We can only compartmentalize the things that hurt us for so long. When it spills out – and it always does – the result can look ugly and feel shameful. But it’s a necessary agony in order to heal.
A few days ago, I began having a panic attack. I couldn’t take a full breath, I was crying uncontrollably, pins and needles spread down my legs and lower back and I couldn’t eat (as I write this, I’ve just managed to eat a full breakfast for the first time in four days).
I hadn’t had a full blown panic attack in a long time and this one was debilitating. I knew what was causing it: I was meant to travel internationally to a place where I’d experienced a deeply traumatic event. Normally I was able to compartmentalize the memory, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t on this occasion.
Many years ago, when I was living in the UK, I was raped by a former boyfriend. When he broke up with me, he told me that there was no point continuing our relationship because we’d end up at different colleges anyway.
Ironically, we ended up at the same college.
A couple of years later, during my second week as a freshmen at my new school (where my ex-boyfriend and I would semi regularly run into each other for the next three years), I was raped by a man who lived two floors above me in my dorm when I was stone cold sober. (He’s now an officer in the British Navy, but that’s a story for another time.)
When these types of things happen to humans – rape, assault, verbal abuse, emotional manipulation – our bodies are remarkably resilient. It amazes me that we accomplish so much in the aftermath. But we don’t normally process the full darkness of those experiences until much later in life. It’s too much for our brains to pull apart in order to comprehend.
Unfortunately, unless we fully comprehend out past, I don’t believe we can ever heal or, at the very least, manage the ongoing effects of past trauma. There’s a difference between reflection and dwelling and I know after many years of suppressing my own traumatic memories that reflecting on them a healthy amount is the only way to heal from them.
But why bother “healing” anyway? It seems painful, right?
In my opinion, we have to heal from past trauma to undermine and overthrow the stories that trauma leaves us with. “I probably kinda liked it,” I told myself after I was raped for the second time. “I was probably not loud enough when I said ‘no’ three times and pushed his left hand away. I’ve never been an assertive person. I wasn’t being assertive enough.”
I told myself similar stories about the first time I was raped: “He was my boyfriend. It’s hard to call it rape because we were dating.” Or, and this is the worst story ever, “We had such good times together. Does it really matter that he raped me?”
The stories we tell ourselves – about ourselves – in the aftermath of trauma are sources of protection and sources of re-traumatization.
If someone rapes you, assaults you, harasses you, yells in your face, it’s okay to call it what it is. It is okay to admit that you got hurt, that the impacts of that trauma are manifesting and revealing themselves in mental and physical ways.
But it’s not okay to minimize the impact on your health. It’s not okay to try and change the past.
Trauma doesn’t go anywhere. It just knows how to hide. And when it reappears from the shadows and takes the wind out of you, let yourself double over and fall.
We’ll be here for you, this wee blog, and all the lovely readers who are learning how to get back up.
Love,
L. x