Looking for pictures for my son's project
I pull out the large tub full of photos.
These photos span from my childhood through now- though most of the pictures from the last 12 years are on discs or flashdrives or digitally live inside the cloud.
For 20 years my tub has changed, and the photos have been transfered and moved and squeezed in. My tub has been dumped out by children and reorganized by them too.
One photo envelope may contain a picture of me when I was 10, a picture of me with my daughter at 19, and pictures of a family trip with all my children when I was 25.
Looking at my life all jumbled up brings such a strange array of emotions.
It is like 10 year old me is living with 18 year old, pregnant and getting married me and 28 year old getting divorced and trying to hold it together for 3 little kids me. And I don't like them all together. It is awkward, like the stages of my life have all been laid out on a timeline and this box of photos has squished them all together like time has become an accordian.
Why can't my mind wrap around it? It is ridiculous. They are just pictures. And yet I am disturbed and haunted by their mingling.
I doubt that me at 12 would recognize the me of today. But I also see that 17 year old me would be horrified to see 19 year old me.
Life didn't turn out how I planned. And even though I say (and believe) that my life turned out well and I am happy with who I am and what I have, I still don't like to live with the pain this knowledge would do to who I was. I would have broken my own heart and destroyed all the beautiful dreams I dreamed. And those dreams, those dreams my innocent girl heart dreamt, those are the dreams that got me through the rough times. It was believing in what I could be that kept me fighting when things got out of hand.
Not long ago, at a self-care workshop, the presenter blew my mind when she said, "you have never been alone. You have always been with you. You have to take care of yourself because you are the only person who has always been there for you and always will be."
I will take care of little Emily. She is still in here. I will take care of young and struggling and so in love with her children Emily too. And I will fight for broken and damaged and drowning in life Emily always. And I will love who Emily is today because I am worth it. I am worth every stage, every joy, every dream, every sorrow, every fear and every moment I have lived.
I may not like to see them in accordian form, but really, all of the Emilys I have ever been are here with me, and they have made me who I am.
