I hate this picture. I hate the dull orangey pink I’ve used to fill in the blossoms in the center of the frame. I hate the flat midday lighting. The leaves have been painted a faded pastel green and I hate that too.
It’s a Blossom Trail photograph I took when I was in high school. Where I grew up the most awe inducing sights were rows of perfectly pruned fruit trees, their circular canopies bursting with tiny pink and white blooms. These symbols of agricultural success are such a big deal in my hometown that they have a contest each spring at the county fair for best Blossom Trail photograph.
In fact, I won it the same year this photo was taken, though I can’t seem to locate the winning image. I think I threw it out at some point. I probably would have thrown this picture out too, but it’s been sitting in this old photo album so long it’s become glued to the sticky backing and I can’t pull it out without ruining the entire page.
I’ve been going through old photo albums in an attempt to jog my memory. I’m working on outlining a memoir. I know, I know, who isn’t these days right? But I’ve been wanting to write this thing for a long time, so here I am finally taking steps to get it all figured out.
The troubling thing is, in taking on this task I’ve come to realize my memory is weak and full of holes. I remember timelines, but not necessarily events, and the events I do remember feel vague and featureless, their colors and shapes bleeding together as though seen through frosted glass.
This album contains photographs I took in my high school photography class. I find it hard to look at them. I’m embarrassed by them, though I recognize the absurdity of that feeling. I was just a kid when I made them after all, and some of them really aren’t that bad. I’m experimenting with different techniques. Some explore shape and form, others, like the one of my grandma’s hands, are more personal and emotional.
Suddenly I really wish I hadn’t thrown away the Blossom Trail photograph. There was a ribbon pinned to the back of it and I think maybe a little certificate, but it’s gone now, lost to me forever.
I consider going to my mom’s house to shuffle through her albums and boxes of pictures. Maybe somehow she has the Blossom Trail photo?
Of course, I know she doesn’t. I’m not even sure she knows I won the contest. We weren’t big on celebrations in my family whether it be of birthdays or achievements. Mostly when I think back on that winning image I feel squirmy, uncomfortable, as though this moment is something to be ashamed of rather than celebrated.
I can see the photo in my hand. I’m standing in a large open hall surrounded by the hum of voices engaged in myriad conversations and the clicking of heels on polished concrete. I flip the image over and look at the blue ribbon pinned to the back. There is a tight sensation of anxiety followed by the flush of embarrassment. I feel as though this achievement is inadequate, the only reason I won is because the other images were subpar.
Not long ago I met with an old friend to conduct an interview of sorts. Maybe the memories of others with whom I have a shared history will open the door to my own remembrances.
The story I intend to tell centers around my best friend, Dameon, who died in 2018. He was a huge influence on the course of my life and I feel the need to tell our story. Our personal histories are irrevocably intertwined. Without him almost nothing about my current life would be as it is. That moment, that meeting was one of those instances in which a single seemingly insignificant choice causes the path to fork in new and unexpected directions.
The friend I’m meeting is the mother of another friend. She was the cool mom, the young mom, and her house became a haven and gathering place for our high school group of friends. She also happens to be smart and insightful and I imagine she’ll have some apt observations about Dameon and the dynamics of our group.
I ask her a few questions and she tells me a story about how Dameon used to show up on her doorstep alone on days when he’d ditched school, something he certainly would have been reluctant to admit. But she only has so much to say about him. The fact is he effectively abandoned her and everyone else back home. We–me, Dameon, and another high school friend–moved away to LA in August of 2000 and after that she saw very little of Dameon. She tells me she doesn’t have much to say about him because he didn’t stick around and didn’t keep in touch.
I know this is hurtful to her and to all our friends from back home. These are people he loved and who loved him. I wish there was some way to alleviate that pain and to help her and the others understand that his abandonment wasn’t about them, it was about his need to run from the past.
The only way he knew to cleanse himself of his demons was to run as far from every version of himself he’d ever found fault with as he could get. They knew too much about him, they’d seen him at his most shameful.
