Demons

Sigh.

One of the New Year's Resolutions that Dave and I made was to clean out a storage unit that is packed with the detritus of our former existences, both separate and together. What does that picture have to do with our resolution?

Well, one of the things that I unearthed in my part of the avalanche of unused, stored possessions was a folder that contained the quotes from the quote wall shown in that picture (which was taken in my apartment soon after Dave and I divorced). I have a lot of self portraits from that time because I didn't really have any idea who I was then. I thought by taking pictures of myself that I could somehow gain a foothold into my new identity. (Just in case you're tempted to try doing the same thing, let me just tell you that it didn't work.)

One of my treasured memories from that lonely, tumultuous time is of the long, drunken night I ended up in my apartment with an eremitic boy who's now at Harvard and a former stripper who's now in law school (and, no, I'm not going to go into any details beyond that). After those two left, I was still drunk and despondent and humiliated and I called Dave and said something like, "I can't do this. I want to come home." And he said, "You are home."

I hung up the phone and got into the bath and got out of the bath and took these photos: