Living in the Light IV

[Dawn70]

You know, I so enjoy reading everyone's stories and gathering words of wisdom from various people across the site and it often strikes me how in some ways, many of us are similar, while in other ways, many of us are different. We are, after all, a collection of strangers from random points across the country who may or may not have connected in some degree in real life, thanks to the magic of the internet and social media.

I say all that to respond specifically to the thing about what do we do with wedding pictures. Unlike many of the people on here, my XH was not the husband of my youth. He wasn't my first love (though he WAS my first husband) and we didn't have children together. Now, I consider is children my children, but they technically have a mother who is not me. So, when it came to "what do I do with the wedding pictures?" In short, I trashed them. What do I need that reminder for? We also had a tradition of purchasing and having personalized a Christmas ornament each year of our marriage. I debated on what to do with those, but ultimately, those went to the trash as well, because odds are not terribly likely that another couple named Dawn and Mr. Dawn who got married on 10/29/2005 would be looking for a collection of random ornaments. The main reason I hesitated was that it seemed wasteful to just throw them away. Some of them I likely would've kept if there had been a way to remove the personalization without damaging the ornament, but I didn't put too much effort into it.

I did keep a few wedding pics. There is one of me and my dad that I adore, one of both of my nephews (separately) that are too precious for words, one of me and my mom where I look especially beautiful, one of just the 3 girls all dressed up and looking beautiful and happy. I kept those memories because those people will continue to be a part of my life forever, but the ones that had XH and I or just him went to the trash can. There were a few of just him or him and his family members that I offered to the girls and they took them more out of a sense of not wanting to hurt my feelings than anything. The irony of all that to me was that one of XH's biggest complaints was that when he and his first XW split, she went through and took most of the pics of the girls when they were little and left him with few not so good shots. After he moved out, NOT taking any of our joint photos, I went through and sorted photos and gave him ALL of his family photos and girls' photos and even tried to give him our wedding pics and he got mad because I kept 5 pics (I'm not exaggerating here...it was literally 5 pictures) of the girls when they were little that he had given me to me before we married. I didn't argue with him because all of our current pics were in albums on my facebook or stored on my computer anyway, so I just let him have everything. He took it all except the wedding photos.

Sorry for the long response..............sometimes I get carried away.