I realized there are almost no pictures of me from the last six months
My sister asked me for a recent picture of myself yesterday. She's putting together something for our mom's birthday.
I opened my camera roll and started scrolling.
There are pictures of my electric meter, a dent in my car door, screenshots of apartment listings, a grocery receipt I needed for a return, and about 40 pictures of my dog.
Not one decent picture of me since March.
My wife and I separated in February after 11 years together. Divorce should be finalized soon. No kids, relatively civil split, and I'm doing okay compared to how I was in the beginning.
But this caught me completely off guard.
When we were married, she'd take pictures of me doing random stuff. Cooking dinner, falling asleep on the couch with the dog, trying to fix something in the garage. I'd complain about looking stupid and she'd keep the pictures anyway.
I didn't realize that was the only reason I had photos of myself.
I went hiking twice this summer. Had a really good weekend visiting an old college friend. Finally started going to concerts again. There have actually been some decent days mixed into the bad ones.
And somehow I have almost no pictures from any of it.
It's not that I need pictures for social media. I barely use it. I just looked at six months of my life on my phone and realized that, apart from bills and errands, there's almost no evidence I was doing anything.
I tried taking a selfie for my sister and felt like an idiot. I'm 41 years old and apparently don't know what to do with my face when nobody's standing behind the camera making fun of me.
I ended up sending her a picture from last Christmas and cropping my wife out.
That felt worse.
I don't even know exactly why this is bothering me so much. I don't want the marriage back. There were good reasons it ended.
I just didn't expect to miss something as small as having another person occasionally think I was worth taking a picture of.
Has anyone else noticed this after divorce? Did you eventually start documenting your own life again, or does that just stop being something you think about?