How Do Old Photos Make You Feel?
A friend shared this on Trans Visibility Day last week:
Oh heyyy, on the last few minutes of Trans Day of Visibility, a question about the visibility of past…
How do you feel about old photos of yourself? Respond below, or PM. I genuinely want to know.
(let me know if you’d like to be credited)
The question provoked feelings I didn’t realize I had, or perhaps had yet to express outside myself, until I started typing my response:
I’ve learned to become sympathetic to my younger self, but it took a long time in therapy and a few sessions with hallucinogens. I can’t imagine most of us have all that behind us yet (or will at all). 🤷
So I can look at old photos and experience them as bittersweet rather than triggering.
The thing I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do is sit with a family member in real time and look at photos together. The amount of masking and holding in invisible traumatic memories so they can stay in their happy place where those memories were all so carefree is too much for me.
And I rarely want to spend the spoons educating/recounting them to people who might argue with me about my experience of them.
(For clarification: Non-binary people are included under the “trans” umbrella term.)
My feelings about my younger self stem from more than my gender. Part of it is the ups and downs of my physical and mental health over the years represented. I’m lucky old photos don’t usually bring back intense traumatic memories the way they do for some of my friends. Rather, it feels mostly like pity and sympathy for my younger self, which — as I mentioned in my answer — took considerable work for me to redirect away from self-hatred.
It’s hard to look at the fake smiles I secretly and painstakingly practiced in the mirror as a kid. I learned to smile on-demand to hide. I wore them to avoid “Are you okay?” questions or escape my anxiety in those moments as quickly as possible (often to run off to my room to play video games or read comics).
That unhappiness and/or anxiety came from things I wouldn’t come to understand until later. At the time, it was just random bursts of misery and discomfort. I had no way of knowing if and when it would ever stop.
I knew I hated wearing certain clothing, but didn’t realize it was likely due to a combination of autistic sensitivities and gender dysphoria. I knew I had a hard time concentrating in school, struggled with memorization, and couldn’t help tapping my foot constantly, but didn’t know those were common ADHD symptoms. I didn’t realize my compulsions to speak up to adults about why the church indoctrination or educational topic they’re pushing on me is inaccurate/irrational/awful is common for both autism and ADHD.
My hindsight analysis of these memories — on which I’ve spent more time than I care to admit — has the Corry of today pointing at each smiling photo and quickly rattling off:
- Real
- Fake – social anxiety
- Real
- Fake – gender dysphoria
- Real
- Fake – struggling to survive the winter/holidays
- Real
- Fake – autistic meltdown
- Real
This is fine when I do it solo or with people who weren’t around when those photos were taken. It’s tougher to discuss it with people who were there. Family members may have those moments in their own memory as unblemished happy occasions. I don’t want to ruin it for them and on the rare occasions when I do want to talk about one, it often turns into an argument. People get defensive over their memories, or they feel like I lied to them at the time.
And maybe I did lie to them. In a way, that’s what masking is after all. But I was treading water in a sea of emotions and pain I couldn’t understand let alone explain until recently. I can’t reasonably hold myself at the time — a helpless child or unprepared young adult — responsible for not knowing the unknowable.
I’ll continue to limit how often I talk to family and old friends about shared memories this way (unless they ask). It feels unproductive to share everything with them save only important moments in my development that might help them understand me today and in the future. Especially if hearing it makes them feel bad.
How does looking at old photos of yourself make you feel? How do you handle hindsight realizations as you age and look back?