When the uncle comes from Holland, father talks about the inferiority complex

2023-09-04 20:22:38

I shake my hands and blink at the TV as well as my own image. It’s an old TV with a huge tube behind it that was in the living room before I knew the word TV. It’s summer 1998, the old device is connected to a video camera for the first time, which is recording me. I cling to the back of the living room chair, I smile, I stick out my tongue, letting it hang from the corner of my mouth.

I’m five years old and this is the first time I’ve seen a video camera. It’s also the first time I’ve seen my reflection outside of a mirror or a photograph. And then right away on a TV screen! I wave my feet and hands to be absolutely sure: That person is me. I make no sound. I keep moving and trying to look into my eyes, but it doesn’t work. When I look at the TV I lose my sight and when I look at the camera I feel like I’m completely lost.

It’s my uncle’s camera who is visiting from Holland where he has been living and working for a few years. He is visiting us in Bucharest for the summer holidays. The adults, the uncle, his girlfriend and my mother pass me without paying attention to the image on the screen. But dad sits down next to me, interrupts my play and tells me in a slightly excited and worried tone: “Stop moving like that, it’s a sign of an inferiority complex.” Of course I don’t know what that is, an inferiority complex .

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It’s now digitized – in the cloud

We both now stand in silence in front of a camera that captures my sagging face and drooping corners of my mouth. Then I go away. What remains is the feeling that something is wrong with what I’m doing. The camera continues to follow the movements of people in the house.

The scene doesn’t just stick in my memory. My uncle sent us the video and I didn’t see it until I was about 27 years old, at a time when I was in therapy trying to manage my fears and complexes. When I saw myself, I laughed out loud – and transferred the recording to my computer. I never looked at them again.

Denisa Nita is a freelance journalist from Bucharest, Romania. She works for the Berliner Zeitung for six weeks as part of the International Journalism Program (IJP).