Trauma Rears its Ugly Head

MONSTER

Push me - it will rise.

Monster in me…you will see.

Love and space, true, yes.

Still, we bleed.

I picture this monster in me climbing from deep in my belly, my core. It climbs my spine, wraps its gnarled, filthy claws around each vertebra, punctures my heart and lungs as it thrusts upward, bursts through my throat…and attacks. I do not want it to come out, but it gives me no choice.

It makes everything worse.

This monster is the lasting impacts of trauma in me. Luckily, I have developed strategies that work for me to keep it at bay. I will be talking about those strategies later. Here though, I want to offer some insights into how this monster has shown up for me and how I have witnessed it in others.

IN HER

Recently, I was working with a neighborhood and the small nonprofit organization that was moving an managed encampment for people experiencing homelessness into it. While those of us who understood how this type of encampment works and the positive impact it has had on neighborhoods, many people who live and work in those neighborhoods fear the worst. They equate homelessness with violence, theft, filth, drugs, criminal insanity. They dehumanize people who live without a place to call home day after day, sometimes for years.

It is understandable: as I have gotten to know people living on the streets, I have found most to be living in trauma, and trauma has most commonly been what led many people there in the first place. In some ways it feels like the ultimate expression of the effects of trauma, especially when no or inadequate support systems are available. If it hadn’t been for my husband’s family helping to cover our housing costs when I was struggling the most, I would’ve been counted among them.

However, this particular program offers a safe place to sleep, connection to resources, companionship, community, and more. Residents begin to feel human again…let the monsters inside rest. Many find hope for a future that they had not been able to imagine for some time, maybe even ever—not perfectly or instantly, mind you; we have work to do to heal our wounds and need plenty of support and space as we thrash about and eventually ease our way back to our whole and beautiful selves…but I digress...

In this recent effort to prepare the neighborhood for this new, albeit temporary addition, a neighbor flew into rage. She showered my clients, their partners, my team members, me with venomous words – spewing accusatory, terror-filled messages. She would fight us, do whatever she could to stop this from coming so close to her home, she insisted. How could we do this to her???

She too had a monster in her, shaken and set free. It emerged to protect her from being raped on the streets of Denver again, to keep the danger away from her home. I listened and gave her space to thrash about without judgment.

I told her I understood, that I could relate. I told her too that most of my perpetrators reached me inside my home, through my school, in the clothes of someone that was supposed to care for me. They were white men. They had power over me, and I could not escape. People who looked and acted like them were unavoidable. Finding a way to live beyond fear would be essential for me if I ever wanted to leave my house, which was essential for continuing to have a home of my own.

I sought a way for her to imagine that this situation could be different, to breathe and see the possibilities beyond her fear. Eventually, she could breathe, see. She became a supporter of the project and a friend to me. She apologized for her behavior and thanked me repeatedly – for my kindness and grace. It is what I needed, still need sometimes, I said. Our trauma may have a powerful effect on our behaviors at times, but it is not us, I said.

IN ME

When trauma is triggered in me and actively rearing its monstrous head, it feels impossible to be with others unless those others are suffering as much as I am. After Jasmine died, I could not deal with that monster, at least not directly. I spent every waking minute avoiding it, and I avoided sleep to avoid the dreams that I could not control. I worked harder than I’ve ever worked in my life. When I wasn’t working, I drowned my thoughts and feelings in booze, drugs, sex, recklessness – anything to avoid the pain I could not bear inside me. My long-time friend turned intimate partner in the wake of Jasmine’s death bore the worst of my behavior, I think. I hurt him in the callous way I left him. He deserved none of it. I couldn’t stand myself, so I met another disfigured soul and spiraled down a dark and hellish tunnel with him instead.

Funny thing is: most people involved in the work side of my life had no idea what was happening with me outside work. They thought I was so strong and brave and said as much. They didn’t realize that was because I was running as hard and fast as I could from the trauma—work, substances, etc. were crutches to help me hobble through my days.

Toward the end of that period, after being assaulted in another dangerous situation I put myself in, I quit everything and fled across the country with the one person I believed genuinely cared about me. With no work to fill most of my waking hours, I fully immersed myself in the drink. The more I drank, the less effective it was at keeping the monster at bay. Then one night…

Sitting alone at 2am on the front step of the house where I was staying, I could feel the booze in my blood, as if the booze was my blood. It wouldn’t let me sleep, had to keep pouring more into my veins. I was mortified, out of control. I called an old friend who told me to go to the first available AA meeting near me. I complied. They told me to go to the hospital to detox – said quitting was likely to kill me otherwise. I complied. I haven’t had a drink since. That was nearly nine years ago.

This is the point where everyone else cheers, celebrates my triumphant sobriety. For me, it was the beginning of the worst hell of my life. Without alcohol to dull my thoughts and feelings, to keep the monster dopey and messy yet somehow less destructive, it took over.

Even going back to work wasn’t enough to keep it quiet, though I tried. I worked endlessly in that first couple years of sobriety, impressing my employer, colleagues, communities I supported – until I hit a wall. My employer wanted more of me than I could give anymore. I became short, rude, less productive; my colleagues became uncomfortable around me – the claws of the monster batting people away. I kept asking for more space, grace, but they wanted what they wanted.

Luckily the job shifted to something less fulfilling for me, so back to consulting I went. I don’t know whether this was a right or wrong turn for me, but it was an extraordinarily painful path for a time. Trying to build my business and spending much of my time alone, I found myself increasingly in need of isolation. I have an image of a dark cave into which my soul retreats when the pain is too much. Inside that cave, my battered, bruised, broken soul was clear, but it got worse each time I tried to poke my head out. I felt everything I did was wrong, and if I couldn’t control the monster, I would lose everything. I was a lost cause, I thought.

I can’t count the number of times I called the crisis line to keep from shooting myself in the head, literally.

In sobriety, every devastating aspect of my 11-year-old daughter’s sudden death was larger than life and haunting. And I wasn’t impervious as I was as a young adult striving to make something good of my life even though haunted by repeated sexual abuse. Of course, because I had eliminated the drink as an option, I didn’t have any of the tools available to me to help with that, unless I was prepared to give up completely, to say fuck it all. I wasn’t.

All I could think to do was retreat. The only tool I had then was isolation, my cave. I had moved away from friends and family already, and I stopped talking to anyone on the phone, for the most part. I curled up in corners and cried, inconsolable. This went on for at least two years.

Our trauma may have a powerful effect on us, but it is not us.

Thanks to my husband, who kept my humanity in sight and sat near me as much as I could handle him being there, holding space for me to shout and sob and reel in pain, without judgment, with pure love. He didn’t try to fix me or convince me it would all be ok. At most, he held my hand. Thanks to him and my own persistence in seeking a path that would let me breathe again and lead me toward hope, I survived.

The monster still emerges – when I am over-taxed or neck-deep in messages from community members that dehumanize people who are suffering. It is relatively benign these days because I have been able to structure my life in a way that gives me space to care for myself and heal. Still, relationships can be challenged when I become short and inadvertently rude or retreat into isolation for a few hours or a couple of days. Luckily, my colleagues, family, and remaining friends have made space for this, as long as I do my part to care for them when I am able to step back into the flow of life that they are all in. Such grace is a rare thing in this society, and I am immensely grateful.

I wonder, what would happen if everyone that is wrestling with such monsters was afforded the same grace and space? How many fewer people would lose their homes or attempt suicide? How much better would our world be? After all, our trauma may have a powerful effect on us, but IT IS NOT US.