All those summer nights spent on back porches under bare tungsten light bulbs sitting in semi-circles around rusted metal patio furniture passing bottles and pipes and stories while the flies circled and the June bugs clamored had laid too much bare and he couldn’t take it.
Then I remember something else. Dameon and I used to talk about how we both lacked much recall of our childhood. There were shapes, shadows, sketches we couldn’t quite fill in, but very little in the way of fully formed memories.
And then I see myself holding that Blossom Trail photo, studying the unremarkable blue ribbon and the words “first place.” Only now the hall feels empty, blank, like a yawning nothing enveloping everything around me in darkness. There is a horrible sensation slowly spreading over my body and with it an overwhelming urgency to run and hide.
And that’s when I realize it was shame we were trying so desperately to outrun. For me and for Dameon. Somehow everything that had ever gone wrong–every unkind word, every act of violence, every decimated moment of pride squashed like the spider on the bottom of your shoe by bitter indifference and misplaced envy–in the end we imagined it was all our fault. If we’d been better, smarter, stronger things would have been different. And so the anger we felt for those who’d wronged us was internalized and became shame.
We avoided the past, judging our former selves too harshly, incapable of feeling grateful for who we’d been and where we’d come from, because we were both trapped in the same insecurity and worthlessness. The dismissal we received from our families left us bereft of any sense of purpose. Everything we said or did was nothing more than another disappointment or mistake. So we compensated for these inadequacies through erasure, banishing all traces of the past from our heads. The only problem being, in banishing these memories we completely lost touch with our entire history.
Shame is why I threw away my winning Blossom Trail photograph. It’s why I feel a sense of revulsion when I sort through old family albums. Reflected in those images I find the girl I tried to outrun, the lost girl who already believed herself to be a failure.
We have a tendency to imagine the past as a thing that needs to be fixed. There is always something missing, something that wasn’t good enough, some person we’ve been that we’d like to forget. But the past is the tapestry of our lives. It is our story. It is what brought us to this moment and it is what makes us who we are for better or for worse. Of course, there is nothing wrong with using our past mistakes as a guide for how not to behave in the future. But this evaluation is useless when it smacks of cruel judgement and its bedfellow shame.
Shame causes us to hide, to run, to cover up, and when we do this we lose our ability to learn from those valuable experiences now lost to some inflated sense of pride which tells us we must never ever admit defeat.
But what if we shifted our perspective and looked at the past through the lens of compassion? It is compassion which leads us to growth. Compassion teaches us to seek understanding by unraveling circumstances and providing context so that we can find empathy with even the most vile parts of ourselves. Empathy leads us to acceptance, and it is only in acceptance that we are capable of engendering change.
There are so many beautiful moments in my life which I have thrown away just like that winning photograph. Tossed aside, heaped into the landfill of broken thoughts and dreams that make up the bitter threads of my tattered history.
I’d like to look back and remember joyful days and laughter as much as I flinchingly recall embitterment, humiliation, and despair. But the truth is when I seek the past I mostly find the latter. I don’t believe this is because my entire childhood and young adult life was nothing but misery, it is simply because I have frequently looked back in shame.
But that shame crippled part of me has begun to shrivel from neglect, as over recent years I have chosen to feed compassion instead. And in compassion there is hope of recovering those fragments of the past I’ve ripped away from myself. Fragments which lie right here in this photo album.
Cracking it open again I look at those photographs I made so many years ago and I remember the girl who believed her camera could help her capture the beauty and wonder and pain she found in the world around her and who wanted to share that vision with others. She was a troubled, but good natured girl, and she deserves to be remembered for the simple and sacred wisdom she has to offer.
I definitely relate very much to the experience of shame. I think it is one of our many lifelong tasks to turn all the shame into compassion. I am so glad you are getting there. Me too! But it remains a struggle, doesn’t it?
The photograph of your grandmother’s hands is beautiful!!
And you are working on a memoir? Excellent. There is nothing more interesting to me than real life stories that happened to real people.
I hope that the process of writing will help you in growing your compassion for yourself and others even more. I am sure it will!
A very remarkable contemplation of shame and empathy, powerful and moving and clearly drawn from real life. Thank you so much for writing and sharing.