If You Haven’t Been There
If you haven’t been there it’s hard to understand. When one’s body is invaded without one’s consent the feeling that one is used to assigning and registering to as pleasure slides in right next to pain. The pleasure now has a new face, pain: a new disguise. Something is taken away from you that you can never get back.
When one experiences trauma the entire nervous system changes. Every signal, every reaction shifts. Some of us can fight, some of us cannot. Each event is different, but we all are the same, forever linked together on one piece of long, thick thread. We can look over and see ourselves in every link and hope the others see us.
Power and force and betrayal combine and become a monster. But this monster is not the one that you were frightened about when you are small. This monster can have the face of someone you know, someone you trust, even someone that you love. Instead of a monster hiding in the cupboard or under your bed, it lives under the covers, on a chair, a couch or a bed, in a bedroom, or a dark room or park you can not be sure where. Or maybe not even in a room at all. The monster does not disappear when you switch the light on. It doesn’t leave your fears when you grow from child into adult. It can appear at any age, in front of anyone with any kind of body, with any kind of face.
If one is conscious when attacked, the feelings of your physical body and your brain meld into a kind of numbing. You are you, but you do not feel like you are you. You are almost a witness to yourself, but one that cannot always shout out and say that is enough. Enough. Enough.
If one is unconscious, all you have is a kind of living nightmare, a blur of a surreal dream with an abstract face. But this dream feels just as real as some of your favorite happy ones. It’s because it is real and when you open your eyes, it does not mean that the dream is over. It is not something you can try and forget. Even though you are really an expert at that. Denial can become a very trustworthy companion. You are confused, not about something happening that you didn’t want to happen, but about why and how and for how long and in what way. You want to cry, maybe, or curl up into yourself and melt away. You feel all alone, but someone else is there. Now you feel like they are suffering. At the time this makes a lot of sense as they are crying. They can cry. They need to be looked after. I am the one to help them. Comfort them. It makes sense at the time. It makes sense because there is no sense. Sense and what is right have flown away. All that is left is the wreckage of two bodies, one that is active and one that has now been de-activated. That’s what it feels like. Being de-activated. You have been stripped, pulled apart, your heart, your insides and your brain having a tug of war with oneself. But, there is another person there.
You can push your panic and confusion down further. You’ve done it before and you can do it again. Maybe, just tell them it will be ok. Yes, that’s the right thing to say. Even though uthere is no such thing as right anymore. You somehow find the energy and movement in your muscles to stand up, away, and walk away. You feel wet and cold and sweaty and warm all at once. You walk away, far away and think that maybe this can just be tucked away for a while, in a box or folded away on a piece of paper into a place inside and revisited later, hoping maybe, just maybe you can forget.
It takes a little longer for the brain and the heart and your body to find each other again. Once you do, you do not know what to do next. Do I tell someone, and if so, who, what will I say, how do I explain, how do I describe something that is still cut up in pieces in front of me scattered all around me like crusty fallen petals from dying flowers, but those are beautiful. This is not beautiful. This is haunted and this is dangerous.
The why. Along with that question, comes other questions, questions that you will ask yourself and questions that others will throw on you, like cold water. After a while you won’t feel the cold at all, it will just dry deeper. You expect all of this.
There is something about memory. When we think back to a time we are first transported to a place. You will transport back to then and there in an instant. You won’t know when or where or sometimes why.
Some time will pass then more and then a lot and it will still live there, becoming more a part of you. Living with it, really living with it, as you are past just surviving moment to moment by now, you will find something, you could call it hope, or you could call it strength, another layer of resilience. Something was taken away from you, but now you can start to try and take it back. Even just a bit of it. Because with that bit you can begin to build yourself back.