i had a couple of friends in my younger days who would cut off ex-boyfriend's head from photographs when they had broken up. i didn't know what to make of it because you look at the photograph and the body is still there so it would just arouse curiousity of those not in the know and ask the why and the who? i've always told them to just burn the photos but they wouldn't.
while i never liked the idea of burning photographs, i did do it at one point in my life. it helped to forget the trauma of a bad relationship. it's finished, it's done, it's gone. no traces. of course until our mutual friends found me on facebook, and then it made me realize how deeply buried that episode in my life had been. but instead of getting upset, i was glad i had something really dramatic to write about. hah!
ironically, at the time, this song, a local composition, was popular in manila:
i've been thinking
it seems we're going nowhere
you don't share my feelings
it doesn't seem fair
i guess there's nothing much more i can do
i know i've got to try and make it without you
i don't love you anymore
can't you see, it's just no good
i gotta walk out that door
there's nothing left to say
i've got to go my way
try to understand.
- butch monserrat, composer
no one could understand why i would not marry this guy. to people he seemed very nice, so sweet, and he was. but he was emotionally abusive and that was the thing that people didn't see. and that's the relationship that most women would find hard to move away from. so when we broke up, i lost plenty of my so-called friends and no one sympathized with me. i was the bad girl, that's what independent and strong willed women were called. two of my former friends dated him after they migrated to the states. after each relationship finished, the former friends wrote to me: how right i was. i wrote them back and told them to burn whatever it was that reminded them of him.
oh, and how he hated that song! which of course proved to be fortuitous for us. here's one i captured from youtube as sung by lea salonga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssniMBe28FU
for the five plus two's "fire" theme this week. only the one corner of the photo that was closest to the candle was on fire, the rest was done in ribbet using overlay. and i had a big bucket filled with water behind me just in case i made a boo-boo. i burned just one photo and only did three shots. soooo afraid of fire!
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*5+2's pick
@voiceprintz - thank you, jt.
@anazad511 - well, now i have a big paper shredder but during that time i only had matches! :-) thank you, ana.
@sunnygreenwood - thank you, anne.
Im thanking God you got away... Im thinking he might be my x. He could charm the pants off of a Catholic Nun... but alone with me... oh the emotional puke-ish ...
You are such a strong and lovely woman... we need more like you.
Sorry for the ramble, but some people do need to be trashed/burnt out of our lives.