In my first years of college I was home for winter break, looking through a box of high school letters and photos. I was newly Christian at the time, and looked at my "old life" with curious speculation. I don't remember what prompted the advice, but my mom suggested I just get rid the pictures of my on-again-off-again high school boyfriend and I. What was the point of keeping them around, anyway? Besides, what if someday they brought pain or discomfort to my future husband? Easier to just throw them out.
I woke up the other night suddenly with the memory of a small lock diary in my mind. The diary that contained the narrative of some of my first experiences with men. Thoughts and feelings and lists. Aches and resolve. Glimpses into my forming heart. Now just nebulous mysteries, really; it did not survive the cut. Those sixteen-seventeen year old words were thrown out, along with piles of pictures, in a sanctimonious act of victory over a shameful pass. A washing away. A making clean.
What a perfect symbolic scene that was. My mom, teaching
me to sacrifice myself to protect the potential fears and insecurities
of a yet unknown future man in my life. Trading my own history and memories
for the comfort of the other. Stand by your man to the erasure of your
own identity. I was learning.
