Pictures

I have a few photos on social media of me with paramours who are no longer part of my life. 

One of them felt like a big deal. I even changed my relationship status to “In a relationship.” I’ll never do that again. 

I am not deleting them. 

I am not adding snarky comments about how they turned out to be major douchebags. 

My Facebook account and to a lesser extent Instagram are a diary of my experiences. Memories of fun nights out, my thoughts on current events, and even random thoughts that make no sense now are available for my reminiscing pleasure. Why would I pretend something or someone never happened? 

We have all seen the TV and movie montages where the scorned girl seeks catharsis by cutting or burning a lover out of her life. I guess it may help in some cases. It’s not for me though. 

Despite the way things ended up, nevermind my heartache, these people influenced the person I am today. 

I am also quite happy in these photos. You can see the excitement of new love, lust, or whatever it was, and it illustrates the hope I still have for the future. I look cute. All aglow with sparkling eyes. 

Yes, I know I blacked his face out for this post. Seems to contradict my whole point, but maybe the point isn’t who he was. The point is who I was at that moment. I was a girl, giddy and vulnerable, willing to document the moment I knew I was smitten. 

My word choice baffles me now. Consistently. Hmmm. Perhaps it sheds a little light on what I value in relationships. Nevermind that looking back, it’s completely untrue. There was nothing consistent about him. Seriously. Epitome of dude who is most likely married and lying about it. 

I get to keep my memories of the time I truly believed I had met someone special. I get to keep the souvenir of the excitement of a new relationship. It doesn’t matter what it was to him. I don’t even know what he was experiencing. It turns out that wasn’t the point. I had zero control over who he was or wasn’t. 

Let’s be honest, by the end of it all, he just wasn’t very nice. 

I’m not going to delete or attempt to erase my past, no matter how untrue it turned out to be. It was real at that moment and I get to keep it. 

“It’s not the destination, but the journey” may sound cliche. I am too frequently guilty of thinking of “my journey.”  But it was my trip, I paid for the gas and traveled across a new land. The ending sucked and I was embarrassed and hurt; I am keeping the evidence to remind me how much I enjoyed the ride.