To most people, the day they found out you killed yourself is the day of trauma for them. For us, it had been building up to your grand finale for a couple years - no one wants to acknowledge that...it's easier to just embrace one single day of trauma and pretend we hadn't been living in hell long before.
I wonder about that file some where in my therapist’s office with my name on it that goes back 24 years. What did my psyche look like so long ago? That poor wounded mushy-matter, still 17 years away from admitting I was an alcoholic. How sad must I have been when I finally sat down in front of a professional and started my story.
If we as parents just stopped making decisions so hard, we would be in a much better place mentally. If we as parents just stopped giving ourselves hard to achieve rules, we would be in a much better place mentally.
I can still remember the freezing cold when the roof, which was only a tarp draped over a massive space between two columns of pine at the little treehouse in Index, collapsed from the weight of the snow and buried me in the loft.
I showed him the letter my mom wrote me and told him I wanted the words, “I love you to the moon and back!” in her handwriting, on my back shoulder. And I wanted the heart exclamation point as well, exactly as she had drawn it.
We spent hours at counselors, nights in the emergency room, sometimes we would just sit together and wait for the darkness to fade and he would cry. Once when he was 18 and having an "episode", I was desperate, I called 911. Two state troopers came to our home. What I wanted from them was help getting him someplace that he could get "better". What I got was a big dose of reality. They told me "He is 18 and unless he is actively threatening to hurt himself or others than there is nothing we can do". At that point he was pissed at me for calling the police, he slung a backpack over his shoulder and left. He couch surfed for the next 6 months. I layed awake every night worrying and wondering where he was.
My dad verbally berated my mother, my sister and I for all kinds of minor transgressions. “What the hell” was a common prelude to a string of insults. My mother was a lousy cook, my sister and I made noise with our forks. My mother “had no friends.” I “had no boyfriend.” Honestly, the stuff he came up with to yell at us for almost makes me laugh today. Almost. Because it still hurts.
My brain still takes me to dark places. But these days, it’s more charcoal than obsidian. I’ve learnt to dance with the fear and the loneliness and the grey clouds. I’ve learnt how to ask myself better questions.
My body floods with memories of them. I was bred to know these men, to be able to pick them out because they felt…familiar. My cells like radar finding them in a crowded room.
I heard once, during a treatment program, that trauma is not about what’s wrong with you; it’s about what’s happened to you. That helps to reflect upon, a lot, but at the end of the day, it’s very hard to ignore that little voice that suggests you’re damaged goods.
