This week’s “My Back Pages” list has been full of old posts from three years ago – apparently I was writing a lot then. Most of those posts are raw attempts at getting to the heart of the cognitive dissonance I felt when my engagement fell apart. They are/were my desperate attempts to understand, move on, sit still, and dive deep. Re-reading them now is interesting because the distance (time and geography) allows for a slightly more detached understanding of what I was thinking and feeling at the time. I can approach it as, “this was a time, this was a something that happened, here’s how I felt about this time and thing and me and this other person.” These posts are also a source of emotional ambiguity for me. They were from a difficult time in my life – a time when I was flailing around trying to figure things out – a tiger caged in my own mind, pacing and looking for an opportunity to rest or pounce while something nagging at me kept tapping on the plexiglass. They are flawed parts of a flawed story. Beyond the historical, I’m not sure what use they serve. What’s past is prologue.
My ambiguity comes in this feeling that if I were to delete them, I would feel as though I’m attempting to erase my history or avoid accountability. I’m no purist in that sense. I have over a hundred posts marked as private that can’t be accessed by the outside world. I have a half-dozen unapproved/hidden comments from when the ex’s boyfriend found this blog and wrote to me. (I kept the comments in the spirit of historical preservation). The truth is, we’re all selective in what we share – and I struggle with these different versions of the truth all the time. I think artists and psychologists are acutely aware of the various angles and perceptions that might exist around the same set of events. My truth, your truth, an observer’s truth, etc. Our past, present, and future are also different versions of our truths… and in the retelling of these stories we practice countless small lies of omission and minor revisions because they paint a prettier or more convenient picture. This is the sausage making of memory.
I haven’t read some of these posts in quite some time. They’re not my best pieces of writing. I was both preoccupied with a subject and just starting out. When I re-read, I’m sometimes tempted to clean them up a bit, but again, I run into that notion of historical record. Editing, other than for obvious typos or slight stylistic revisions, feels wrong. Yet, yesterday morning, I removed photos from my post “learning to run.” In that post, I had pictures of me and my ex running a half-marathon together (Facebook was kind enough to share those photos and memories with me two days ago – it’s that time of year). Shortly after discovering my blog, my ex had reached out and asked/demanded that I remove all photos of her/us. I reluctantly did so (again – I felt like this was an attempt at erasure or at controlling the story – a story which was only half hers).
If I recall, I left the pictures in the learning to run post as an editorial decision – though I honestly forgot they were there until I saw them this week. At the time, I was writing about the race and our running styles as a metaphor for our relationship. At the time, I felt the pictures added to the story (I still do). I intentionally ended that personal essay on the notion that we may have crossed the finish line together that day, but ultimately, we never learned to adjust our pacing and run together. This was one of many attempts at acceptance. One of the closing photos was one of us holding hands as we crossed the finish line. Now, the newly edited version ends with a picture of the participation medal I received for having run – which might highlight the differences in how she and I approach life. I’m inclined to remember the people who have been with me along the way, the ones who have influenced me, the ones with whom I chose to run. She might be inclined to remember having finished the race.