What trauma has taught me about surviving a pandemic
WOUNDEDBOYSHEROICMEN·THURSDAY, 16 APRIL 2020·3 MINUTES3 reads
I find myself asking myself these days, What does it take to survive a pandemic? Waiting mostly, and if nothing kills you and nothing hurts you, you make it out alive. In a way that you don't have to do anything to heal a cut, just let time pass.
So in this upside-down topsy turvy world that we are lying in at the moment, I let time happen to me, slowly letting it wash over me like the ocean. My concentration is affected, I tend to read the same lines over and over again, my brain not registering the words that are set out in front of me. Sometimes, at night when the worst of my “fishes” swim past my eyes (a great friend of mines analogy!) I think about the universe and all of its dark secrets wrapped up in the shimmering diamonds in the sky. And just like that, it falls out of my brain like it never existed. The fog takes over again and those fishes return for another run.
I have always been good at waiting. Isolation is both a comfort and a curse. It reminds me so much of the enforced isolation that I experienced when I was sexually abused and tortured. So much I see and feel that are the same, sometimes the fear comes back to haunt me, dangling in front of my eyes. Then the depression sets in, of course I have better tools these days to deal with such events, but I find myself sometimes walking around like a zombie with images in my head. The rest of the world doesn't know and sometimes doesn't want to know. Outwardly I seem like any other member of my family, caring, passionate and attentive. But as the days go on, reminders are everywhere.
I have my autopilot switched on. I do what is necessary to survive. Its a mode that my mind is automatically used to. It wants to protect me from the fear. Its been 35 years since I was brutally raped and tortured, almost on a weekly or daily basis, or whatever suited my Father and yet I am only at the beginning of my journey.
I know that this journey is a marathon not a sprint. Its complex and draining. You question yourself on a daily basis. And you try to live your life.
I hated disclosing the assault to people originally. I was afraid of what people would think, particularly the men that I knew in my life. The shame, guilt, the anger, the frustration with myself and with others. Its played out both emotionally and physically. My body and brain are constantly tired.
I have lived this way for so long that I forget that it could have been different. That I deserved more then and that I deserve more now. We all deserve more.
Our lives are not going back to normal, as one way of being has been abruptly and unilaterally aborted, without our consent. Instead, we’re left with grief for the ten of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars evaporated and a future of promise that was wiped out of an entire generation. This represents the stark reality of survivors of sexual abuse. It’s something that we live with on a daily basis.
I survived being raped and tortured, I will live through this, I will get out of bed. To break up the days I will ride my bike around the lake, take my dogs for a walk up the mountain, I will play with my kids, I will eat meals and spend time with friends. I stick by the decisions that I have made. I stand by the person I was before the pandemic and I stand by the person I was as a child. We all need to do this.