Just "thinking out loud"
melliferal
Registrant
As I was growing up, one of the ways in which I expressed my rage at myself following the abuse was a hatred of photographs - logical, I suppose, considering the nature of my abuse. I hated pictures of me. I suppose I was "cute", or whatever - but I hated that aspect of myself. It was one of the things, I reasoned, which made it possible for the abuse to take place. So, I rebelled against my image - I attempted to sabotage it; by gaining weight, by choosing a nondescript hairstyle and clothing. I didn't want to be "noticed", by anyone. I used to do quite good in school - I stopped doing homework. Knocked tests out with no problem - but without the homework, my grades suffered. I became a nobody, on purpose. I didn't want to stand out as "bright", as a person that anyone would feel it important to get to know. I didn't want anyone to see me.
One day - I believe it was around 15 or so - I had something close but not quite equal to a nervous breakdown. I went through my family's photo albums and methodically erased myself from them. I paused at and kept a couple of specific photos which were taken before the abuse - photos that I connected with specific good memories. Everything else, and absolutely everything from the years following the abuse, was removed and destroyed. Over the years, I never brought the "picture day" purchase packages home from school to my parents. I did everything I could to avoid being photographed - including being absent on yearbook photo days.
Time goes by quick these days. Earlier this year, I went on a trip to Las Vegas, for a conference of sorts. I took many photos, and some photos of myself were taken. On the various websites I belong to, I have shared some of these photos, and people have commented that they are the first photos they had ever seen of me - why hadn't I posted any before? Well, truth is, it's because there are no photos of myself, anywhere, that were taken during the last 15 years. I went back through my personal "archives" and whatnot, and actually looked. Before the conference photos, the most recent photo I could find of myself was taken when I was 10 years old. One of the photos that was spared the wrath of my fit those long years ago.
The photo, slightly faded with time, is of a little boy sitting on top of a truck, looking through a pair of binoculars out over an airfield. The boy is me, of course - on top of my father's truck, an old Chevy Blazer. He's the one who took the picture. He used to take me down the hill from where we lived, on Lackland Air Force Base, to the flightline at Kelly AFB, so I could watch the jets take off and land. This once, he took a photo, and I've kept it ever since. Of all the photos I kept, this one is the most important to me. It's sitting on my desk, leaning up underneath my monitor, as I write this.
I am reminded of a very old movie called "Citizen Kane". The lead character, Charles Kane, calls the word "Rosebud" right before he dies; the film follows the exploits of a newspaper reporter who dwelves into Kane's history, in part to find out what "Rosebud" is supposed to mean. The reporter comes very, very close to learning, but doesn't realize it; he blips over the relevant portion of Kane's past without noticing the significance. At the end of the movie, we see some fellows cleaning out Kane's mansion. The valuables are all taken to be sold - the unusable "garbage" is thrown on a pile to be burned. Amongst the refuse is an old child's snow sled, with the word "Rosebud" painted on it. The viewer will recall a scene from early in the movie - a memory of Kane as a child, playing on a sled, the day he is suddenly removed from his idyllic childhood and thrust into a life which holds many, many things, but not happiness. That happiness - the one single thing Charles Kane does not have - is the one thing he yearns for most at the end of his life.
This simple image - of a boy watching airplanes on a sunny day - is my "Rosebud". Soon after this photo was taken, my parents' divorce was finalized, my father was transferred, I was placed in the care of people I was told were "friends", whom I'd never really met. And, only a matter of a couple of months - a couple of months! - after that photo was taken, my abuse took place, the final spark that catalyzed over a decade of general misery.
But that photo. Somehow, fate decided that my last day of really being a child, of being pure and innocent - the very last moment in time that I was truly happy - would be caught in a photograph. I look at that photo, and I remember that day, and I am filled with joy once again. I do not think about what happened in the weeks following, or the years following. I don't look at that image the way I looked when I was 15, at a photo of a freak - a boy who was no longer really a "boy"; a dupe, a pathetic idiot who had been used and didn't even catch on until YEARS after he'd already been rode hard and put away wet, nothing more than jerk-off fodder for perverts and a grooming tool for aspiring child molesters. I don't see any of that.
No, I look at that photo, and I see...a little boy, watching airplanes. A little boy with no worries or cares, no shame or guilt for anything, as it should be. As it should've been.
I've scanned the photo; I've photobucketed it. The image is now immortal - no longer subject to the ravages of time, liquid spills, fire, loss, theft, or computer crashes. The little boy will be sitting on that truck from now until the end of time. Watching his airplanes.
And yet I look to the future and I see that I am not Charles Kane. I've had my years of melancholy, discomfort, and sadness, and I see that they now seem to be coming to an end. I am having fun again. Pictures are being taken of me, and I don't mind. It's difficult, difficult work, and there are some setbacks, but I'm getting it done, little by little. I will never recapture the sort of purity and happiness embodied in that photo - I suppose that's why I want to keep it always, as a reminder - but I think that if I work hard enough, I won't be spending my last few breaths searching for an old photograph. I will have plenty of other things to keep me company.
