This is one of those deeper processing posts, so I don't know where it's going. Buckle up.
I saw an image, a face, in a music video that grabbed me deep. I felt the yank of the flashback reaction. If you have it you know. No memory, just pure emotion I can tell is linked to something, but I don't know what. So I pulled back to the face and paused. I just stared at it staring at me. What is in there?
I don't recognize the face. It's female, long-hair. No, no inkling of knowing. Frozen as it was, I wasn't having the reaction. I advanced, frame by frame. Still not so much. But in the motion, there it was again. It's the expression.
But have I seen it before? Someone else? A mirror? I read about the phenomenon. It took some search jockeying, but I discovered a new theory that memories can be locked to states of being so the brain has to be back in that state to access. Not so sure about that, but it gave me a clue.
I tried searching for similar faces and that's when I found it. Took a little more jockeying of search terms, but it's the hollow-eyed expression of recalled pain. Not witnessing traumatizing events, not shock. It's the look that the eyes are seeing through a haze of calcified hurt from which there was no escape, and in these moments, there is no escape from the recollection, the reliving what it did to us.
I've seen people see it in me and they react in various ways. But I can tell you, when someone knows what they're seeing it takes only a microsecond and we're linked.
Now that I grasp it, I can recall so many times I've seen it live and known. Seen people fear I saw it. Seen people see it in me. Seen us see each other. And that's where the link happens. Once we even dropped a conversation. I had picked up something about someone and was doing a little fishing. Once he hit the link, we both just stopped. Understood, brother. I see you. What's for lunch?
