***

I was flicking through a photo album the other day,

Full of pages of pictures of the man I love, as he was growing up.

This man I know and I have,

And claim to know above all else,

Reflected back to me in the form of a boy,

In a version of himself that I never met.

I can see him in the familiarity in his smile,

And in the colour of his eyes.

In the upturned nose,

And the bits of hair that stick up on his head.

But I have never known that person,

And I never will.

***

I know how his life plays out,

I know the secrets and the stories,

The wins and the bruises.

I know to look out for the heartbreak behind his eyes,

And the weight of the world in the slump of his shoulders,

Because of the peek behind the curtain I have been given years later.

The stories of the pain he held at that time,

The doubt in who the boy was, and whether he was deserving of love.

I know that five years after this particular photo,

He will want to end his own life.

I know now that the smile on his face in that photo is false.

That it’s wavering.

That it hides a sea of sadness that no-one else can see, or understand.

I know that in this one, that those with their arms around him,

Won’t be around forever.

And that in this one, the person he is photographed smiling with is no friend of his at all.

I want to yell out to the boy,

To give him a heads-up,

To tell him to look out for these things.

To warn him of the dangers,

And shield him from the inevitable that I know is to come.

From the grief, from the heartache, from the undeserved hard times thrust at him.

But most of all,

I want to let him know that in the end,

That it will all be OK.

That he will be OK.

That beyond the slips and the falls,

That there is love on the other side,

That there is happiness on the other side,

And boundless adventures he needs to stick around for;

Those that will be photographed,

And those that will only ever exist in memories,

That are all to come.

That even though the darkness that those eyes are blanketed in may seem endless –

That there is hope,

And there is a way through.

***

I want to protect him.

I want to go back there,

To that timestamp in the bottom corner of the photograph,

And rescue him from the pain,

And help him save his own life sooner.

But I know that if I alter his timeline,

If I change his journey –

That I would never meet that man.

And I would never have known the love that he has shown me,

And have all that he has gifted to me.

***

I find myself hating looking at these photos sometimes,

Because it paints a picture of the sadness and the pain that he has opened up about,

And that he has waded through.

And other times I love looking at those photographs,

Because I get to see a version of the man I love,

That I know I would have loved too.

Not only because he grows to become the man I have,

But because of what he survives,

And all the good he gave to so many others in his world before me, too.

The years of photographs show the journey.

Into all the different versions of himself;

Those that he likes,

And those that he doesn’t.

To morph and change,

And end up in the final form of the one I will meet and fall for years later.

***

So to the boy in the photograph,

The handsome one with the waning smile.

Hold onto hope,

Keep your head down,

Push with all your strength,

Believe in yourself,

Have faith in who you are –

And make it to me.