Down for the Count Up, 10

PICTURE THIS AGAIN, OCTOBER 3, 2016

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I found them. I found them in the last place I looked, which would have been amusing like the long-standing joke, except I wasn’t amused. I was done.

During my weeks of frantic searching, I found myself revisiting the same places.  When I didn’t find what I’d been looking for in any of the obvious places, I logically made a firm list, of course.

I won’t bore you with all the details, although there were some things that bear mentioning. I rediscovered reams of specialty papers, printable stickers, printable window clings, printable fabric, printable shrink-dinks, printable business cards and a complicated foldy-card thing that I’m not even sure I would ever attempt again.

As exciting as all that was, once I’d been through my list, re-searched all the places I’d searched before and more, I set it aside and let my eyes leak a little. Not just once, either, but when there’s nothing you can do, there’s nothing you can do.

Early Saturday morning, I took myself on a 3-mile walk. I came home exhausted, weepy and probably a little low in the sugar department.  Chomping a nectarine, I headed for a shower and fell apart.

The pictures had become a hangnail part of my life I just couldn’t properly trim off.

To be honest, writing this blog has been hard. I’d been avoiding truly crying for weeks; the overwhelmed, sobbing kind. But, the time had come and I gave in, voicing aloud what I’d been thinking so long.

“God, I need help.’ I choked. “I don’t want it to be ten years. I don’t want it to be any years!”

It took a bit to get myself together and decide I was being stupid. I figured I might as well seal this episode up and do what I had to do.

I needed to move some things from one location to another, so I did.

Halfway through that, there they were.

I didn’t recognize what it was at first. Randomly fanning/flipping through a few pages, I finally focused enough to figure it out.

I had been looking for a mailing envelope or one of those green marbley-looking cheap sleeves they used to give way back when you ordered actual picture prints by standing at a counter and filling out awkward envelopes.

Chronically arranged, in a sleeved booklet I had apparently decided need to be fancied up with scrapbook paper, was my lost capsule.

I wonder at the timing, wonder how I could not remember what I did.

Wondering. Just wondering.

Joyously sharing them with you now.

Thanks for helping me through this year of memories.

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Identity Crisis

The first thing I remember about October 6, 2006 was entering church and seeing one, lone, beautiful flower wreath.

I’m not sure how Jeff’s October 6, 2001 wedding portrait got there. I assume I brought it, since it had been hanging in our home.

In that little space of wall next to the front door, I saw his love every time I left the house for work. Mine was there, too. Jeff saw it every time he left the house for the store.

The placement? Prophetically, romantically poetic now. I left Jeff’s photo on the wall until I moved out of our house, 4 years later. But, I took mine down right away. I wasn’t that person, anymore. I still had the name, but I wasn’t a wife.

After we were married, my father inquired, when I was going to change my email address for work? I tried way before he ever asked. Corporately, it wasn’t allowed. To this day, my maiden name remains in the root. But, I’m not that person anymore, either.

Although, it’s painful to admit, I’ve (more recently than not) typed or scrawled my signature on more than a few communications with my prior surname. Last week, I scribbled a return address on an envelope that way, too.

Why?  Dammed if I know.

Maybe I should carefully consider this. Maybe it means something.

I’ve been undefined for years; unacknowledged and unreasonably delayed. So, I suppose, it’s time to declare:

identity crisis.

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