The original post: /r/glitch_in_the_matrix by /u/ayyangelina on 2025-03-09 08:55:05.

For context, I have a Polaroid wall on my shelf with at least 20 pics, but never any dupes (if you know Polaroids, you would have to take TWO pics to get the same extra copies— never have, even for group pics)

My boyfriend and I were going through a rough patch & it DOES NOT validate his actions at all, but he decided to rip off two pictures from my wall that was from my birthday because of the events that followed on that trip.

He ripped them up. In front of my face. It was a very heated moment, but it was crumpled to the best you can ruin a Polaroid. The black film part was even peeling/crumbling off where the image gets printed.

During this entire ordeal, I’m texting my best friend about what he’s doing, I took pictures of the Polaroids before he took them from me and destroyed them. He tossed them in my trash, and this is the part that gets me.

I went back in my trash and saved them. Those were my cherished memories and I am painfully sentimental (also I felt like if I kept them I was standing up for myself in a way), so I know I was on thin ice if he found out I saved them. I put them in my makeup bag for the time being until I tossed them into one of my drawers.

So a couple days pass & I’m thinking I have to find those Polaroids because if he found them, it would be a whole repeat. I’m looking in my drawers and I find them, in perfect condition along with my other pictures.

I’m tweaking at this point, trying to find a way to fact check they were the same Polaroids. So, I go back to the texts I sent my best friend and sure enough, the Polaroids match the ones I sent him. I look in the makeup bag I hid them in and I still see the small pieces of the black film that got ripped up.

To this day, I cannot find the crumpled or destroyed Polaroids. I haven’t obviously been able to validate this with my partner since to his knowledge those pictures don’t exist anymore.

I know there weren’t any dupes, I know he looked through that exact pile I had found them in to find those pictures after I tried to hide them before he got his hands back on them— I just don’t know if it was such a high intensity moment that something shifted? I don’t know.

What makes me not doubt myself is the fact I have texts from that night including pictures of the Polaroids before he did it, since I was sending him updates on our situation/fight in realtime. (This best friend ALSO went on this birthday trip with me from where the pics were took, so he knew which ones I was talking about)

Ideas? Similar stories?