Photo by: TimeHop

Screw You TimeHop App

by Sarah of "Raising Danger"
Photo by: TimeHop

Who’s familiar with an app called TimeHop?

For those that aren’t, it’s an app that shows you an overview of your social media history. “Here’s what happened 1 year ago in your life… here’s what happened 2 years ago…” and so on.

At first glance, it’s a very innocent app. A little walk down memory lane, cute right? I say… no. I say, screw you Timehop.

What this seemingly harmless app has the power of doing is reminding you of your past. Yes, I know that’s the whole point, but what if you don’t want to relive it just yet?

Every time I stupidly click on that cute little dinosaur icon I’m taken to a life that I am not yet happy remembering.

It has been 13 months since my husband decided to leave the marriage, so all I’m seeing is what was happening one month after he left us. Mostly, it’s me bravely posting pictures of the boys and our life, as if all was normal; keeping up appearances, and not wanting to air my dirty laundry on Facebook. But I know what is really going on. I remember how I felt as the boys posed for pictures with their new Christmas toys. The fear, the anger, the utter sadness.

And it doesn’t just involve negative feelings from a year ago. Looking back further is almost more painful.

There we are as a family at my in-laws for Boxing Day. There’s a video of us when Danger was three, you can hear the two of us kidding each other off camera as we watch our kid opening a new matchbox set. There we are six years ago at a New Years Eve party kissing for the camera.

Not only do I torture myself with mourning those happy times. I doubly torture myself by wondering (ad infinitum) if he knew then that we were doomed, because I sure as hell didn’t. Did he know 4, 5, 6 years ago that he was not in love with me and he was going to eventually leave us?

It’s sense memory at it’s worst. It’s not bringing me to any place I’m happy thinking about right now. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to relive those times.

Now, at this point you might be wondering why I keep opening this app. After all, no one is forcing me to repeatedly take this cruel stupid hike down ol’ painful road. Why would I open it every damn day when I know what is going to be waiting there for me? Even when there isn’t a picture or video that he is physically in, there is always something there that reminds me of him (cue Naked Eyes song here). We pre-existed social media, so there is no point at which Timehop will show me my “pre-him” life. It could just be a picture of Danger as a baby but there is the dog we bought together in the background, and the picture was taken in our first home. It’s constant. It’s everywhere. But I can’t help it. I can’t help torturing myself…

I can help it. I don’t have to look.

I think the problem is that I’m not sure I want to do anything about it. If I don’t open the app, then I won’t be faced with these old memories, which means I won’t have a reason to think about them everyday, which means I might get over them. I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to do that. There have been plenty of circumstances this past year that have helped me to write him off, but to actually get over the memories of us? I don’t know how to do that yet.

So, I think for a while this cute little, soul crushing, day ruining TimeHop app will need to be deleted from my phone… I think. No, I mean definitely. Maybe.

Sarah Kennedy-Sexton is newly single and a mom of two boys. She can’t decide if she should keep her married name or go back to her awesome maiden name, so for now she is going to have a hyphenated last name like someone important. She lives outside of Philadelphia and repeatedly tries, and mostly fails, at all things domestic. Also, she likes to write. Probably should have led with that. Follow her blog at Raising Danger.

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