remembering with pictures

aww ~ 7/24/13
non-subject: remembering with pictures
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I've never been one to snap many photos. I've never owned a nice camera. When I got an iPhone, I thought I might learn more about photography. But alas, an iPhone is a phone, not a camera.

I have a big banker box full of photographs. The banker box must be at least two feet long. Most of the photos are in packets in which I picked them up from the store after the photos were developed. I dated the packets and threw them in the box. There are loose photos too, scattered in and among the packets.

I used to feel guilty that I didn't take more photos of our family as the children were growing up. No one else in the family seemed very interested in preserving memories with photographs. Eventually I gave up at trying to capture life in photos. We have some and maybe enough, but not as many as in other families that I know.

I am guilty of not preserving more with photos.

Guilt. That huge monkey that hung on my back for decades.

I thought I had worked through much of my shame....until the John Knapp incident. His words to me in his emails painted me as dishonest and a destroyer and not trustworthy of any sort of friendship.

Guilt. Shame.

After Knapp's initial verbal blows in August, 2010, I then wrestled and wrestled and wrestled with the decision of whether or not to file a formal complaint with his licensing board. I hated myself if I didn't file and I hated myself if I did file. I chose the lesser of the two hates.

In 2012, at the hearing when I was a witness for the state of New York, the examining board asked me a question about the complaint. I can't recall the question now, but part of my answer was that it was a horrid decision for me. The prosecutor responded, "You mean it was difficult." I said, "No. It was horrid. I hated being put in that position."

In 2011, after Knapp publicly tried to smear my character with outright fables of sexual propositioning, of contacting his clients, of cyber stalking and harassing him, and the myriad of other lies and twisted truths he proclaimed, I again felt guilt and shame. Yet, I had committed none of the acts of which he accused me. But I thought somehow maybe I deserved his blows.

It wasn't until late 2011 when Shelley, another former victim-client of Knapp, came forward to me in private that I was finally glad I had reported Knapp and that I had gone public. Shortly after contacting me, Shelley called the NY state prosecutor. The prosecutor asked Shelley if Shelley could testify. Shelley responded, "I can't. I am terrified of that man."

Shelley shared with me that she felt like a coward that she couldn't testify.
But she wasn't or isn't a coward; she's human.
I don't think of her as a coward at all; it took a lot of guts for her to contact me after standing with Knapp against me and initially believing Knapp's lies about me.

I need to have that same compassion toward myself as I do toward others. To recognize I am not a shame-filled disgusting degenerate. Sometimes my inner dialog against my self is inhumane. I hear male judgmental voices. I don't hear female voices.

Oliver the cat was put to sleep last week. I drank Margaritas almost daily last week to help me numb the pain and forget for a few moments my error. I drank a Margarita again tonight.

Oliver had copper eyes.
The last I saw them, I thought he was going to make it, was going to survive.
But I was wrong.

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