looking at old pictures

I am sarcastic
I am shy
I assume that I will not be included in the conversation
I assume that I will always be the one to call first
I assume I will always be the one to give in first
I am broken, healed over and scarred
I am beginning my middle age and I'm scared I haven't made enough of my life so far.

I am advice giver, Miss Fix-It, picture straightener
I am always sympathetic and surprisingly generous
I was a little girl caught up in the roiling mess her parents made
the one no one was watching, forgotten for a while
I was well-loved but never easy to love

I am trying to please everyone and in so doing no longer please myself
I am self-centered but unable to stop feeling guilty about it
I look at these pictures and I see myself in all my variation
the camoflauge of hair and clothing
and I look adjusted, I look like a normal kid
a student, a girlfriend, a happy bride. I am fatter, sometimes thinner.
What I am is not in these pictures.

**I would really like to put away whatever has been bothering me for these last 6 or8 months but I just don't know how. I pick at these feeling every day like picking at a scab until it's scarred. I do that too-- a nervous physical quirk that has become an emotional bad habit.