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I can’t picture myself as a child. I don’t remember ever being “small” or child-like. I can only picture myself as an adult. Or maybe as a shrunken adult, full of the same mental capacity, but maybe with shorter limbs. I see myself as an adult, maybe because I was forced to be an adult at such a young age. My mother forced me to be the emotional regulator and cheerleader of the house. I always had the “Can Do!” attitude and the wherwithall to balance her checkbook, to arrange schedules and the business side of running a family. And Storm made me a little adult, his little concubine, very early on.
I remember one time having a family portrait taken. Well, it wasn’t the entire family, but it was my brother and I. Gauging by the photo, I think I was about eight. I remember the photographer encouraging us to stand closer and closer together. “Put your hand on your sister’s shoulder,” he said. When Storm laid his hand on my shoulder, I cringed and felt myself shrinking smaller and smaller. “Now lean into her, like you’re telling her a secret,” the photographer said. I remember thinking, “Oh man, if you only knew.” I plastered on a smile, and there’s an empty look in both our eyes. That photo hangs in my mother’s living room to this day.
And so I hate looking at photos of myself as a kid. I don’t have any pictures that I can chuckle with a, “Ho, HO! Look at that girl in a Scünci headband and Frankie Goes to Hollywood t-shirt!” When I come across a picture of me as a child, I feel a sort of disconnectedness, like I don’t really know who this person is. And I feel sad, because I know it’s me. My memories are all so fractured and upsetting, like trying to recall a bad dream. When I see a picture, it’s like the flashbulb going off back at me, blinding me for a moment, stealing a bit of my soul.
