Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I was going through my photo albums on iPhoto today (yeah, total Mac user here) to try to find a profile pic to post on my blog. As I was scrolling through the pictures to find one where I didn't look ridiculous, I couldn't help but look at all the vacation pictures I took with the ex. Four years is a long time to be with anyone and we went on a lot of vacations: St. Martin, Beijing, Cape Cod, Vermont, Chicago, Miami, Key West, etc. What do I do with all those pictures? Delete them all? Save some (especially the ones I look skinny in) and ditch the others?

My conundrum reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's about a couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) who break up and decide to get their minds erased so that they don't have to remember that they were ever in a relationship together.  Partway through the mind erasing process, Jim Carrey's character, decides that there are some memories worth saving and tries to hold on to the good ones. Full synopsis here.

So, what do I do? I guess the first step is to decide the purpose of holding onto the photos. I will definitely want to remember the vacations themselves, I mean we were in Beijing for the Olympics and that was amazing. A once in a lifetime opportunity, really. I could delete all the pictures he was in and keep the ones I was in, but it's like denying he ever existed. Or I could just photoshop him out, but I don't want to see bits and pieces of him in my photos (you know, an arm here, an ear there). I always thought it'd be cool to show my kids (none yet) what their mother was like, what kind of people I dated pre-dad. Although on second thought, that might freak them out and I'll have to shell out a lot of money on therapy. I'll rethink that one.

I don't want to pretend like we were never in a relationship because what we went through made me the person I am today. That person happens to be confident, assertive and generous, among other things. And to be honest, we both grew in the relationship, albeit apart. I'm less crazy than I used to be (we all have a little crazy inside us) and he...well...I don't know what he is now. 

Verdict: Not quite ready to ditch all the photos just yet, but will probably upload the ones of him and us to a thumb drive. I can always revisit this down the road

Lesson Learned: Out of sight doesn't always mean out of mind.