“It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.” ― Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club
I am a sentimentalist, I keep trinkets and memories, letters and cards, things that mean something to me. Tonight whilst looking for something I stumbled across my wedding album. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I didn't need to open it to know exactly the photos it contained, I had once spent hours pouring over hundreds of photos to select the perfect 32 moments that would forever be bound in that album to remember "forever".
You don't know when you're 24. You don't know what it really means to connect your life to someone elses life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to become entangled, how you're going to bond to one another. You don't imagine that your love might one day burn itself out. I didn't know that one day that album might cause me pain.
It begs the question what to do with it now. The original purpose of the album has vanished. It represents the celebration of a time when promises were made and feelings were far different, a time when I loved and respected a man who no longer exists. What would be the point of keeping it?
I am told that as time passes my bitterness towards my ex will fade, but I cannot imagine that when that happens I would want to sit and leaf through 32 memories of a day when vows were made that my ex found so easy to break. But I cannot erase my past, it made me who I am.
Without looking through the album I know there is one photo that I want to keep. One that was taken when I wasn't looking. One where I was at The Mummas before the wedding, hair done, make up done, relaxed, happy and with people who loved me then, have loved me all these years and love me still.
I have learnt a great many things this year about myself, about my friends, my family, about new people and about love. My photo frames are now filled with new memories, my heart filled with a new love. The old Lini isn't gone, she's just evolved, and the smiling happy person in the photo still lives inside me. She's older, she's wiser, she's been bruised, but she's capable of looking back and not in anger.
Perhaps tonight is not the night to choose what to do with the rest of the album, bonfire night has passed after all!
**Note to myself for February 15th, it's ok if you still haven't decided! xxx
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