Life More Abundantly

I just recently accidentally stumbled across “Facebook.” A friend asked if I was on facebook because that’s where all of her baby pictures were. So, drawn by the promise of baby pictures, I became ensnared by the addiction that is facebook.

She did not lie. Her baby pictures were worth the look, and the added bonus was that I reconnected with several people with whom I had lost touch over the years. As I began to browse through the profiles and pictures, I came across several hundred pictures from my years at college. I wasn’t in many of them, but to look back over the pictures, (realizing that someone scanned all of these pictures!) and reminisce was fun. What was more fun was the comments other people had posted. Under one picture, Nathan, a guy I have known all of my conscious life, posted “The me in my memory is cooler than the haircut in that picture.”

I laughed out loud.

Aren’t we all different in our heads? Don’t we all look back on pictures and realize that time really evens out perception? I was in a teen pageant at 15, and thought at the time that I was the most beautiful that night than I had ever, or would ever be. I look back at the pictures and think: “Really? Teal satin? And what were we doing with the bangs?”

I remember thinking (with all the logic, and awareness a 15 year old can possess) that I would keep that pageant dress forever, and wear it again “the first time I get to go to the Oscars.” I honestly remember thinking it, and rehearsing how I would tell Joan Rivers on the red carpet how I had worn it in a pageant at 15.

On the other hand, there’s this picture of me at my sister’s wedding, when I remember feeling fat and frumpy. See how I’m cleverly hiding my “fat stomach” with my hand? I look at it now and think “Dang, what was I complaining about?” By the way. That little boy beside me is Jonathan, my husband. Doesn’t he look 16?

As I laugh, and say that the girl in my memory is cooler than the glasses in that picture, these pictures are a reminder of how embarrassingly long it took me to stop thinking like a 15 year old. That maid of honor at my sister’s wedding was still hoping she’d end up at the Oscars one day – for screen writing, and not in the teal satin. I don’t remember when I stopped looking forward to when my life would “really begin,” but it’s not that long ago. I spent too many of my years thinking that real life was something other than the moments I was living. I wasted a lot of real life living in a fantasy.

So yeah, the girl in my memory is a lot different from the girl in these pictures. I’m a lot more comfortable in my own skin, my own clothing, and my own life. I’m glad to be the woman I am now, instead of the girl in both my memory, and these pictures.