Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © 2009
What is it in a photograph - a snapshot - that brings out such powerful emotions even after so much time has lapsed between then and now? The immortalized nano-second, buried in what we call "the past", spotlights only a single expression branded in a single frame of the continuum which itself may tell an entirely different story from that, which lives forever in celluloid.
You and I took many photos of each other - happy, smiling, pointing to places with backgrounds of oceans or churches, markets or street scenes, family or friends. Yet there are not many photos with both of us together in it. Was this because you or I was more interested in taking the other’s photos, that neither of us thought of asking someone to snap a picture of us together - tete- à-tete - just the two of us?
I felt that we didn't need photos because we were together and real in life. Photos served to remember things or people that one wasn’t likely to see ever again , so an image caught in a minute passage of life would be one's only tangible validation of that passage. If we took photos of each other, it was not because of a fear that we'd forget the other—since we would always be together— but rather to remember the places we had visited and left a part of ourselves along our life’s journey.
So today when I came across a photo in a forgotten album, I wondered what had made us pose for that picture. The note on the reverse (and I’m so glad it was dated, unlike so many that are neglected) is in my sister's script: "New Year's 2002 - The picture of happiness!" You are sitting in an armchair in Nurdan’s living room. You are wearing a shirt and tie with an unbuttoned cardigan. It's very unlike you to wear a tie. You look very happy —your luscious lips (as I used to call them) are parted wide in a sincere smile that reveals your unfortunately not so good teeth.
I’m wearing that red sweater and sitting on the arm of the chair, to your left, leaning over so that my cheek is touching yours and my red lips are chiming my happiest smile. My right arm is wrapped in an embrace around your neck; your left hand shows around my waist securing me in a close embrace so that there is no space between us.
Was that photo, I wondered, genuinely reflective of how we felt then? Or was it captured at the right micro-instant when both of us could look so happy and in-love without much effort. And the lightness of that effort was what must have had us believe, in all honesty, that we were unquestionably happy.
There is not a day, an hour, a sleepless interlude in my life when I don’t question and rewind the memories of the last nine years, go over every scene bit by bit with a magnifying glass, trying to see something that I missed! I keep asking myself what I could have done, what did I fail to do, what signs have I missed, was I subconsciously trying to destroy the best thing I had in my life because part of me believed that I didn’t deserve it, I wasn't worth it ?
Then I try to balance this with the other end of the scale questioning what if everything was the exact opposite of what it seemed to be? Black was really white, and white - black? Just like a photo in its negative - and depending on which state one views it, one’s perceptions could be totally opposite from the other’s.
Imagine a row of pearly white teeth revealed in a beautiful smile looking like blackened, rotten ones exposed through a clown’s exaggerated mouth. Or what one sees as such turn into a vision of a captive smile displaying a row of white pearls — so much more appealing than what was perceived in its negative, its opposite, its false paradigm.
So is that old photo really a reflection of happy, connected us at that instant in time, or is it the positive of a false paradigm of whose existence neither of us was aware on New Year's Eve 2002 ?
As time goes on, I feel as if I’m beginning to forget how you look. Your presence, your voice, your smell, your touch filled me with warmth and excitement, security and desire all at the same time. It is that feeling I miss so much yet at the same time I'm trying to forget because missing leads to longing . Longing without hope is the road to painful desperation. Missing is empty and painful. I wanted your presence in my life ; your absence came suddenly and against my will. You severed our connection without my will, my consent and my knowledge. You walked away on a deceitful, pre-planned, inexcusable path. You planned your departure in a pretext that denied me my voice and the ability to make sense of what happened.You worked out your details so sinisterly that I could not even question, seek out answers, make any sense, find closure and move on. At the end, after months of bleeding tears, I could do nothing but let go praying that the open wounds would form scabs on their own — the only badges of survival and closure to the pain.
I still haven’t let go, because letting go means erasing you out of my thoughts and I cannot do that completely yet. But the more I think of you , the more I question your actions and your words. Rewinding into retro years, I see the negative — the side of the picture that shows everything in its primal stage.
When I look at the picture from this perspective, you emerge as a stranger to me — the antithesis of the man I loved for sharing my values, my dreams, my life, my love. But the image captured in that photograph has long been spoiled by your departure ; so I have to focus on the only one that remains— the undeveloped one. The negative. It is the negative of that photo, the flashback to my life with you— (like the photo that was taken in Wilmington, on New Year's Eve, 2002, the one that caught the false paradigm so convincingly) — that will allow me to let go. There's a tiny voice within, a feeling which keeps gnawing that, little by little, it must be through the negatives I'm likely to find the answers to the most painful questions and finally - hopefully - be able to let go with the insights I gain.
Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © 2009
