I think the thing about the photos
This may sound melodramatic
I've spent a great deal of my life being told who I am by my mother. That I'd never amount to anything. That I was a failure, worthless, didn't have anything worthwhile to say.
I believed her for a long time and it wasn't until I did counselling several years ago that I was able to put the pieces together and see just how much she sabotaged my education, my friendships and my family relationships. I tried to rebel at at times but was always told she didn't say that, she didn't do that, I am imagining things and I'm crazy.
So this all leads to finding these photos difficult to look at because they are from the time there was a battle in my head between who I was and who she told me I was.
I still struggle now to like myself, to feel confident in my abilities.
But slowly I'm learning who I really am and what I really want and I've been making it happen.
The little sad child in those photos exists still inside of me, as does the voice of her mother.
But I'm fighting it now and I'm winning. These photos with their false smiles and unhappy memories do not get to take me backwards.
So I am choosing the ones that deserve to be brought forwards and family photos are slowly being correlated into something I don't ever need to look at once it is done. With factual labels of who they are and how we are related.
Chances are, maybe no one will look at those again.