Member-only story
I haven’t seen her in years — but she’s in every photo.
Please note: this essay includes references to emotional abuse and suicide.
My head was tilted back in the picture, mouth frozen open and mid belly laugh. I’m surrounded by a handful of wonderful friends smiling and laughing with me — a candid moment of true joy and friendship.
I couldn’t delete it fast enough.
It’s been almost 15 years since I’ve seen my mother, and yet, there she is, in that damn photo someone innocently thought to take when I wasn’t paying attention. I once believed my problem with being photographed was rooted in body image issues and the general self-loathing that seems to be required for all women, particularly fat women like myself. But it’s so much more complicated than that.
Growing up, no one told me I looked like my mother. I was always my father’s doppelganger. He’s the spitting image of his father, and my face follows suit — particularly our wide-set nostrils that flare when we’re fired up about something. Once, I tested out a “bald” camera filter to see if I was one of those people who look stunning with a shaved head. Instead I just got my dad’s goofy face staring back at me.
Now, as I careen toward 40, where I only used to see him in my reflection, she now appears. The deepening creases at the corners of my mouth. The way my cheeks push my eyes closed when I smile and my chin disappears into my neck when I’m laughing really hard. Tiny, indescribable features that don’t feel like mine, but hers.
I was eight years old when my parents split up. The night she left, I sat on their quilted bedspread fidgeting with a white plastic hanger as she moved frantically around the bedroom packing a suitcase. I would not be joining her.
“You’ll stay here with Snoopy,” she said, gesturing to the lazy beagle sprawled on the scratched hardwood floor. “It’s better this way.” She repeatedly rubbed her dry hands together, looking to me for agreement. I nodded, swallowing hard to keep from crying.
When we heard my dad’s truck pull into the rocky driveway, she sent me to my…
