Photographic Memory

There is a black & white photograph of me that I have used as my avatar, online photo, and profile photo for decades. Pretty much since college. In the photo I am wearing my favorite hat, my hair is out (a rare event) and I am looking back over my shoulder at a friend from college who was taking a photography class. I was pissed at her when she took the photo, and she knew it, and now, 33 years later, the feeling in the photo feels like it happened to me yesterday.

I was on a field, we were outside watching a lacrosse game, I believe, my freshman year of college. I can’t remember exactly why I was pissed off. But considering who the friend was, this particular friend used to do stupid shit during parties that I would still be annoyed at with her the next day. I spent a lot of my college time annoyed at the people around me.

What probably happened was that she ditched me or she got drunk. Both happened with an unfortunate regularity, and would have kept me salty until the very next day.

Either in the late 90s or early 2000s, I connected with the same friend again, and she called me out about using that photo as my avatar and online profile image. She was like, you know who took that photo, right? And I was like yeah, you. So what? Am I not allowed to use it? She was like, why that photo though? And I was like, because it’s my favorite picture of me. She was like, you look mad in it though. And I was like, yeah. That’s the best part.

I wish I had the negative of that photo. I only have the original print she made, which she printed out small. I would enlarge it. Gallery sized. I was with her when she developed the photo. That whole event, the photo, the taking of it, the creation of the photo from blank paper into developed picture, has stuck in my memory. Even after so many other things have been data dumped this photo has persisted.

I feel that the look on my face in that photo is the rawest I have ever looked in my life. Photos where I am smiling, especially when I was younger, pre-marriage photos, were pictures where I crafted a look. In an age before selfies were a thing, I had perfected how to look good on camera whenever people took candid pictures of me. I used to get a lot of hate about it. About how most photos of me, when they should have been opportunities for humiliation – like at the DMV – were instead chances for me to look great for posterity.
I lament the loss of those days. The loss of that confidence. That photo and what the hat in the photo, represented. The connotations of my appearance in the photo, and the confidence that I had in the photo I know I lost several years later when I got married and life got ugly. And then I got ugly.

And even if I wasn’t ugly, life through the people closest to me who made it their mission in life to make me miserable, sure made me feel ugly. It has taken me decades to unlearn that ugly feeling. And even though I am at an age where I literally could not give a fuck what other people think about how I look – or that I at least endeavor to make that my reality – I have lost the rage that fueled me through so many tough times in my youth.

The sad thing is that I no longer have the hat I was wearing in the photo. It was a red UNLV hat. It disappeared sometime early on in my marriage. I have long suspected that my mother stole it somehow (either from my house during a visit, or if I left it at hers when I visited) and I have not seen it again. She had gotten it for me when I was in high school when she went to Las Vegas once.

It was my souvenir she got me from the trip. I wore it EVERYWHERE, even when I was in the navy. I thought I looked cute, it was red, it was bold. It was my favorite hat. And then one day it disappeared and that was that.

People have told me (or at least they did when I was younger and in my 20s) that I look good in hats. I think that was no longer the case when I gained weight after motherhood, and I didn’t think I looked good in anything after I got divorced. Frankly, I didn’t want to be perceived. I wasn’t going to add any accessories to draw attention to me.

I don’t wear hats anymore. I am not sure when I stopped exactly. I know that when I got the urge to wear one, was when I went looking for my UNLV hat, and when it didn’t turn up, I tried to order a replacement online and that didn’t work out.

The hat disappeared, and that version of me never came back. And will never come back.

I think about the implications of me clutching as my identity to a photo that is 33 years old. As I stare into the camera, free to share every ounce of the rage I felt inside in that moment.

I love everything about that picture and what it represented for me. The photo is, ironically, one of my favorites, and I consider it one of the best photos of me. If I have my way, it will be my obituary photo.