Cropped Out of My Own Fantasy

On my computer desktop I have a folder within a folder that’s labeled (in a message to myself) “Do Not Open.”

Big surprise: I recently opened it.

It’s full of adorable pictures of my ex and me that I had erased from every other location. One drew me in: a black-and-white photo of us from the trip we took to the Oregon coast for his birthday two summers earlier, just after we attended my mother’s backyard wedding outside my hometown, Portland, Ore.

My mouse hovered over the image, then I double-clicked to enlarge.

With our elbows in the sand, we smiled as his hand caressed my left forearm, his dark hair and eyes contrasting with my light features. My right fist, mostly concealed by my black hoodie sleeve, hid half of my coy white smile.

That picture had been everywhere: on Facebook (where I’d made it my profile picture), in his office, on our living room wall and on his grandparents’ coffee table in Iowa. It was taken about six months into our relationship, during our “honeymoon” phase, and a lot of people had gushed to us about it, saying things like, “That’s a perfect picture” and “You guys are such a beautiful couple.”

What they didn’t know was how ridiculously hard we had worked to get the shot right. The camera was set to timer mode, so we’d press the button, rush into position and attempt to look natural for the snap. We’d take one shot and then analyze the result:

“I look crazy.”

“I look like an old man.”

“You’re forcing it.”

“Is my left eye melting off my face?”

It went on like that until our muscles ached from smiling and the sun went down, but with the help of some tasteful editing, the final version looked effortless and pure. And because of the timer, we may have even fooled some people into believing it wasn’t a boastful selfie.

I used to love telling the story of how we met. But now I don’t, so I won’t. What really matters is this: I failed to take seriously that he had, just a day before we began our romance, broken up with his previous long-term girlfriend.

I routinely repressed thoughts that I could be the rebound girl or a placeholder for him until the real deal came along. I pushed forward, drawn to his good looks, intelligence and manners. I loved how expressive he was with his hands when he spoke.

Despite the good, I always felt as if I had to prove to everyone that he and I were happy and that our relationship was legitimate, and social media helped. On Facebook, I was able to exclude the negative — a dismissive comment here, a lie there — and showcase not only how I wanted others to see us but how I wanted to see us.

Sometimes he would comment on how he thought I’d be happier with a “Pacific Northwest lumberjack type” who wasn’t as “strait-laced” as he was. To be fair: I was the one who convinced him to grow a beard, trying, I suppose, to nudge him toward the image of the boyfriend I had imagined for myself.

Almost exactly a year after the black-and-white selfie that we spent forever posing for, we got another envy-inspiring picture. This one was in color and set on a Ferris wheel on the Seattle waterfront — the Great Wheel. We road-tripped up there in August for his birthday and stayed with my cousin.

We must have posed 10 times for my cousin’s camera before we got the “perfect” photo: Puget Sound behind us in striking aquamarine, distant hills in the background. Our smiles were big and white, and my shoulder was nestled comfortably under his arm — a colorful new addition to the public exhibit of our relationship.

We labored over his Facebook status to make it casual but warm, brief but heartfelt: “Celebrated a great birthday week with Sage Cruser in the Seattle area!”

“I love you, McBug,” he whispered to me that night as we fell asleep.

Two months later, shortly after we had moved into our second apartment, he woke up saying his stomach hurt.

“Was it the fajitas from last night?” I asked, yawning, as I snuggled into the fluffy white covers he’d thrown aside a few moments before.

He sighed and sat down at the end of our bed, his head wrapped in his hands. I was grinning like an idiot with my eyes partly closed.

“No.”

I poked my head up. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I — I can’t see our future.”

I threw the covers back. “Hold on. Are we having the conversation I think we’re having?”

He turned to me with sad eyes and tight lips. I almost felt bad for him until I remembered that I was the one getting the boot. He was vague in his reasons for ending it, saying he’d been thinking about it for six months.

“Did you ever love me?” I asked.

He paused and then stammered through an explanation. But the pause said it all.

I cried from my chest in our bed, wearing an oversize T-shirt, red-faced and choking on my own spit. And then it was over.

We both changed our profile pictures within two hours of the split. He changed his from a cutesy picture of us in a Portland coffee shop to a solo picture of him in a suit. I swapped out the black-and-white beach picture to one of me standing alone on the summit of a mountain in Ireland, steely-eyed, with an expression that I hoped said: “I’m on top of the world, and I’m thriving.”

With each “like,” I felt my ego being rebuilt, but the high wore off as I packed my things and moved into my mother’s basement, which wasn’t on top of anything.

Family and friends were shocked. I had sharp pains in my stomach every time I thought about him. I’d stare at my ceiling for hours. I was lost in confusion and feelings of betrayal and hatred. Even so, I fantasized about reconciling and having everything go back to the way it was.

The following week, word got back to me that he had opened an online dating account the day after he dumped me. His profile image made my throat seize up: He had cropped me out of the Great Wheel picture, leaving his white teeth and green eyes beaming at potential future lovers and the radiant water contrasting with his dark hair. Mere inches from his head, smiling my big toothy smile, I had been sliced out of my own fantasy.

Two weeks later, after the dividing of belongings, after the crying and dry-heaving and listening to Adele’s “Hello” on repeat, I received a handwritten letter from him. He included it in a package with a sports bra of mine he’d discovered in the hamper, using its return as an “opportunity to get a few things” off his chest.

The letter provided the same vague explanation he’d given before, confessing he still couldn’t think of “any specific reasons”; it was “just a feeling” and he still missed me “a lot.”

I wondered what might come of a response, but I never sent one. Instead, I corrected his spelling and grammar with a red pen, finding some satisfaction in that.

I wanted my perfect love to look like what I’d convinced myself I had: the photos, the Facebook statuses, the beard, the narrative of our relationship I’d woven in my head. I had fallen in love with the man I wanted him to be and the woman I wanted to be. I had fallen for what I thought we could be together, not the reality of who we actually were. That was a hard truth to swallow.

Soon after my dive into my not-so-hidden folder, I met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen in over a year and a half. We took a weekend camping trip to Cannon Beach, the same place I had captured the black-and-white photo nearly two years prior.

After we caught up and made a fire, she confessed she had gone through a breakup with her current boyfriend that seemed similar to my situation. Her guy had ended it abruptly when she thought everything was great, and they went a month without any communication before reconciling when he said he wanted her back.

She found it uncanny that we had experienced such similar breakups but ended up in opposite spots. She raved about their newfound happiness, saying she’d marry him if he were to ask.

We sat quietly on the cool sand next to the crackling fire as I stared up at a yellow kite, its long tail dancing in the sky against the evening’s wispy clouds.

She broke our silence with a question: “Say you two could be together again some day. Would you want that?”

I looked at her, then back up at the kite, and said, “No.”