Land Mines

I have a large pink bin in my closet. It's where I store photos and baby momentos.

Not, mind you, in albums or envelopes. I have them thrown in their as if Michael Jordan were my de-clutter expert.

Right after STBX left, we had the "Great Burning". Photos were burned, goats were sacrificed, incantations were chanted.

I thought I had all that crap cleared up.

But last night, I went diving for old photos for my brother. Anything I could find of our dad or our siblings since there was a time when some woman burned all of his photos.

Hmmmm. I'm seeing a disturbing pattern here...

As I'm digging, I dig to the bottom of the bin and find piles and piles of photos. Photos of STBX, photos of his family, photos that every time I looked at them, I wondered what was going on at that time in our lives.

That photo from our family vacation years ago? Guess what he was doing at the time that was taken?

That photo taken with his daughter in his arms? Was he already thinking about what he wanted to do?

That photo of the two of us, where I'm smiling everywhere but in my eyes. I remember that day. I remember the emptiness and the pain. I looked like a rabbit caught in a trap. Until now, I've looked at that photo and just thought "Wow, that's a bad picture!"

In all reality, it's probably the most truthful picture I own.