on.  Or maybe for one of his daughters because for the last five years the only photos taken at all were by me, and no one has any others. 

Five years is a big enough chunk of time that I may want to keep the memories of MY trips, and MY outings, and MY love. I need to figure out a way to make this visual noise be quieter so that I can find MY life in there somewhere, but not have it feel so difficult, or so immediate. It is not like randomly finding a photo in an old box.  I have to actively delete them on multiple platforms, while deciding what I value.  Can I be okay with that great pic of the Lincoln Memorial with us standing together on the top step? What about the selfie at the Golden Gate Bridge, or from the window of the Rainbow Room?  I was there. There is visual proof. He was there, too. Just as smiling, just as present. One thousand, three hundred and eight two times. 

I pulled the photos labeled with his image into a folder marked "ex". I pulled the nudes I have of him into  a sub folder in the secure folder (under password protection), also marked "ex". He probably won't be happy I am keeping those.  I am okay with that, he has company.

What I really need to do is figure out how to smash the frame without cutting myself in the process.  I need a different kind of sledge hammer this time because it won't be as easy to just burn the photo at the end, and there will be no accidental boxes to find that prompt nostalgia.  Delete is so much more permanent. How much of me will be left?  I am guessing a lot, since I still have ones of me in my wedding dress, and me with my babies, and me that day at the beach.  Me. I still exist, and I am keeping the photos to prove it. Him maybe not so much.

I might actually print a couple of me just because. 

Scarred

Did you know that you can Google "how to get rid of a wedding ring indent?" and there will be dozens of articles and advice tips in less than a nanosecond.  I learned that today.

I was sitting on my porch, sipping tea, reading, sun just high enough to not be in my eyes, but still warm on my legs. and I look down at my left hand to see the dent on my third finger.  To be honest, it took me a second to realize what it was, then another second to be mad, then sad, then frustrated that it was there.

I wore a ring there for a little over four and a half years. I took it off to shower sometimes, or to sleep if it was hot.  I would take it off when my hands would swell if I was walking, or had eaten too much salt the day before. But for the most part, I wore it daily since the day in June it was given to me.

It was his grandmother's ring. A lovely wedding band type, set with channel diamonds in antique cushion cut.  Not expensive; the engagement ring to the set would have cost more.  He didn't have the engagement ring, he said, because the jewelry had been divided up when the grandmother died, and this was what he got.  He had never let anyone else wear the ring before, and had pulled it from a plastic film container he had retrieved from his junk drawer.

It never came with a question, and I liked it that way.  He had been married before, and so had I, and while we planned a future, the idea of matrimony never came up for longer than to work out if a certificate once we retired would make finances better.  It would be a transaction.

But as I looked at the dent on my finger today, and thought about the memory of the day he gifted it to me, all I could think was that the word transactional was actually the best word for most of our relationship.  

I gave him a ring later that year, just before Christmas.  At first he didn't want to wear it.  I asked him about jewelry, and he said that was not the issue, he had worn rings before.  I ask him about comfort, and he said that he was okay with wearing rings that fit him.  So I asked the elephant in the room question, and wondered how he felt about outward physical signs that our relationship was more than casual. 

This is where he balked. He wanted me to wear a ring, but he didn't want to.  He wanted the casual freedom of not having to be asked about his "wife" (the reason men wear rings on their third finger on their left hand) and then either have to explain that I was his girlfriend (that got some looks a few times), or cringe at the word. It was okay for me to have to explain, but he didn't want that. Because almost invariably the questions would become about why we weren't married, when we would get married, how long had we been married if we chose not to talk about girlfriend status.  Fielding them when we were together was easy, I had more language for the ways to answer.  And after a couple times when he had just rolled his eyes, or said something truly vile like "Oh God no she's not my wife!" my responsibility was clear. If he was going to wear a ring, I was to protect him from looking like a flake.  Men whose opinion he valued, and women whose attention he desired, needed to think he was shiny.

So on the day I gave him his ring, and he didn't wear it, I put mine in a bowl on the nightstand and didn't wear mine either.  This bothered him.  He didn't have my undivided adoration right then. Manipulative, maybe, but more than anything, I wanted us to be equal.  Partners without the paper.  If rings meant something to him if I wore one, I needed for him to have that same kind of faith.

He broke the first ring.  It was black hematite and shattered completely one day, without a good reason.  The next ring I got him was titanium. 

The day we ended, we had been out for a walk.  As I said before, my hands swell and, like had dozens of times before, I took the ring off and put it in the inside zipper pocket with my wallet of the jacket I was wearing.  It was his jacket, and I loved it almost specifically for the pocket that held my wallet and ring so perfectly.  When I left that night, I took my wallet, but not the jacket, and hadn't put the ring back on after coming home. When I left that night, I didn't take the ring with me.  When I left that night, he still had his ring on.

He told me two days later that he wanted the ring back. Another day went by before I told him he already had the ring, and where to look.  He informed me it wasn't there.  The ring is gone.  Maybe still in the lining of the jacket. Maybe on his floor near his dining table from it coming out of the pocket when I took my wallet.  Maybe on Market Street somewhere. I don't know.  I only slightly care.

When I returned his keys, dropping them with his concierge without seeing him, he texted later and asked about the ring again. I told him again that I didn't have it, but asked if he was willing to talk about something other than possessions.  He wasn't willing, and honestly, I am glad he was just as transactional this time as he had been with most everything else. He didn't give back his ring, so maybe it lives in the film canister now. No matter, I didn't ask for it or want it back. 

But what I have is this dent where the ring used to be. I took a photo to see if it was truly noticeable to anyone but me. It is, but barely.  Google says the only thing that truly gets rid of it is time.  I added lotion just in case.  I am hoping it just stops being there, and I don't notice when. Apparently, not yet.

I semi-wonder how long his dent will be there, but not really.