The other day I'm searching on Facebook for a photograph I knew was taken of me, but wasn't sure it was actually posted. It was of myself and a female of interest. What I mean by that is she is a friend, but there is some mutal interest beyond the definition of the word friend, but also not falling into the realm of romantic either. We'd hit it off recently and had been spending a bit of time together. I didn't find the picture I was looking for, but about where I thought the picture should be, I found a picture of the FOI with some attractive guy I didn't recognize. I felt an extra twinge of unjustifiable jealousy and disapointment as I noticed the date. The picture was posted Septemeber 15, was also a day we had spent together which I thought was signifigant. I was jealous of the handsome confident guy in the photograph, but I shouldn't have been.
I was filled with resignation, but pondered where I was a year prior, September 15, 2016. I was in the final death throes of an awful three year long relationship. In hindsight the realtionship should have only lasted three months. Primary issue was, in spite of living a mere seven miles apart, I was lucky to get one evening with her a month. It was never because of being busy though. She always had an excuse. Her friends expected her to be somewhere so she'd cancel. She was afraid of her abusive roommate/ex so she didn't want to anger them by spending time with me. She'd say "that sounds like fun" and then claim that was different than actually agreeing to thebplans I proposed. She'd pick a fight with me, then think it obsurd that I'd still want to spend time with her, even if just to talk out the issues. Those and hundreds more.
Make no mistake about it, plans were made and made often. They just never happened and according to her, it was never her fault. I spent most of the last summer we were "together" in some combonation of therapy, on antidepressants, drunk and/or high trying to understand why a woman who claimed to love me as much as her children, wouldn't find even a few hours for me a week. My self esteem was mangled, and I struggled to get out of bed on a daily basis but usually did. Then one day it hits me. We'd been together for three years and she had never taken a single picture of me. Her social media was filled with pictures of her, her friends, her kids and even her abusive ex/roommate. But she hadn't even even taken a single one of me, let alone posted one. Whereas I had taken a picture of her on our very first date.
The realization felt like a cattle prod to the heart, but it was finally something she couldn't blame on someone else. Oh, she tried all right. Claiming I sent her enough selfies and snapchats she didnt need to take a picture of me. I didn't buy it, and I ended it for what felt like the 300th time. Only this time it stuck and was glad it did.
As bad of a place as I was from that relationship, it wasn't the worse place I've been. Seven years ago on September 15th I was laying on my dirty, broken, beat up couch.
I know this because I spent better part of a year there. I'd lost my job more than a year prior. My severely emotionally abusive exwife I'd been with for a dozen years, had left with the kids in March. So I spent my days on the couch, alone, broke and unemployed, in a three bedroom house, with a basement, two car garage, and pole barn, located outside city limits a small town with a population of only 1200, next nearest city was a fifteen minute drive away through cornfields the whole way. I lived so far in the country only three other houses were visable from my property, and not becauae of hills or trees, because there were none of those either. To say I was isolated was an understatment. It was my own hell on earth. Sometimes I'd go weeks without seeing another human being besides the ex and the kids. My ex had battered me and put me down for every single thing I did, I couldn't even make Ramen noodles right according to her.
When you get put down for everything you do, you stop doing everything. It is more sane to not exert the effort if the results are going to be the same regardless. So for a while I stopped doing everything, hunting for a job, cleaning the house, getting dressed, eating, I put all my effort into taking care of the kids when I had them and it was exhausting and I questioned my ability to do so every minute. She was gone, but the voice inside my head was hers and it did nothing but constantly berate me. She damn near killed me by pushing me into such a deep depression I nearly died of apathy. I remember thinking to myself more than once that I couldn't even find enough motivation or energy to get off the couch to kill myself. Still, if I were to say one nice thing about her, it was that she took plenty of pictures of me and our children.
Maybe it was having all those pictures my exwife took etched into my brain, or maybe I hadn't really looked myself in the mirror in a while, either way I didn't recognize myself in that photo on Facebook. That guy I was jealous of in the picture of the FOI, was me.
That had been the exact picture I was looking for. Sure, the glasses are newish, and I rarely wear them, my beard is longer than its ever been and my hair shorter than its ever been and I've lost 65+ lbs since my exwife left, half of which was in the last six months, but none of that was why I didn't recognize myself. That thing on my face, it's a ... smile. A real smile, not a forced smile for a selfie or a snapchat. Not the smile of someone enjoying the company of the FOI and the person behind the camera, although I absolutely was. This was a smile of someone who is actually happy, and not just happy in the moment. I didn't recognize the happiness or the confidence or the strength I saw on my own face. The calmness was unfamiliar. This was a face I'm not sure if I'd ever seen, even before meeting the exwife. I have a face worth being jealous over? I look attractive?!? When the hell did this happen!?!
That one, innocent picture, opened my eyes to how far I've come, in the past seven years, in the past year and especially in the past six months since my ... "change in lifestyle." I'm good, But I still have a way to go. My goal now is to look at those pictures from seven years ago and not reccognize that person. I'm looking forward to that.
