The Day That Photo was Taken
Written by Stephen William Babb
The trust that builds a strong relationship goes beyond the secrets and insecurities shared with each other. It’s the confidence that a partner will treasure that information and understand how to discuss it with sensitivity and patience at the appropriate time.
My partner and I once took a quick picture together – she was kissing my cheek while I had my phone pointed at us – and I saved it to my camera roll. It was cute. We’d been seeing each other for a little while and hadn’t yet taken many pictures as a couple. The image file sat in a shared photo album, hardly acknowledged, before it resurfaced as a canvas painting for a present to me 15 months later. My partner will be the first to clarify that it’s a color-by-number operation, but I don’t care that she had some guidance. The photo that was initially an unremarkable moment had since become a visual reminder of a day that my new girlfriend shared an experience that I would never forget.
A few hours after that photo was taken, we were walking away from the crowd and back towards my home. She already displayed courage by meeting my mother for the first time, but her next action took so much more. As our conversation drifted along through experiences and memories, she told me that she was a survivor of sexual assault. There wasn’t much more to the story when it was first shared. It seemed like a knot in the timeline of her life that needed to be untangled before she could move forward. I learned that I was the first person she ever told despite it happening three years prior, and it was clear to me that she felt as much relief as vulnerability when she finally spoke the sentence out loud.
I was in possession of this person’s most guarded secret, most loathed memory, and most delicate experience of her life. She invested trust in me to treasure this information and understand how to discuss it with sensitivity and patience. I understood that there was more to her story – more knots to untangle – but walking through a bustling town was not the right place, nor her restoring of mental poise the right time to ask for more.
The night that photo was taken, we were slouching in bed together and recovering from two sets of eyes much bigger than a pair of stomachs. Filled with as much uncertainty as delivery food, I brought up my partner’s brief story that she shared earlier that day. My reference was vague, but it didn’t need to be specific. She knew the one – and she told me she didn’t want to talk about it. I responded “that’s okay, but I want to ask you again later. It won’t be tonight, but it won’t be never.”
My partner agreed, and that marked our discovery of the most effective procedure for beginning difficult conversations with each other: Bring up the topic, and if they are not yet comfortable to discuss it, then the requestor has the right to bring it up again later. Like many things, three times may be the charm. That’s what it took on my first endeavor.
Following the third time I asked my partner about the day the photo was taken, she shared more details of her story from college. The details I learned had never been shared with anyone else until she was later inspired by Cor-a to publish her story and empower other survivors to share theirs. It took courage from her and patience from me. Beyond a few supportive words of affirmation and nods of comprehension, I just listened. It was her story to unearth at her pace.
Eventually I learned the full story of my partner surviving a sexual assault. It wasn’t my experience, but it was one that she trusted me to know so I would understand why she doesn’t want to walk to over my home in the middle of the night, or why she doesn’t want to take that extra shot to finish a round, or why she shared her location with a friend before every first date since college.
Fifteen months after that photo was taken, I received a hand-painted canvas of it for my birthday. It was cute. She pointed out the faint outlines and numbers that designated which colors to paint in certain areas, but her pride of gifting me that canvas was all her own. It hangs on a wall where everyone can see but no one knows the reason why it means so much to me. That photo was taken on the day that my partner invested trust in me to treasure her story and understand how to discuss it with sensitivity and patience when she was ready.
