Old photos and the person in them

Dear You,

The photo surfaced the way they do now, in a memory notification at 7:14 on a Thursday morning. Three years ago today. A wedding, a navy suit I remember buying in a hurry, a glass in my hand, a laugh caught mid-way.

I looked at it for a while. Then I noticed I had two thumbs hovering over two very different buttons, and neither of them felt right.

The first urge was to delete it. Not out of shame, exactly, or not only. More the feeling you get looking at an old haircut: that’s not me, I don’t need the evidence, make it go away. The second urge, which arrived about four seconds later, was to post it. Side by side with something recent. Let the internet do the math. Collect the comments.

I didn’t do either. It took me the better part of the day to work out why.

The delete urge was about disowning someone. The man in the photo was at a wedding he’d been looking forward to, in a suit he’d chosen, laughing at a joke I can’t remember, next to people he loved. He had, as far as I can tell, a good night. Deleting him would be telling that night it didn’t count, and it did. He was me. He paid for the suit.

The post urge was about something else, and it took me longer to admit it. It was about wanting credit. Wanting the people who’d known the man in the photo to see the one typing now and say the thing people say. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that. But I noticed that the version of the post I was drafting in my head turned him into a before. A problem that got solved. And he wasn’t a problem. He was a person who went to a wedding.

So I did a third thing, which is nothing. I left the photo where it was. I did not hide it, I did not delete it, I did not caption it. It’s in the album, in order, between a picture of a dog and a picture of a sunset I thought was more impressive than it was.

Here is what I’ve come to think, two years into looking different and a lifetime into being the same person.

A body is an outline. The thing inside the outline, the one who likes the window seat and cries at airport reunions and cannot leave a group chat unanswered, has not changed in any way the camera could catch. The outline changed. It changed a lot. But I’ve been continuous through all of it, every day, with no gap, and the photos are just evidence of continuity, not evidence of a replacement.

I think the before-and-after format does real damage here, and I say that as someone who has been tempted by it. It teaches you to see your own history as two people, one of whom was wrong. It makes the past a thing to be ashamed of or a thing to be triumphant over, and I don’t want either relationship with the man in the navy suit. I want to be able to look at him and think: that was a good wedding. Which it was.

A few things I actually do now, since this is a blog and not just a feeling.

I keep the photos. All of them. In order. The album is a timeline, not an argument.

When someone sends me an old picture with “look how far you’ve come,” I say thank you and I mean it, and then I say something true about the day the picture was taken. “That was the night Marcus did the toast.” It gently moves the conversation from outline to person, and people follow you there more easily than you’d expect.

When I catch myself about to say “back when I was” with a word attached that I wouldn’t use about anyone else, I stop and say “three years ago” instead. The date is the fact. The adjective is a judgment I’ve decided not to pass.

And when the memory notification comes, I look. Sometimes for a while. He’s got a good laugh, that one. I’d know him anywhere.

Want to tell me something? Reply to any Low Volume email, or write to me here. I read everything.

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