A Long Road

A sluggish feeling arose in me. 

A sluggish feeling arose in me.  We were walking home from school one day when I was fifteen years old.  I had to climb a hill to get home.  The road was steep in places.  Sometimes I just had to stop.  The March winds rolled up the valley and tousled my hair.  Why do I remember this day?  I was about to have a nervous breakdown if something did not shift at home.  My dad had made me a promise to never to do something again that he had done.  He had threatened to kill my mom. Dangerous waters these are.

Steep Road

The truth of the matter is that I was so traumatized I did not know which way was up.  I knew I needed to go home, but my feet just wanted to keep walking up the road without ever actually reaching home.  I wasn’t sure I could trust what Dad had said.  I also wasn’t sure I could trust Mom not to argue with him.  It wasn’t a good time for arguing.  It was a time for healing.

Over the Hills

I was frozen inside as though my life were about to crumble.  My feet did not want to go home.  My feet wanted to run over the hills and into the forest.  I couldn’t do that.  I had sisters and a brother to take care of.  The road was very long that day.  I had to find a way to fit myself into a new reality.  I loved both of my parents, so this wasn’t going to be easy.

The afternoon brought some usual pleasantries at home, but my brain couldn’t participate. I went through the motions.  The anxiety for me was so intense I could scarcely breathe.  I tried to do my homework, but I could hardly think.  I said about two words at dinner, then got up to do my chores, hoping to stay out of the line of fire if hostilities broke out again.  I was listening to every conversation, every moment of tension.  Hypervigilance is handy when you’re dodging bullets.  Not so handy for healing though.  I’m amazed my heart kept beating throughout this whole ordeal.

I couldn’t live like this.  Mom and Dad acted like nothing had ever happened.  It was business as usual for them.  Not for me.  I needed a picture of reality that included what had happened.  But their consensual reality was entirely different.  Where was I to go?  Who could help?  There was nowhere to go and no one to help.

After a week of overwhelming anxiety, tension, and terror, I needed to get out of there.  After a week of deception, whitewashing, and denial, I needed to feel safe.  After a week of going through the motions, hypervigilance, and dodging potential bullets, I needed a world in which these things did not happen.  So I buried it.  I buried the whole set of events.  I buried them so that I could not find them, could not have them disturb my studies, my life, my family life.  I buried them so deep inside.  Dissociation is a marvelous tool, a massive defense against trauma.   . . .But an uneasiness, a thread of anxiety remained.

Years later, those memories returned, returned to haunt me, returned when they needed to, when they were needed.  A crack in my world took place, filing me with anxiety, and I needed those memories of where I had been and what had happened in my life.  At first I was angry and thought it could not possibly be true.  I thought my dad a better man than one who would threaten to kill.  I thought my family a better family than one who would go through such events.  But seeds got planted and began to grow, and I began to search my own memories for signs, for clues about what had happened.

It was a long road.  Little by little, the entire dissociation fell away.  One day I realized those memories were true.  I began to remember how I learned that my dad was threatening to kill my mom.  I remembered how freaked out I was, how frightened I was that he was going to kill her and then come after the rest of the family.  How I was not sure I could protect myself and my siblings but had a distinct urge to do so.  How this was all too much for me     . . . at fifteen . . . at any age.  I could feel the icy fingers of terror that I had buried so long before.

I was remaking myself.  My parents were not who I thought they were, and I spent years exploring that theme.  Not who I thought they were as a child and during my teen years.  I wondered when I would get to the bottom of this trauma, trying to understand the truth of who they were and who I am.  One uncovers traumas bit by bit until each piece is let go.  And as one does so, life is remade.  Nothing needs to be hidden anymore.  Neither to be denied.  Neither to be forgotten.  There at the bottom is just the stark reality of what once was and need be nor more.  The intense emotions are felt and let go in time.  Each trauma need have no more hold over one’s life.

One need not live in fear, in hypervigilance, in dissociation anymore.  Without this emotion and these defenses directing my life, I am free.  I am free to decide what to do with my life without living in fear for my life.  I am free to love the truth regardless of whether everyone consensually agrees with me.  I am free to dig into my soul to uncover what needs to be uncovered and to heal whatever I find needs healing.

The Road is Long

Have you ever experienced a truly life-threatening trauma?  How did you cope with it? What did you do or are you doing to free yourself from the trauma?  In what ways did it remake your life?   

In what ways did it remake your life?   

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