The People Behind My Eyes

Part of me would like to lay low today and do nothing at all. Therapy yesterday was kinda brutal. I took in the same photos that I let Dr. T see awhile back. Dr. D, my current therapist, saw exactly what I saw with very little prompting. One of the main themes in those pictures that I missed was how the pictures of the children do not include adults until the older years. We aren’t touching each other much and are spaced apart almost perfectly. The faces of the children show stress that increases with age. That I noticed but I hadn’t seen the fact the young children are pictured alone. Not until we hit our teen years are children seen in the same photos as adults. Most of the pictures of my cousins, my sister and myself are staged. We are being photographed but we are certainly not participating or want to be photographed. In the photos of me around age 10 and up I’m no longer looking dead into the camera. My sister looks into the camera from her early years to the oldest picture I have of her which is her senior year in high school.

Dr. D asked a few questions that I answered rather easily. I didn’t feel much about the session until I got home. Of course he asked how I felt about showing it to him. I told him I didn’t feel much at all. I was rather removed. I gave info not feeling. This is so-in-so, this is so-in-so, I lived here, I was in this grade, etc. The one question he asked that caught me off guard was, “Why is your brother’s face red.” He threw me for a loop. I held up a picture of the mother and said, “She did it.” I skipped over giving more detail and showed him the next picture. That by the way is the first time I dissociated in this entry. A few photos later the brother came up again and he asked a little more about the redness on his face. I wasn’t able to give him an answer just, “The mother did it.”

We talked a bit about having a flashback while showing him the photos. I told him I needed to try to get grounded enough to walk out of his door and go home without falling on my face. He asked how he could help. I told him to turn on the friggin lights and that I felt like I needed a flashlight just to see him. I was moving my hand back and forth like I was searching for him with a flashlight. He laughed. I got up, walked to the door, flipped the overhead lights on and left.

One thing I learned about Dr. D is that either he is really good at separating himself from his clients issues OR he has no children. He didn’t look at the photos as a father. Two other therapists that have seen these photos looked at them and commented on how cute my sister and I were. They ooh’d and ah’d over many of them. I had to remind them of why I was showing them the photos. Dr. D. looked at them and immediately saw what I hoped he’d see, staged events with children in desperate need of saving.

Photo Flashes- Saturday, December 29, 2007-11:16AM EST