It's kind of funny how even the smallest things - things that in any other case, to any other person - would be so menial...can trigger the deepest hurt. I've always loved this photograph. This is the photograph that made me fall in love with Annie Leibovitz. It follows me everywhere. Without fail, every semester, someone shows this photograph. And every time, without fail, I feel a little sick. That...kind of tightening in your stomach..that's somewhere between butterflies and nausea...that makes your heart beat strangely and your eyes burn.
Stacey and I have missed the opportunity to ever be like this. 20 years without seeing her face; without ever hearing her voice. Hugs at the airport are awkward. And I've stopped wondering if that will ever go away. It won't. We'll never have a photograph like this. I'll never be in her lap and she'll never have her arms around me. I'll never feel safe enough to just stare at her face and search for the similarities in her features. The best I can hope for is a chunk of time in the afternoon where I can be let to pour over photographs of her when she was little. Somehow it feels so safe to look at pictures of her before she gave birth to me. Maybe because in those photographs - for that split second - there is a fleeting chance that she won't give me away. A fleeting look in her eyes that maybe - maybe she'll keep me. And maybe we'll have this photograph together.
We have the same hair; the same eyes; the same hands. We have the same laugh; we get hiccups when we're hungry; we have the same toes. Our handwriting is impossibly hard to differenciate. And for 20 years I missed it. She made me miss it. I spent 20 years wondering why my hair never fell straight around my face like my family's. 20 years wondering why I could draw and paint and dance - and they could calculate and solve and manage. 20 years of adjusting my laugh to match those of my parents and their families. 20 years of hiding and adjusting and trying to figure out what it was that I had done wrong.
I wanted so badly to look like them; to fit in around them. I thought that when I found Stacey I would finally be complete. That she would scoop me in her arms like I was still a child and she would hold me and rock me and cry with me and laugh with me; and she would be my mirror - and I would finally look like someone and laugh like someone and fit in with someone. I would have forgiven her everything. I would have shown her the endless pages I drew as a child, filled with her eyes and her smile: a child's desperate attempt to find her place. I would have told her that everything was okay; that we found each other and now we would both be okay. We both found our place.
But everything was ruined. An emotionless, awkward hug - one you might give to that distant cousin, who married your uncle's granfather's sister-in-law - where you lean in and wince and already you wait for it to be over. And it's all elbows and crashing cheeks and you hold the rest of you back, careful not to touch, so your just standing a pace back from where your upper bodies meet. And then it's over. And she turns and says, "the car's this way," and you're just kind of standing there, confused, staring at her back as she starts walking away. And you realize you've seen this once before. And your breath gets trapped in your lungs and your eyes sting and you realize you've been dreaming of this - you've been dreaming of her back as she walks away - for your whole life. And all you want to do is sink to the floor like the bones in your legs have just suddenly disappeared. And you just want to be left alone.
You don't care about your similarities anymore. You don't care that when you look at her you're looking in a mirror. You don't want to hear her laugh or play with her hair. You don't want her to hold you while you stare into each other's eyes and let silent regrets swirl around you like the air you're breathing. You want the air to be still. You want to stop breathing. And you want Annie Leibovitz to take her photograph and shove it up her ass.
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