Ghosts & Origins

Not long ago my brother sent me a picture of me as -- I'm guessing here, 'cuz there's no date on the picture -- an eleven or twelve year-old boy. I can't be sure, since I'm pretty awful at guessing my own age in pictures.

If that's the case, though, it can't have been very long after my brother Bill died, which kinda explains why I look so very -- there's no getting around it -- unhappy in this picture.

I hadn't thought about this much, but you really can see the difference between photos taken before and after Bill died. I go from being a pretty care-free, happy-go-lucky kid to a really somber, withdrawn one. The Trifecta of Poopiness™ that was my life -- having my brother die, entering puberty, and coming to the realization that I was gay -- made for an interesting span of years.

It wasn't until a few years later, probably about the time I started forcing myself to be social with the new folks I was meeting in high school, that I realized the value of putting on a happy face even when you feel craptastic inside. Tears of a clown and all that.

The thing that it makes me think of most, though -- tell me if I'm crazy here -- is this: I think that dividing line also marks the last time in my life I was completely unselfconscious in a photograph. A lot of it has to do with a performer's vanity ("Is he getting my best side?"), and a lot has to do with my own insecurity ("I hate the way I look in pictures"), but I wonder to what degree those early tragic events made me want to examine every moment, every action for its consequences. To completely control the world's perceptions of me. To stare down a problem, or to be thunderstruck by it.

A work colleague recently used a phrase in describing another: "Analysis paralysis."

I'm nothing if not self aware, and have always known this is one of my own traits/faults -- I just never knew from whence it comes.