Hiding behind the lens

careful not to be seen

photographic memories

of everyone but me

~

It’s a terrible thing I’ve done

I can clearly see that now.

I didn’t think it mattered.

I didn’t think I was

hurting anyone.

I didn’t stop to think,

not in the moment,

not in all those

moments,

but now . . .

now I see

what I have done.

~

I removed myself

from memories

and nothing

can take their place.

Every picture

I cropped myself out of,

every photograph I erased,

where I should be,

there’s only empty space.

~

Why?

~

My smile wasn’t right,

one eye looked a little closed,

it was a terrible angle,

I looked awful in those clothes.

~

None of it even mattered.

They didn’t care

what I was wearing,

they didn’t care

if my hair was done,

they were busy

making memories,

busy having fun.

I see their smiles

in the pictures.

~

all of them

but one.

~

When memories

are all that is

left of me,

I hope they

can close their eyes

and see my face.

I hope they will

forgive me

for all the

memories

I erased.

~

I’ve spent most of my life dodging cameras, bowing out of group photos, begging people to get rid of pictures I deemed unworthy to be seen, and now . . . I wish I hadn’t.

I didn’t think it mattered until one afternoon when my son was looking through some old pictures and reliving a few fond memories, he’d come across photos of a fantastically fun day we’d had and started talking about his recollections of the day, he spoke as though he were telling me all about something I’d missed.

“I know, I was there!” He looked shocked. “You were?”

It hit me. Hit me hard. I wasn’t in any of the pictures. He remembered the day because the photos reminded him, but I wasn’t in any of those photos, that part of the memory wasn’t recalled by the evidence of smiling faces in front of him. I felt shattered and guilty. I’d stolen bits and pieces of my son’s precious past by hiding from the camera.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

Not too long after that, I came across a box filled with pictures and mementos of my beautiful cousin who traveled to her place in Heaven much too soon. I sifted through the letters and postcards and pictures. Photographs of her smiling face playing with my boys, splashing in the ocean, sitting by a campfire . . . I didn’t realize I was crying until a tear splashed down next to a photo of her hugging my oldest son.

I wasn’t crying because she was gone, I was crying because she’d been here . . . with me. We’d played and laughed and hugged and had fun, but I haven’t any pictures to look back on that reflect that image of us together. I’d ducked out of every single frame.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

I met my husband shortly before my 16th birthday, we’ve made so many beautiful memories since then, but looking back through the albums of our youth, I’m absent. I cut myself out of those precious, paper pieces I’ve saved. There isn’t a single surviving picture of us from those teenage years together.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

I’ve cropped and cut and deleted myself from my own photographic history and there is nothing I can do to remedy that now, I really, truly wish I hadn’t done that.

I’m trying to make amends now. I’m trying to accept the reflection of me I see. I don’t want to be absent when my children look through our family photos someday. I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to have pictures of us. I don’t want them to wonder if I was there. I don’t want them to look back on our memories knowing I was too insecure to capture them on film.

I don’t want them to say, “I wish she hadn’t done that.”