I don't know what the point of all this has been; I just logged on, and my heart spilled out onto the keyboard through my fingertips. I'm in a good mood today - I hope that you are, too, wherever you are in life.
One day - I believe it was around 15 or so - I had something close but not quite equal to a nervous breakdown. I went through my family's photo albums and methodically erased myself from them. I paused at and kept a couple of specific photos which were taken before the abuse - photos that I connected with specific good memories. Everything else, and absolutely everything from the years following the abuse, was removed and destroyed. Over the years, I never brought the "picture day" purchase packages home from school to my parents. I did everything I could to avoid being photographed - including being absent on yearbook photo days.
Time goes by quick these days. Earlier this year, I went on a trip to Las Vegas, for a conference of sorts. I took many photos, and some photos of myself were taken. On the various websites I belong to, I have shared some of these photos, and people have commented that they are the first photos they had ever seen of me - why hadn't I posted any before? Well, truth is, it's because there are no photos of myself, anywhere, that were taken during the last 15 years. I went back through my personal "archives" and whatnot, and actually looked. Before the conference photos, the most recent photo I could find of myself was taken when I was 10 years old. One of the photos that was spared the wrath of my fit those long years ago.
The photo, slightly faded with time, is of a little boy sitting on top of a truck, looking through a pair of binoculars out over an airfield. The boy is me, of course - on top of my father's truck, an old Chevy Blazer. He's the one who took the picture. He used to take me down the hill from where we lived, on Lackland Air Force Base, to the flightline at Kelly AFB, so I could watch the jets take off and land. This once, he took a photo, and I've kept it ever since. Of all the photos I kept, this one is the most important to me. It's sitting on my desk, leaning up underneath my monitor, as I write this.
I am reminded of a very old movie called "Citizen Kane". The lead character, Charles Kane, calls the word "Rosebud" right before he dies; the film follows the exploits of a newspaper reporter who dwelves into Kane's history, in part to find out what "Rosebud" is supposed to mean. The reporter comes very, very close to learning, but doesn't realize it; he blips over the relevant portion of Kane's past without noticing the significance. At the end of the movie, we see some fellows cleaning out Kane's mansion. The valuables are all taken to be sold - the unusable "garbage" is thrown on a pile to be burned. Amongst the refuse is an old child's snow sled, with the word "Rosebud" painted on it. The viewer will recall a scene from early in the movie - a memory of Kane as a child, playing on a sled, the day he is suddenly removed from his idyllic childhood and thrust into a life which holds many, many things, but not happiness. That happiness - the one single thing Charles Kane does not have - is the one thing he yearns for most at the end of his life.
This simple image - of a boy watching airplanes on a sunny day - is my "Rosebud". Soon after this photo was taken, my parents' divorce was finalized, my father was transferred, I was placed in the care of people I was told were "friends", whom I'd never really met. And, only a matter of a couple of months - a couple of months! - after that photo was taken, my abuse took place, the final spark that catalyzed over a decade of general misery.
But that photo. Somehow, fate decided that my last day of really being a child, of being pure and innocent - the very last moment in time that I was truly happy - would be caught in a photograph. I look at that photo, and I remember that day, and I am filled with joy once again. I do not think about what happened in the weeks following, or the years following. I don't look at that image the way I looked when I was 15, at a photo of a freak - a boy who was no longer really a "boy"; a dupe, a pathetic idiot who had been used and didn't even catch on until YEARS after he'd already been rode hard and put away wet, nothing more than jerk-off fodder for perverts and a grooming tool for aspiring child molesters. I don't see any of that.
No, I look at that photo, and I see...a little boy, watching airplanes. A little boy with no worries or cares, no shame or guilt for anything, as it should be. As it should've been.
I've scanned the photo; I've photobucketed it. The image is now immortal - no longer subject to the ravages of time, liquid spills, fire, loss, theft, or computer crashes. The little boy will be sitting on that truck from now until the end of time. Watching his airplanes.
And yet I look to the future and I see that I am not Charles Kane. I've had my years of melancholy, discomfort, and sadness, and I see that they now seem to be coming to an end. I am having fun again. Pictures are being taken of me, and I don't mind. It's difficult, difficult work, and there are some setbacks, but I'm getting it done, little by little. I will never recapture the sort of purity and happiness embodied in that photo - I suppose that's why I want to keep it always, as a reminder - but I think that if I work hard enough, I won't be spending my last few breaths searching for an old photograph. I will have plenty of other things to keep me company.
I don't know what the point of all this has been; I just logged on, and my heart spilled out onto the keyboard through my fingertips. I'm in a good mood today - I hope that you are, too, wherever you are in life.
