Some Memories Are Best Stored In The Heart, Not Digitally
What to do when one chapter is over and the next has begun
I have just one picture saved from my entire wedding album.
After my divorce I unpacked the album— my ex requested a few which I sent him and the rest I trashed. Mostly because I didn’t see the point of storing memories of an event that marked the beginning of something I rather forget.
I don’t like carrying around deadweight both literally or metaphorically.
The one picture I have is not on account of the beautiful wedding gown or jewelry gifted to me by my parents but to serve as a reminder of the girl who once was.
I feel tenderness for that girl. Sometimes I try to find any semblance of who I am now in her naiveté. I don’t.
Sometimes it makes me cry.
I try not to delve into self-pity and focus instead on what I have now and how far I have come in terms of rebuilding myself.
When I embarked on my first relationship post-divorce, I wanted it to be on a clean slate. Since I came with a lot of trust issues, it took a long time for me to settle into the relationship, and only felt comfortable enough to take selfies together a few months in.
I am not sure why I made a big deal of such a small thing. Perhaps I wanted to be sure I could trust him or that it was not a flash-in-the-pan thing before deciding on the significant step of taking a selfie together. And my ex-boyfriend never once pressured me to do so even though he must have thought it weird on my part.
In my opinion, it isn’t as if one needs digital proof to show two people are committed to each other.
At the same time, I used to wonder how many selfies with different partners one might accumulate in a lifetime before finally settling down with ‘the one.’
All the ‘before lives’ so to speak. Where do all the pictures from those before lives go then?
Become memories?
Get trashed?
Get deleted?
Get saved in a secret folder somewhere?
Or just let them lie around on the phone, around the house, and on social media for the world and the new partner to see?
What if the new partner is not happy with the last one? It is not a big leap to think they might feel insecure or even think you have not gotten over your ex when they see those pictures everywhere.
But I digress.
Ultimately, my then-boyfriend and I ended up taking a lot of selfies. More so, each picture had a funny story or memorable experience behind it. They may not seem extraordinary or fancy to a third person but to us, who were first and foremost best friends, they were all special.
There is a series of pictures we took while trying to balance on a log out in Lake Winnepausakee — it took several tries before we could curb our laughter and settle down enough for the perfect shot. That was how we were — me having a creative imagination and he building up on it, we would craft the most hysterical stories out of thin air.
I don’t have my ex-boyfriend’s pictures on my phone anymore. I rarely think of him and if something triggers a memory, I recall it with fondness and let it go.
Perhaps the residual affection is because there are hardly any bad memories — not even one major argument. Nevertheless, I wasn’t happy towards the end of our 3 years together — our life goals did not align and when trying to find a middle ground proved futile, I decided to end things.
I am happily in a new relationship now. He is someone who was drawn to me through my writing.
When I was growing up, I recall common advice in my culture was not to tell your partner about your previous affairs, crushes, or family secrets even because chances were they would strew doubt and discord within a marriage or relationship. Or they could come around and bite you in the behind when you least expect it.
It happened to me. I shared some of my family secrets that were causing me a lot of pain with my then-husband. While he pretended to be understanding and empathetic at that time, he had no trouble shouting it from the rooftops when our relationship started unraveling.
It hurt pretty badly. Mainly because it was not about me but my family members. They didn’t deserve that sh*t.
Sometimes people try and deflect blame that way.
I, on the other hand, don’t seem to have learned my lesson. I am pretty open about my life. I am not ashamed of whom I loved whom I broke up with or who broke up with me. It is all in my blogs and as someone with baggage, I wouldn’t want the new person in my life to think otherwise.
And he doesn’t. From the time we started talking to each other, he has let me set the pace of the relationship which is saying something. He has given me the time and space to settle into the relationship and has been a steady presence during certain challenges I had to overcome.
I have already started documenting the experiences behind some of the pictures we have taken together. Of course, looking at them evokes the emotions and sensations associated with each specific memory but being a blogger, I’d like to take it one step further and preserve them in words.
Similar to how he is capturing our love story in his poetry.
Maybe one day down the line, it would be fun to turn the pages back in time and see how it all unfolded — the initial connection, the frequent chance encounters, the circling around one another — the axis gradually tightening, creating a sense of inevitability…
Yes, I think it is one for the books indeed.
More from Yana
Thank you Libby Shively McAvoy
Some posts I enjoyed this week:
Dr. Preeti Singh Life Is A Special Gift, Celebrate It