I rent a room in the house my sister and her soon-to-be fiancé rent. It’s nice living with people I’m familiar with rather than “flatmates.” We eat together etc; there’s no partitioning of food or bathroom products or anything like that. But recently my sister brought up the idea of a professional family photo.
There was a silence immediately after she said it. We were all thinking the same thing. She then broke the silence by saying, “…and Aaron could be in it…” Hopefully we’ll tacitly agree I won’t be when the time comes.
Imagining the photo emphasises to me just where I’m at right now. That photo will function to remind them in future years of their nascent family, but marring it will be my shitty directionless presence with my shaved-once-every-three-days face which can’t hide my young-man anger at existence.
It’s so shameful thinking of their nostalgic flipping back through old photos and remembering, “that’s us in the beginning, and that’s…Aaron…when he was living with us in his early twenties not really knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Actually he’s probably high in this picture.”
