RECORD STORE TALES #1153: The Roots of Trauma

I don’t remember the photo session, but I remember the picture clearly.  My red, white and black shirt is what I recall the most easily about this picture.  I couldn’t remember my age or what I looked like in the photo, but I remember that shirt.  This portrait was on display at my parents’ house for many years, along with others depicting my sister and I as children.

When I saw this picture again, for the first time in probably decades, I was shocked.  I looked into my own face and I read my own mind.

I still make that face.  know every angle of the eyes and the curvature of the mouth.  I am intimately familiar with that face.  It is the face of anxiety and fear.  If you have ever seen me make that face, it wasn’t a good day.

You can’t blame my parents.  Back then, nobody knew any better.  Baby was crying, baby didn’t want his photo taken.  So you ignored the crying, you sat the baby down, and you let the photographer take the photo.  There were going to be lots more photos.  He’d better get used to this.

I look at the picture and I don’t see a baby crying for his first portrait.  I see the fear and the need to be understood.  I was always “shy” around strangers.  You can imagine how I felt, with this strange photographer and in this weird place with a shag carpet beneath me and a dreary grey background.  My parents were probably frustrated that they were paying for this photo, and this baby keeps crying.  I can read that face.  It’s the face that says, “I’m in distress here and why isn’t anybody listening to me?”

My whole life, I have felt like people don’t listen to me.  They either don’t understand what I’m trying to convey or they just won’t listen.  I have had dreams about this going back to when I was a kid.  Trying to tell people what I’m feeling or what I need, and being dismissed.  Eventually the frustration at not being understood boils over to screaming.  To me, there is nothing worse than not being heard.  To this day, sometimes the only person who understands what I’m saying and feeling is Jen.

In this picture, I see a need.  I clearly wanted the hell out of there, and back home where felt safe and sound.  I needed someone to hug me, tell me it was alright, and it will be over in just a minute.  I needed someone to touch me and say, “I know you’re scared, this is all new to you.  I know that camera and all that stuff looks scary.  I know that person is a stranger, but if you need me I’m right here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”  I needed that time being reassured.  I can see it in my face.  It’s as clear as words on paper.

This picture makes me feel a lot of things.  I see my entire future laid about before me.  So many fears.  Going to school, learning to drive, living alone…that’s the face of someone who doesn’t want those things.  He wants to stay home with his mom and dad, where he would be safe and surrounded only by familiar things and people who love him.  This is the face of someone who is so uncomfortable that he is questioning why mom and dad are doing this to him.  This is the face of someone who feels utterly alone inside.

It was over in minutes and forgotten, but I can’t help but feel that seeds were being sown.

There’s nobody to blame.  Nobody knew any better.  I couldn’t even talk, let alone understand all this terror I was feeling.  I couldn’t have said “That person is a stranger and something about them is bothering me, I don’t know what those things are, I don’t like being up on this table covered with a shag carpet, and can someone please just tell me what is happening right now?”  All I could do was cry.

I hate being this way.  I hate the constant anxiety that nibbles away at me every day.  I hate the feeling of not being understood.  It’s amazing to think that I can see all this in my baby picture.