i unearthed this picture earlier this week. i first identified the envelope as containing a set of school portraits from my high school days. then i noticed the flipped over photo in the envelope's window. the motivations for hiding the image and the self consciousness from that time came back to me instantly and i opened the envelope expecting a similar encounter with the feelings i had about myself then. i anticipated the judgments and criticisms i had to rise freely as well as the judgments i believe about myself now to be applicable to the person i was then.
what i found was something else entirely.
my thoughts were rendered silent by the photo of a fresh-faced, blue-eyed innocent. the gaze is so truthful and open. artless and clear. she's not ugly like i remember{ed} from my assessments in front of mirrors. my hair. my eyes.
i still don't know all the places i went in those first few moments of stunned recognition. it was an instantaneous and far-reaching journey that happened in many spaces and times at once and most tangibly in my lower abdomen. i came back to myself with a jolt holding a moment of clarity in my hands: i saw how harshly i judge myself currently and how it might be {probably is} as equally misplaced as the harshness of my judgments to myself then.
my mind traveled back again to another, similar revelation i had in front of some photographs. it happened many years ago (again, in high school, perhaps around the same time the above was taken). i was going through family photos and happened across a pile of photographs of my father's childhood. i had expected to find more images of my mother and her family as the innocuous looking plastic bag was a resident of a folder of mikesell images, but i was staggered to find images of my father. this is significant in that the only picture i had seen of him from before he met my mother was the one that hung on our walls and depicted him as a young kid with a teddy bear (?). it was so commonplace as to be invisible, so finding these images suddenly and unexpectedly and in such quantities ranging throughout his life was amazing. awe-full. tragic.
tears started pouring down my face seeing this man i had been so hurt by and angry towards before me as this vulnerable. tender. gentle child. this open-faced teenager. a serious toddler. and i realized too that these were parts of the same person and that all the raging and passionate emotions i felt towards the adult i would never inflict on this child.
a softness overcame me. and i stood longer in my tears. and there was an acknowledgment of loss there too. and tenderness.
it was a big moment for me. the tables turned abruptly.
and here i am, years later, reliving this paradigm shift in my own universe while looking at my own reflections.
it's days later and i still don't know what to do with all it has opened up in me.
(one note: the photo is a photo of a photo. and it's not even from a decent camera {i love you iphone, and particularly for your camera, but you do have limitations}. anyone have a spare scanner they want to give me as a b-day present? ;)
currently listening to: sigur rós on shuffle but sæglópur is currently playing. that song was amazing live. amazing. damn. that was a fine concert.
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