Recently l went through the “saga” of having to get a new passport, for reasons that are a story for another day.  This process included having to get new passport photos taken. In theory getting passport photos taken is something you should only have to do every ten years or so. I travel abroad fairly often and in the last few years, I’ve had to get identification photos taken several times for various visas and IDs, each with different specifications for photo dimensions. US passport photo requirements have changed and now you can’t wear glasses in your passport photo. Other countries require that your eyes fit within certain centimeter dimensions for an official photo ID. While simply taking off your glasses sounds like no big deal, for someone with BPES, these specifications can be a nightmare. Getting passport pictures taken is such a mental obstacle to me, that I go through great lengths to avoid having to do it. For example, I still keep a huge stash of passport sized photos that I printed and trimmed myself years ago on a photo printer at home based on a photo I had taken that met passport photo specifications. Crazy schemes like this often backfire on me because photos have to be recent and the requirements are often changing.

A colleague ran into a snafu recently with getting his passport replaced. As we were commiserating this week over the bureaucracy of getting a passport, particularly while abroad, I realized that part of my resistance to passport photos stems from my eyes. Oftentimes when getting my picture taken, the photographer will prompt me to open my eyes wider. I used to get so frustrated when someone told me to open my eyes. It drove me crazy because I would always think – if I could open my eyes wider, don’t you think I’d do it?! On one of my latest rounds of passport photos, I sat with the photographer for five minutes where he kept telling me to relax my eyes. With my eyes being so small, the picture wouldn’t meet the ID photo requirements. It was insanely frustrating for both of us and I felt really stupid. He didn’t realize I had small eyes and it seemed he thought I was squinting on purpose. Other people came in and it took less than a minute to snap their photo. In the end I got my photos, but the entire experience made me feel awful. At best it should have just been an annoying quick errand, instead of me feeling incompetent, foolish, stupid, embarrassed, and frustrated. Clearly it made its mark, with damage to my psyche because now I’ve built it up in my mind that getting passport photos is SUCH a hassle.

Just another small annoyance of having BPES.