The following post was authored by the incredible Kristin of Better Now (whose beauty, it must be noted, is dazzling even when only 1/3rd of her head is visible)
In the beginning days, I’d take clandestine portraits of him when he wasn’t looking: god he was so incredibly beautiful: thick black lashes and startling green eyes, calloused hands the size of baseball gloves. And at night he wanted to fold his meat-hook glove around mine, toss his leg over mine in a comfortable pin. Some nights I’d watch him fall asleep and feel his extremities start to twitch and my own hands would itch for the camera. To record the moment, that elation, because one day, I knew, that snapshot would be the only proof that moment existed.
I snapped portraits from the kitchen, his face blue-lit from TSN, fingers poised strategically on the remote for easy access between the Smash Your Face and Tackle You Down sporting shows he loved so much. On vacation, in a bar, on a night I felt flushed and particularly lithe, I’d cajole him into the frame, come on, I’ll take our picture.
Here’s one: with red-rimmed eyes on the streets of Amsterdam on his first International vacation. After this, we rode a bike to a market to buy cheese and bread and he deflated a tire with his muscular weight. We laughed so hard my stomach felt torn in two, and that night we fell asleep with the tips of our noses touching.
Here’s another, I’m wearing ponytails and a pink number 8 shirt, he is smiling like he has won me in a world championship wrestling match; I’ve always loved the small space in his front teeth. The photo doesn’t prove it, but I can tell he had his hand on my butt. Our shared rescue dog is straining, embarrassed of his failing bowel movement, in the background. We are oblivious, I am newly pregnant, we are still so full of hope and confidence.
I upload everything to Flickr: my pregnancy stages, painstakingly captured month by month with the dog entering stage left, every time. I recorded our Christmas parties, our weddings, Wednesday nights by the fireplace while we did nothing but eat Shepherd’s pie and touch each other’s feet. When our baby comes I continue to snap: the moment our son is born, the moment my soulmate starts to cry, the moment I lose it totally when I realize we are in this forever, now.
Except, sadly, then we weren’t.
Flickr is not like a photo album that you dust off the shelves of your Mom’s house at Thanksgiving Dinner, marveling at the Footlocker head bands, parachute pants, and sickly-sweet smelling Salon Selectives hair. Flickr is a photo album on speed; one that is added to and witnessed almost every day. Comments, views, organized meticulously.
I am not sure how to remove my ex from Flickr, from my living photo album. He is still there, in the Milestones set. He’s half of the K&R set. His heli-boarding trip is there, impossible to avoid. I could private them all, but I’d still see them. I’d delete them, maybe, but then I’d be erasing those snippets of time, those places that had to exist for me to get over to here. I could have no photos of him, but he’d still be here, everyday, in my son’s eyes.
So they stay, those pixelated moments of a relationship at its prime and to its death. And I realize I want them to stay more than I wish that they were not there at all.
