Skip to main content

Stories (Because We've All Been Down To The Bottom At Some Point), And Photos

I love photos.

I blame that on a set of grandparents with a deep-seated love of photography, whose visits to the photo department of the pharmacy/store to drop off and pick up rolls of film were frequent and fun.
It helped that they were pretty good with cameras.
I know that because I spent a lot of my spare time in college helping them scan their older photos for the family history.
If something crazy happened like me getting sent back in time, I would know people and places simply because of my involvement with the family history project.

But I digress - a little bit.
I digress a tiny bit.

For all my love of photos, there are some I struggle with looking at.
Those photos are few and far between - which won't be such a huge surprise when I tell you they were taken at various points during my spiral into depression and suicidal thoughts.
What also shouldn't be a surprise is how I managed to avoid being in so many photos by putting myself behind the camera.

The photo that has been hardest for me to think about (much less look at) is one taken by my grandmother on Christmas Day the year my niece was born.
It's a lovely picture of me sitting on the couch in my grandparents' living room holding a three week old baby girl in a brand new dress her momma made for her, smiling at her like she is one of the greatest things to ever happen to the world (and that is an opinion that is not likely to change... ever).
And when I say much less look at, what I mean is that looking at it has hurt like a knife wound or punch in the gut.
I'm reaching a place where I see what it symbolizes rather than the darkness pushing up against me, but it has taken a long time to get there.

A few people have seen that picture outside of family, but not many.
They've looked at it, looked at me, then back at it.
"Are you sure that's you?" they've asked.
"Yes," I'd answer.

When I tried to look at the picture through their eyes, I could understand why they asked.
The girl in the photos was much thinner, obviously swallowed by the blue fleece she wore that day.
Her jaw line was much more pronounced.
She didn't look much like the person they saw in front of them.

Before you start jumping to the conclusion that I starved myself or made myself throw things up back then...
Well, I didn't go there; mostly because the thought grossed me out.

At that point in time, I dealt with my spiral by walking.
My family will happily verify how I spent hours and hours and hours.
Summer (brutal Arizona summer), fall, winter, spring.
Rain and nightfall were the only things to stop me from hitting my trails and trying to walk my way through the worst of my pain and confusion.
I lost a lot of weight. People thought I looked great.

People thought I looked great.

They had no idea how much misery was building up inside my continually shrinking frame, or how hard I fought to make sure no one knew the extent of it.
No one heard the voice screaming at them from inside my head, begging them to take notice -
Pleading for someone to recognize my pain, to reach out with a helping hand.
I know now I was too good at locking everything down.
I also know I wasn't half so aware then that most people have their own struggles and their own voices to contend with, and won't hear another person's cry for help unless or until it is too loud for them to ignore.

I think what I'm trying to get at here is that pictures and appearances are never going to tell us the whole story, so we have to stop acting like we've heard it a million times.
Once we get past that, maybe the whole story will step out into the light of day.
And maybe that whole story becomes something better than we imagined, a beautiful sound we've never heard before because we closed our mouths and listened.
For once.

I thought about looking for that picture of me with my niece to share, but I decided to leave it alone for now.
That picture is part of a much longer story I'm learning how to tell.
Maybe this is your opening to ask it of me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Writer's Toolbox: Thesauruses I Love

I don't know about the rest of you writers in the crowd, but there are times when I struggle to get the right words to come out onto the page. The debate over using thesauruses amongst authors can be fierce. My personal opinion is that there is definitely a place and time to use them (they've saved me from missing deadlines on a few occasions), so long as a writer is careful not to overuse them. Because I do consider them an essential in my writer's toolbox of resources, I thought I would share the ones I make the most use out of and where you can find them. 1. Webster's New World Thesaurus (credit: @catpollockwrites IG, posted 8/24/2017 ) When you were in grade school, did your teachers ever hand out those monthly or bimonthly Scholastic book catalogs with all the age-appropriate books coming out that they wanted you to buy? That, my friends, is how I got a hold of my thesaurus. It's almost like mid-thirties me traveled back in time and whispered int

Metaphors: Candles

I've recently fallen in love with candles. Since coming home from the World Race , I've bought at least one a month. My favorite candles are the ones that come in glass jars - because when they burn out, I can clean the remaining wax out and put the jars to other uses. Right now,  that means they get cleaned out and packed away in anticipation of my move to Flagstaff. But as I was lighting one tonight (vanilla spice... Thanksgiving smells? Yes, please!), I saw a metaphor for writing flickering away in the flame licking at the wick and melting the wax. I suppose it could be a metaphor for life in general, but since the theme of this blog is writing... Well, you do the math.

How to Make Sure Your Book Review Request Does NOT Get Deleted

I've been hesitant to write this post. That is due, in large part, to how angry I get some days after reading book review requests. I curse, I rant, I snark. My cat will tell you it's not a pretty sight. But I also feel like this is a good opportunity to talk about what it is that makes me feel those feelings AND how to not stir them up. I'm not the only reviewer that gets frustrated when I see certain things in my emails from authors looking for a review. And I know I'm not the only one who gets triggered enough to ignore or delete those messages. I never feel good about doing it. It's just that I'm hitting the proverbial wall here and I want to hit it a little less often. So if you're an author looking for loving advice on how to approach reviewers (especially this one), read on. Review Requests I Always  Delete Before I get into what to do, I wanted to take a minute to look at what not to do (and how I handle it). Want to know what immedi