Worth a Thousand Words.

When I got back 'round these parts a few years ago, my Mom discovered something rather strange. AT some point she'd reused a roll of film from my wedding to take pictures at her own, so several of the pictures transposed.
There was an image of myself and the ex-husband dancing on the dance floor. That was shot one direction. ON the other was a shot of myself and my previous bf. He looks thrilled to be having his picture taken. As I remember correctly, he was basically an asshole throughout the entire thing, doing his best to make it all about the fact he was begrudgingly going with me to be with my family during this happy moment.

It had been drifting around the house ever since it was initially found. Bob found it twice and moved it somewhere it should have been theoretically very easy for me to find. Even so, it took me until last night to locate it.

Now, most people are aware that a favorite method of mine for "cleansing" the past is to set things from darker periods of my life on fire.

This baby went up in a blaze of stinky, stinky photographic smoke in a matter of seconds. In a silly way, I'd wished I'd had more to throw in there, to dwell on the cleansing that was going on and feel it wash from my being and psyche. But, alas, really I only had one issue and that was iwth the photo in my hand. No deep catharsis, just a really stinky sweatshirt that had to come off once I got inside because it sucked up all that smoke like a 3-pack-a-day granny in Vegas. Ugh.

I'm happy to have that picture out of my life, but really there wasn't a lot of ceremony to it. I didn't properly reflect. I just thought "I've gotta burn this bitch" and it was the only thing in my mind. So that when I did..... well, that was it. Sort of missed the point. Or what I thought was the point. Maybe the entire reason I burned it was to show how pointless a maneuver the actual act of burning an object can be. Like Fahrenheit 451, burning the book doesn't destroy the thoughts, or the words, unless you have decided to also get rid of them.

I'm still angry at times at my ex and ex-bf for their stupidity. I'm not sure why I thought a messed-up Kodak moment had the witch-doctor's medicine to take that out of my life. Maybe I"m never happy concerning either of them. But the picture is gone so I don't have to remind myself of it anymore.

I will admit I'm disappointed in the strength of my voodoo with this. I really wanted that anger gone.