Tag Archives: trauma

Just do it, one tiny step at a time.

Posted on by

5

You made breakfast at home on a Saturday. You can’t recall the last time you’ve done that.

Short-lived success. Now you feel the cloudy swaths of dissociation floating around you.

But, somehow, the floatiness passes. It actually passes without you having to leave the house. This has never happened in the past. You’ve always had to leave for it pass.

And so you heated up soup for lunch, watched tv, and took a peaceful nap.

You woke up, and drafted a poem. Then you made french toast for dinner. The enormity of what has happened has not escaped you. You cooked three meals in your apartment in one day, three meals! You feel like you should be doing a victory lap of sorts.

You realize that it’s the small victories that are actually the large victories in this journey.

Why I will l not watch the Hunger Games

Posted on by

3

Hunger is life changing. When you have felt true hunger in your life it never leaves you. It clings to you like a bad memory of food poisoning that repels you from the food culprit that led to your illness. However, in this case, the reverse happens: you are instead drawn to food because of your past experience with hunger.

Hunger haunts you even in those innocuous moments when you don’t have time to eat breakfast, and your mind starts to freak out on you simply because you are hungry. Your freak out is not due to low blood sugar. The feeling of hunger takes you back to that time when you and your two sisters had to share a small frozen pizza between the three of you, and there was nothing else to eat. Hunger takes you back to searching in vain for something to eat while your mother holed up in her room with the blinds drawn, the lights out, and the door closed. At 6 years old your resourcefulness could only take you so far.

But, in fact, you were resourceful. You learned that watermelon was served during the summer lunch program, but, your understanding was that you needed to be in summer school in order to get a free lunch. So, you showed up to school one day, and declared that you needed summer school. You were so persistent they didn’t know what to do with you so they let you read books all day and play with the felt board. You were fine with that arrangement.

Then there was the time you learned how to make deviled eggs on the television show 3-2-1 Contact. You were thrilled beyond belief because this was something you and your sister could make on the nights your mother holed up in her room, which was most nights.

Your reactions around food are not muted, nor are they discreet. God help the person that tries to start a conversation with you while you are holding your tuna melt that you just purchased. You have a short capacity for waiting to eat something once it’s in your hands ready for consumption. Your brain cannot fathom ignoring a hot tuna melt in your hand for a two minute conversation.

You do know that you are no longer in danger of going hungry, but your brain is mixed up on this issue. Part of your brain knows that you have a good job, and you can feed yourself now as an adult, but another part of your brain still lives in that scary place called hunger. So, why would you want to see a movie depicting this feeling … this horrifying feeling likely not intimately known by most movie goers of The Hunger Games?

Today is better than yesterday

Posted on by

2

Integration, apparently, is moving along. I’m not completely sure how, nor can I even coherently explain it. Two nights ago I lost a lot of time, and the nightmares were ridiculous, and lengthy. I did not wake up yesterday until 1:53 p.m. When I finally woke up I truly no longer wanted to be on this earth.

I think Doc must have been in a bad place as well because when I called him he asked, “Are you safe?” Well, as safe as one can be with a mind that likes to switch off to different channels. He then asked, “Do you need to go to the hospital?” Once I answered those questions sufficiently enough he was pretty much done. No, I don’t need the damn hospital, just a connection to a human being that can tell me that what’s in my mind is not real. I just needed to talk to someone that was not in my nightmare, someone that can tell me that the world is not as scary as it is in my brain. I just needed to hear another person’s voice so that I know that I am not truly alone in this world, that Armageddon did not happen and I didn’t make the cut. What I needed was someone to convey to me that it’s worth finding that shred of hope, like an umbrella tucked into the backseat of your car that you suddenly remember in the middle of a downpour, and it’s worth cashing it in today because tomorrow will be better. Not all days will be like this, some will, but not all of them.

As usual, no one else was available. Instead, I found hope in a diner meal of roasted chicken, potatoes and chicken gumbo soup. Then, the bookstore was the final refuge for us. We stayed until they closed for the night as I was terrified to be home alone. But the night was better than the previous one, and today is still lonely, but, somehow, more hopeful. Not sure how, but I’m not questioning it. I’ll just take it.