The Face of Trauma One Year On
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One year ago today, I had the most traumatic experience of my entire life. It was a staggering blow to my entire world, and I disappeared from pretty much all online communication for about a month. At the end of May, I posted a blog to this website, but even then I only had the stamina to ask a single question: “what do you do when your world falls apart?”
What exactly is emotional trauma? According to the Jed Foundation website, it is “the end result of events or experiences that leave us feeling deeply unsafe and often helpless. It can result from a single event or be part of an ongoing experience…Emotional trauma is recognizable by a persistent sense of unsafety and other challenging emotions such as fear and/or anxiety. It is often accompanied by other physical symptoms as well, such as chronic insomnia, nightmares, and other health issues. The emotional damage from trauma can often be more harmful and harder to recover from than physical injuries since trauma can actually alter the way our brains function, especially when that trauma is chronic.”
Trauma is lonely. Only a very small handful of people, including family, know what happened to me this day last year. And after a while, you start to feel like you’re leaning on them a little too much. You worry that they expect you to be better than you are by this point. You wonder if you might drive them away. They ask how you are, and you want to be able to tell them, but haven’t you burdened them with this enough too many times before? You kind of wish you could open up to more people so that you have a wider circle of support, but it’s too private, too personal.
Trauma is frustrating. I feel bad for my therapists because I find myself going over the same questions and issues we have touched on so many times before. I feel like…shouldn’t I be further along in the process by now? I was always a straight A kid in school. Am I failing the class of recovery?
Trauma doesn’t make the rest of your life stop. Even though your world may be reeling, it doesn’t mean other challenges won’t come up on top of the trauma you’re already struggling with. Health problems, house issues, etc. seem even more impossible to deal with when they all pile on top of what already seems the never-ending and insurmountable pain and trial of the trauma.
Trauma is painful. I am not “healed” yet. If such a thing ever happens, it will take a very long time. Two therapists and one year later, I still struggle daily with the hurt. The seemingly most innocuous and random of sights, sounds, or comments can trigger a trauma response in me. Certain things I once took great joy in are now ruined for me, even beautiful things. It’s hard. It’s really hard.
Trauma can look like happiness. It can look like shoving down the pain so deep you can almost pretend it’s not there. If you were to take a look at these two pictures, which of them would you think was the face of trauma when it has just occurred, and which is the face of trauma one year on?
The second picture was taken on Beltane last year, the day after the thing that happened. A dear friend who was a huge support when things happened invited me to celebrate with her and a few other friends that morning, and I was bravely attempting to smile for a picture of the face glitter her friend had adorned me with. The first picture was taken at the end of March, one month ago, after an especially difficult emotional breakdown. I never know when something might make all of the massive emotions I’m working on slowly over time burst out all at once in a massive explosion of panic and pain. Too many days of seeming like I’m “okay” are actually not a good sign. It means I’m pretending everything is okay and that nothing happened. I’m ignoring the feelings and shoving them down too deep.
Trauma isn’t a hidden lesson. I had saved a little artwork to share in this post that included part of a quote. But when I looked up the entire quote, it didn’t quite seem right for me because of one sentence.
I hope you heal from the things you don't talk about anymore. I hope you heal from the things people have stopped asking about because you appear to be okay. I hope you heal from the things and people that shattered your faith and confidence. I hope that pain gets replaced with the kind of happiness that makes you appreciate why things had to happen the way they did. And if you aren't there yet, I hope you get there soon.— Kirsten Corley"
What I resent about this quote, though it may apply in some situations, is that trauma doesn’t always have to have a hidden lesson. I don’t want to appreciate why things had to happen the way they did. Things didn’t have to happen the way they did, and it completely sucks that they did happen. There is no hidden moral or lesson. Maybe I’ll learn or grow from what happened, sure, but that will be because I worked at it, bled through it, not because the universe somehow sought out to put me through the pain of my trauma to teach me some bullcrap lesson.
What I do love about this quote though is the truth about not talking about my struggles anymore, or how I may act okay. As I’ve already mentioned, I seem much better now. I don’t talk about how I went through a trauma a year ago to acquaintances or even friends on a regular basis. But I’m not okay. I go to the woods and take pictures in the trees. I create artworks and write posts about whimsy and magic. None of that is fake. But behind it all is a thread of what I don’t say. There’s a constant baseline of trauma I don’t talk about often because no one wants to be a broken record. No one really wants to be broken at all. But we are. I am. I simply have to keep finding the beauty and magic anyway, and hope that someday, with therapy and work, the magic and joy will outlast the pain.
