Scrapbooking After a Breakup

My boyfriend and I broke up last September after more than five years together. Thanks to supportive family and friends, I'm moving through the grief and recovery period more quickly than I thought possible.

There are, however, a few nagging issues that remain, one of them being what to do with my four complete photo albums and hundreds of unscrapped photos from our years together. I started scrapbooking seriously about a month before I met him, so all of my completed albums feature him and his family prominently. The loose photos I refer to are mainly from 2005 with some from very early in the relationship. I took a lot of photos last year, and good ones too. Having bought a second digital camera, an HP R717 to supplement my large HP 945, I went crazy with the photography. I wasn't too picky about which ones I got in hard copy either - if they were any good, I ordered them from Kodak Gallery. The plan was to cull them later.

For now the completed albums are on a shelf in the back of my closet where they are safe but I don't have to see them every day. I am really proud of those albums and on some level hate to hide them, but at the same time, it is painful too see them - yes, even the spines in a bookcase. I hope and trust that someday I will display them with the new albums I will create. Perhaps all it will take is a critical mass of new albums to overshadow the old ones.

Various suggestions have come to me about the loose photos. Of course there are plenty of photos without my ex in them, and someone recommended scrapbooking just those. That could work for the part of my vacation that I took alone last summer, and for other things I did without him. For events where he was present, that approach seems a bit revisionist for me. Another thought was to scrapbook them as they are. I certainly don't feel up to doing any of that now; just going through the pile was emotionally draining. Looking at those photos reminded me of the things we did that we'll never do together again, his family and friends that I'll never see again (except by accident, and that's apt to be awkward), and the house we shared that is now being rented to others.

Because I'm dead set against wallowing in this loss, I've boxed up the loose photos and stored them with the albums. But I don't want to deny that part of my life either. Someday it will be clearer how to handle those albums and photos.

Although I have taken photos since the breakup, my scrapbooking efforts have focused on some very old photos that need to be transferred from old albums to new photo-safe albums. This feels right for the moment.

I really hope this entry isn't too maudlin. Scrapbooking after a breakup is more of an issue for scrapbookers without children. True, people with children have relationship breakups too. But many of their photos probably center around the children, and those that don't are still a record of their parents' lives for those children. This is definitely not a topic I hear discussed at the crops I go to, and certainly not in the magazines either. Nevertheless, it is worthy of thought and discussion.

I'll have more to say about scrapbooking after a breakup. Next time it will be the brighter side - more about what I've focused on since the breakup and some ideas and plans for the future.