Escape from the funhouse

So I'm going in another direction from Elizabeth: Rather than posting the high school photo of me at my nadir, I'm posting a photo of me from 1995, found in a marathon weeding out of stuff in our apartment. The photo was taken to run with a story I wrote. I don't have the negatives, only the contact sheets, and this photo, which was not the one chosen, was my my favorite. Based on the other photos on the contact sheet, I didn't really look like this then. In every other frame, the proportion of my face looks distorted as if seen in a subtle funhouse mirror. Except it wasn't really distorted. That was—is—my face. This one frame, though, captured something of how I wanted to see myself, eyes soft, face in balance. This post is in lieu of my talking about the great unresolved question still casting its shadow over here, the resolution to which will determine what comes next. Let's just say I'm looking back while looking forward. The exercise is nothing if not instructive.