Trauma

I have been thinking about trauma a lot recently.

I have never thought of myself as a person who has experience trauma.  In fact, up until the past year or so, if you asked me if I ever thought I experienced trauma in my life, I would have answered quickly with a "no."  But that has changed.

This fact didn't even register with me as it was occurring, but back when I lived in southern California, I was going to therapy.  And it was helping.  A few short months before I moved, my therapist started doing EMDR therapy with me.  And it wasn't until I moved and had stopped going to therapy and had time to think (finally), that I then realised...EMDR therapy is usually performed on people who have experienced trauma in their lives.

I won't get into specifics, but my therapist and I focused on my junior high years.  Years that were, obviously, imperative to my growth both mentally and physically.  Things that happened that I had no control over left me with a lot of issues that I am only now uncovering.


The thing is, is that I can't talk to my family about this.  Because it involves them.  To a certain degree, at least.  My parents did the best they could; they did what they thought was good for me.  My siblings all have their own ideas and perspectives on how we were all raised, so what may have been a horrible experience for me, was a happy memory for them.  After all, perspective determines reality.

I don't even dare mention the possibility that I may have gone through trauma as I was transitioning from an adolescent to an adult.  The mindset(s) I walk away from with my family is that if I talk about something too much, I use it as a crutch.  Or it's just the influence of "the world" that is making me think I experienced trauma; not that I actually experienced trauma.

But that's the thing...who I am...who are they...to tell my brain any differently?

You see, I struggle with this.
Because the signs are there.  The things I feel now.  The way I handle life.  All the repercussions of how I was raised/treated as a child.  The fact that my therapist felt the necessity to walk me through that kind of therapy in order to help me walk through trauma I lived through but had no idea I lived through it.

If I mention it to anyone in my [immediate] family, they will most likely think I'm exaggerating or making it out worse than it actually was (again, from their perspective, maybe it wasn't), but...it's there, right?  I am now dealing with things that I had no control over when I was a child, and it has majorly fucked me over, despite my parents doing what they thought was best.


And I cannot bring this up to my parents.  I don't want to say "hey, you did this because you thought it was the right approach, but it fucked my brain up and you actually traumatized me."  That would wound them beyond repair.


How ironic.
That for the entirety of our lives, we are still the children of our parents, and even in our adult years they do their best to shield and protect us.  And yet, as we continue to age and live as adults, we - in turn - try to protect and shield them.

(Yet another topic for another time.)



And then...
An incident happens.
One you can't really tell people about.

But you felt so utterly alone, so completely abandoned, yet you know what you saw, and the results come back normal, but you know what you saw.  And you keep thinking about it and thinking about it and wished you weren't alone so someone else could have seen what you saw with your own eyes, and from that point forward you try to convince yourself you aren't crazy and you know what you saw.

But you can't talk about it.
You can't process it, other than thinking about it over and over and over.
And you question if that incident caused you to feel trauma to a certain extent.
And then feel crazy, because how dare you think you experienced trauma, you're probably just playing the victim and wanting attention and it was all in your mind anyway.

...right?


I...
I don't know.
I feel like there was trauma, but who am I to say?
I know it definitely affected my mental health.  And my attitude.  I know this, because it affected my relationship.

Feeling so completely alone and knowing that soon I will have absolutely no one to turn to if that happens again; that this time, at least - even if it was delayed - I had someone come to help me.  But next time?

There will be no one.


Who knew that even if you have someone in your life, that you could still feel so completely and helplessly alone.