Photographs

I was looking through old photo albums tonight and was going to post lots of pictures of me as a Brownie, Guide and Young Leader. Of course, the album with all my Senior Section pictures seems to have disappeared, but it doesn't matter - I got distracted anyway.

As I flicked towards the end of the photo album (even though I knew there were no more Guiding pictures), I came across photographs my parents took when they visited me in Germany. Some made me smile, like the one of my house, but then I came to this photo, and the one after it.

This photo was taken in January 2005, just a few weeks before I was attacked. It's strange to see me smiling and so happy because I still associate the smell of bratwurst and gluhwein with everything that happened. Whilst this picture looks so happy and peaceful (and I was surprised by how young and pretty I look there - I didn't recognise myself for a moment), the one after it was taken in June, when my parents came to collect me.

In the second picture (which I can't bring myself to scan and post), I looked so different. My eyes were tired, pained. I know, looking back, that it was only a week or two after I miscarried. And the two, side by side, look like completely different people.

After that point in the album, there's not a single picture of me smiling. Every single one looks haunted and in pain, or resentful of the camera. And I was. Because whenever the camera was around, I knew that all my feelings were being captured and preserved forever. I hated seeing my pain reflected in others' eyes, I certainly didn't want it there in stone for all to see forever.

I forgot how much it hurt. It still hurts now, but not as much as it did then. And it's a different type of pain.

The truth is, I thought I had managed to destroy all pictures from that year. I thought that it was a black, blank space that I could forget about. But life's not that simple.