stop time.

I just went through my pictures in iphoto.

And deleted a lot of them.

It was time.

And it’s amazing how photos can stir your sense memory; amazing how the story is written in the colors and the feel of the images.

And I love to look at this; it’s a good story.
A girl, just turned three, blowing out the candles on her cat cake. It had to be a cat cake, you know. Every year. Maybe this year my mom will make me a cat cake again. That’d be nice.

And this picture.

It says a lot.

Drew had just told me a little bit of the story that would shatter my life, though I still was ignorant of a lot of it. And then we went to one of my best friend’s wedding. I sang a song for them and was about to give a speech. One about love, faithfulness, the joy of covenant.

I was sitting in this room with Drew and I couldn’t see him. Not really, anyway. I didn’t understand where he had gone, though he was sitting across from me. But he might as well have been back in Delaware, while I was in the North Carolina mountains, for all the real relating he was doing.

Oh, but it makes sense now. And so does the fact that after the wedding, he opted to go hang out with some strangers at a bar, dragging me there, rather than spend some quality time with me. I guess it didn’t matter that I had just this last day off from work.

And then this was taken when I was in California.

And I love how it looks like they finally had to just put me in a straight jacket.

Because I felt that crazy.

I didn’t know which way was up or down and the few things that I did still know–family, trusted friends, God, and music–I kept holding onto like it was a lifeline.

But a straight jacket–that could have totally made sense.

And so did the color yellow.

This was a good day.

Darby and I went out to get pedicures. The sun was bright and the sky clear and blue where it wasn’t already crowded with mountains. And we went to eat some food and we talked, which is when I started tentatively talking about life without him. And Darby acted like this was normal, so as not to scare me into realizing the change all at once, I think. She listened and agreed and loved me. And every time I looked at my painted yellow toenails, I felt a little bit happier.

And then I came back East and I couldn’t believe how horrible everything was.

The airport. The christmas decorations. The people who knew me, but couldn’t really know me–not anymore, not after what had happened, I thought.

And a friend just recently told me that he knew something tragic had happened to me the first time he saw me at church, right before Christmas, I guess.

And this picture makes me think of that.

I was walking around like a dead person. My parents wondered if I’d ever be the same again–though they had the wisdom not to mention that to me then. And I didn’t care about much anymore. Life looked like a very long time to be here, and I wondered what exactly I would find to do with all these days that piled up before me like math homework. And I was never very good at math.

But then Christmas happened and a few days later, we went to a museum.

An art museum.

And Lyric and I rode in my parents’ car together and I taught her a song that we proceeded to sing together just about the whole way there. It is one of my audition songs and, goodness, but singing is good for the soul.

And once we got to the museum I remember looking at the art like I’d never seen it before. I remember thinking it was interesting that I had this terrible secret that all of the people around me (with the exception of my family) would never have guessed in a million years. And I remember he called me and my heart hurt so badly that I had to tell him I couldn’t talk to him. And then he said he was sorry and I didn’t understand why he said that because sorry doesn’t look like that. It doesn’t look like any of the stuff he did against me; and even if it did, well, sorry doesn’t mean that much anymore.

And this picture of Ollie is perfect. It was just after Christmas and a group of us were at the mall and there were people I knew there, so I made him duck inside Harry & David’s with me in an attempt to not have to say hello.

And his look just about sums up the way I felt about the situation too.

It totally sucked.

All of it.