The Woman That I Used to Know

Oh boy. I did not need to see that photo notification today. Life has a way of reminding you of how insignificant you are. How meaningless any progress you made might be because the past is there to haunt you like a vengeful ghost. Such a gut check happened to me today.

Google Photos has this nifty feature (and I think other mobile devices do too, but we shall not speak of that treacherous fruit) where it will dig up photos from your past and then shock you with them in the name of precious memories. I consider it a psychological attack when it uses subtle reminders like “It’s been 20 years?!” and “Look who it is!” and my favorite “11 years ago…”. Like I need these surprise reminders of the passage of time. It’s already traumatic enough as it is.

What popped up today was a full frontal selfie of none other than me. OMG, I remember taking the photo. And I honestly thought, at the time, it was a good photo. And for many years later (because this photo resurfaced from the year after the divorce), I thought that this was the best I had ever looked. And for over a decade, that was theoretically true.

In complete disbelief as I looked at a countenance that no longer looked familiar. I had to get up and go to the mirror to look at myself for confirmation. It was the face of a stranger, and I did not recognize her. How had I been this way?

My memories of that photo were that I was happy. I thought I was happy because I clearly did not look happy. I thought I was content. I looked a mess. It fills me with shame and sadness to think back on how I mistreated that version of myself. I have to be forgiving to a degree because, in retrospect, so much was stacked against me; it is actually a marvel that I survived at all. I was barely hanging onto sanity.

Which validates a comment my bff made to me a month ago after I had sent some photos of Guatemala to him, and one of them had the side of my face in it. He said that he had never seen me so happy. At the time, I considered that perhaps he just meant that I looked happy to be in Guatemala.

But now I think it was the opposite. That despite having known me for 3 decades, I have only recently become aware of the cage I was in, and sought my escape from the mental incarceration – and he sees the physical manifestation of that psychological shift.

I think the emotional and psychological progress I have made in the last two years has been the most significant of my life. Not the most ideal, as they have been challenging, and revealed entirely too many toxic truths, and I have been forced to face up to my own inequities. Own up to just how much I had been deceiving myself, during the marriage, and after the divorce, about my health, my well-being, and my happiness.