Monday, February 29, 2016

Photobombing



I see those quotes that say things like,
When I see my child smile my bad day goes away.
I feel guilty. My children sometimes only add to my bad day. Some days they give me more anxiety than happiness. I see that quote and I know deep down they can’t take my pain away when I go through bipolar depression. And for the past week I had been feeling just that. Depressed.
My depression has been deep lately and there are many things contributing to those feelings. I’ve had medical issues to deal with, I have weight to lose, I hadn’t been sleeping, and I just can’t seem to get it together.
On Friday nothing was getting any better but I had to suck it up and get ready to go to a Condors’ hockey game. My youngest daughter and her group of karate kids were going to go out on the ice at half time and show off their skills. I really didn’t want to go. On that day my bad mood had not gone away, but my daughter was beyond excited and she would be highly disappointed if her mom wasn’t there to see her. So despite my negative attitude, we all loaded into the car and drove to Rabobank Arena.
When we arrived, the crowds of people only made me feel worse. My social anxiety was catching up to me and I could feel tightness in my chest. Eventually I could see my family getting caught up in the excitement of the loud music and cheering from the rest of the crowd.
Throughout the game, there was a woman sitting in front of me with her family. Her son was also doing Karate. She was there as I was, to watch her child perform. It seems however, not only was she there to watch her child perform but she was also there to try and get on the Jumbotron.
Every time the camera spun around there she was standing in her seat waving her arms doing everything she could to get noticed. Ultimately her attempts failed but that didn’t stop her from trying. At one point I noticed that she was trying to take a selfie with her child. I glanced down to see that clearly my youngest daughter and I were in the photo. I remember thinking; I am obviously in her photo. Can she see me and my child are literally in her photo.
I tried to look away and pretend I didn’t see her taking the picture. But I glanced down again and realized that she was fixing the photo but she didn’t crop us out. Everyone knows how to fucking crop. I sat there trying to decide if I was going to say anything or not.
Did she really just put a fucking filter on this picture?
Deep inside I was little uncomfortable that I would be shared in her life and probably on several social media sites for strangers to see. I decided to calm myself down and not think about it. I just continued to watch the game.
Suddenly I heard her laughing and then she turned in my direction.
“Hi, I was taking some photos and look.”
She pointed her phone so I could see she had zoomed into the photo. It was so close I could make out my daughter’s face.
“Look, she smiled in every picture.”
She showed me several photos and in the back of every one of her pictures was my daughter smiling. My little girl also noticed they were taking pictures and had no trouble photo bombing them.
She was smiling and in a few of them she made funny faces

And you know what… I laughed harder than I had laughed in a week. It was the funniest thing. I hadn’t seen anything so funny in a long long time. It was as if my daughter was saying; if you get a put me in your photo that I’m not a make some faces. I hadn’t laughed this deeply in a long time and it felt so good. Actually, I felt a lot better. Because my depression with bipolar disorder is not something that I can always control, the feeling didn’t last throughout the weekend but for the rest of that night my little girl did some that I didn’t think she could ever do. She brought me out of that sour mood and we laughed about her sweet little smile and funny faces for the rest of the evening.

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