My Passport Photo As A Marker For My Current Mental State
Freshman year of college, all I wanted to do was travel. I mean, I wanted to achieve international fame for being an astute, extremely intelligent journalist, to join a sorority and make a lot of friends as a result, and be seen as hot and cool at frat parties and bag a boyfriend. But more than anything, what I wanted the most, was to be overseas.
At age 19 I got accepted into an international exchange program based in Chengdu, China, facilitated through my college in Ohio.
Travel was actually at the top of my priorities since sophomore year of high school, after a distant relative told me of his adventures in Africa. Since I had spent an afternoon listening to his stories detailing the friends he had met and their time together abroad still being one of the highlights of his life 30 years later, my mind was preoccupied with how to do something similar. My first plan involved volunteer programs for teens in Costa Rica, backed up by my Spanish teacher’s positive opinion that I should go. But that failed as I needed parental approval. My second plan was a volunteer trip in college to I don’t even remember where, but that failed as it was over $4,000, which I did not have.
My third plan succeeded, a cost-effective trip facilitated by university professors who would be with us every step, and my mother’s full confidence that I would be safe. Success. But the day to day activities occurring in my life around that plan ate at me, like all conditions of student lives do. 3-hour classes, late nights, long assignments, working a part-time, minimum-wage job outside of my class schedule, meeting people I hated yet still spent time with, joining a sorority I didn’t actually like being part of, consuming tons of alcohol that was detrimental to my mental health, which I was unaware of at the time. And getting my passport was on that list of things I “had to do.” AKA: things that were on my to-do list because of life choices I made, and now seemed like daunting tasks even though I was living my best life.
I curled my hair, put on minimal makeup, and got a passport photo back that was absolutely appalling to me to look at. I looked drowsy and tired because of back to back sinus infections and allergies I hadn’t learned to tame yet. That was 9 years ago. That passport photo has accompanied me on every trip I have taken since. I’ve probably pulled that passport out at the airport over 20 times, maybe more. Now I don’t mind how I look in it, who cares. But I can see in my eyes how sleep deprived I was. How I was in a state of my life I was trying to escape, which I learned to do with travel. How I was simply at a location doing a step, fighting through exhaustion and stress to get to a place I wanted to be at.
I got another passport photo taken today. I didn’t do my hair or makeup before ad I wore the outfit I was running errands in earlier that day. It was as raw as it could be. A true reflection of my physical and mental state on this day.
When I got in my car and pulled the photo out of the envelope that the camera man handed to me over the counter, I was actually shocked. From far away, the photo looked ok. I was satisfied with how my hair was lying around my face and how my complexion was looking- I have been keeping up with my skin care. But upon closer look, my hair looks flat and greasy, my eyes look sleep-deprived, I have dark circles underneath them, I have a healing pimple that popped up after a stressful week above my lip. I look truly exhausted, just as I did when I took a passport photo almost 10 years ago. I don’t mind really, but it made me laugh that at these two pivotal points in my life: the first time traveling out of the country, and the first time migrating to another country, I have these photos to mark how absolutely exhausting and difficult the times in my life right beforehand were. It’s like this life of travel constantly feeds complicated scenarios, a lot of work, and periods of time in which you don’t feel like you have your head on straight or even like yourself. And it is a reminder of the life I chose and the life of travel. And I have no thoughts about that, whether that’s good or bad or why I’m doing it, it is simpy just an observation in time.