Braving the Unknown when You are a Trauma Survivor
On life after trauma
I’m leaving for Tokyo today. The two things I wanted to be as a kid were a feminist hero and a word traveler. At eight years old, no one wanted to be my friend in school. I was weird and different and developed faster than all the other kids in my school. I internalized the difference. I found refuge in the school library. Particularly the travel section. Learning about different countries was my obsession. I bought an atlas for fun and just studied every section. To this day ask me what the capital of Azerbaijan is and I can tell you (it’s Baku). Ask me what countries border Bhutan and I will tell you (It’s China and India). I didn’t do it because it had any use but to me. I didn’t do it for any reason but because I enjoyed it and it helped remind me that there was a world outside my life.
But somewhere along the line I got terrified. I was the girl who moved to NYC at 18, three months after high school graduation, never having been there, knowing not a soul there. And what happened? I got trafficked. I met many a bad man. I was prey, yes. But I remember my spirit of adventure and complete trust and faith - not in the universe. Complete trust in myself. Whatever came my way I knew it was no match for me. The pain here is this is the real me.
This year I turn 40, and I have learned along the way to be scared and to not trust myself. I learned I can't make good decisions. When I was 23 and I met and almost married an organized crime member, I barely left that situation from my life intact. I had to flee in the middle of the day with my Hindi books, some clothes, my passport and SSN card. I left the necklace my mom bought me for high school graduation and put his engagement ring on the table when I left, crying so hard I could barely see. It took me years before I could bring myself to throw away the house key my fiancé had made for me. It was pink and sparkly with the words princess on it. Redacted had gotten it made for me.
I wonder if my fear of the unknown is really my own inability to forgive myself? In a recent energy healing session with my new amazing reiki practitioner, she led me through an exercise:
I’m sitting with 3 year old Laura. The age I was when I began to be sexually abused and physically tortured. I have a red and white polka dot frilly dress on and my blond curls are wispy in the gentle afternoon wind. Little Laura loved animals and nature more than anything. It was one great thing her father taught her before he left her at 8. The beauty of the wild world. Little Laura and I are sitting on a pink blanket having a picnic and I have brought her favorite foods. Candy. Cake. Mac and cheese. Vegetarian lasagna. We are having a feast and she is loving looking at the animals.
“Little Laura, I know you have been hurt. I know lots of adults have hurt you, but I’m not going to let that happen anymore. What do you need to feel safe with me?”
She looks at the blanket beneath her tiny fat feet for a minute, then looks up with a smile and points at me
“You!” She giggles and shows a toothless smile where her eyes crinkle.
What do you need me to do?
“You listen now,” she says, not even bothering to make it a question.
That’s the thing. There were always warning signs. Always red flags I ignored because I wanted to be loved more than I cared about being alive. How do we as trauma survivors forgive ourselves? I don’t know that I have a blanket answer for that. Trauma is a ball rolling down a hill that gains more and more speed over time until it’s almost totally unstoppable. It’s a runaway train. An F5 tornado, a level 8 earthquake. The fact that we survive is a miracle at all. And still the guilt I have… why didn’t I listen to myself? I may not have always known on an intellectual level something was wrong, but certainly my body was screaming at me. Only thing is, we trauma survivors learn to cut our own heads off from our bodies at an early age. And that is hard to undo, and even further, I get sick of feeling like my whole life is undoing the shit other people chose to do to me. And so I want to live and not just exist within reaction to my surroundings. I do. I do. I want out of my trauma. But I want out of this struggle within a straightjacket of my trauma. And I guess to get one I have to go through the other.
My energy healer led me through another exercise:
“Okay, shut your eyes and drop down from your headspace into your body ….
Tell me what you feel in your body?”
“I feel tense and kind of sick in my stomach area.”
“That’s your solar plexus. Your power center. Okay, let’s do something…. I want you to imagine you are in a safe place with your Little Laura in your power center together. And you can decorate it however you want. Anything Little Laura wants she can have in her power center. Go ahead and shout out what she wants to have with her…”
She-Ra!
An elephant!
Six elephants!
A cake that is pink and white with diamonds and goes on forever!
A sparkly wand!
A sparkly sword!
Travel books!
Bollywood movies and music!
Succulent plants in ceramic pots!
Seventeen jaguars!
Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings!
A Mad Hatters tea party!
The White Rabbit!
Hindi books!
Buffy the vampire slayer!
A castle, mote and crocodiles!
David Lynch movies!
Cherry pie and black coffee!
Pretty journals with dogs on them and good pens!
A tiara!
Expensive matcha tea!
Cleopatra!
Hatshepsut!
Joan of Arc!
Mac and cheese!
Says my reiki healer, “this power center is available to you to go to or pull from or decorate anytime you want and this is where Little Laura lives.”
I started crying so bad I shook. I was always so powerful. Still am. And the crime of trauma and violence is that it steals this knowledge, and it steals the power center and leaves something rotten and queasy in its place.
The unknown is scary for me. Even when it is benign, like my trip to Tokyo. But for someone who has learned life can and does change on a dime, it’s a real fear. An even more real fear for me is who could I be without this fear of the unknown? That in and of itself is unknown, and scary. If I let go of this fear, who am I? Am I still me without the trauma?
Little Laura has something to say on the subject:
“You are even more you without that fear. The fear someone else made you believe. That no longer serves us.”
See you in Tokyo, friends.
-Love, L