Tag: trauma

Post Trauma

I looked down at my right ankle. The sight was hardly recognizable.

Red welts now dotted the inside of it, migrating down toward the top of my foot. It was as if an army of mosquitoes had swooped in and gone to town.

These were the marks left by the surgeon. The entry points for the tools that repaired my damaged tendon and removed a bone spur.

The procedure was deemed a success. But as I stared at the welts on my ankle, with my protective boot sitting nearby, this hardly felt like victory.

I was told to give it time. It had only been two weeks since the operation, and I hadn’t even started physical therapy yet. As I worked through my rehab, the welts would retreat. Things would look more normal.

This all turned out to be true. But more normal still left a mark. Several, actually.

Even with the welts gone, the scars on my ankle would remain for life. And while the discomfort in that area was thoroughly minimized by the procedure, it would never fully dissipate. Phantom pain would sporadically appear.

Post trauma? There’s no such thing.

I am posting this article on the anniversary of the worst day of my life – September 11, 2001.

It was the day when terrorists hijacked passenger planes and used them to attack our nation. When they killed roughly 3,000 people and left millions of others wondering if they’d make it to tomorrow.

Nearly a quarter century has passed between then and now. And so much has changed.

The sites of the rubble have been cleared and rebuilt. The mastermind of the attack has met his demise. American troops have mostly withdrawn from the Middle East after waging a two-decade War on Terror abroad.

I too have changed over this time.

On September 11, 2001, I was in school in New York City, less than 10 miles from the World Trade Center. When I got word of the attack that felled those buildings, I thought my life was over. Rumors were already flying about an imminent, wide-scale invasion. I was certain they were true, and that the terrorists were coming for me next.

I survived that day, of course. And the next one. And the one after that.

Survival was the only way to describe that time. Because even if you hadn’t run from the avalanche of debris, it still felt close enough to shake you to your core.

Eventually, that feeling faded. I grew up and moved far away. I weathered financial crises, a pandemic, and a career change. I made friends who knew nothing of my September 11th experience.

I’m fundamentally different now than I how I was back then. I’m more seasoned. I’m more knowledgeable. And I believe that I’m a better person.

But every now and then, I tremble as an old memory comes to the fore. I still freeze at the mere mention of any terror attacks – domestic or international. And September 11th is the toughest day for me to get through each year.

Convention states that none of this should be happening. I should have gotten over my trauma long ago.

But convention is wrong.

Trees are timekeepers.

So, I was told as a child.

The phrase is based in science. Tree trunks expand outward over time, growing a fresh set of bark each year. This process creates a ring pattern on the trunk’s interior.

This means that when a tree is felled, one can ascertain its age by counting the trunk’s rings.

Such a pattern doesn’t hold true for humans. We morph as we grow, leaving few outward indications of what we once were. It takes something jarring, such as ankle surgery, to leave any kind of visible mark.

But what of the invisible ones? How do we account for them?

Traditionally, we haven’t. Bury it and move on has long been the American credo. It’s how we’ve persevered in a landscape full of danger and tragedy.

In recent decades, that has changed. By necessity as much as anything.

Many of us have found ourselves in situations too traumatic to bury, with disastrous results. This trauma-fueled carnage has been broadcast by the 24-hour news cycle, allowing no quarter for collective deniability.

We all know what’s going on, and what’s causing it.

At the same time, we’ve changed our relationship to mental health services. What was once the realm of One Flew Over the Coocoo’s Nest and Freud’s extravagant theories is now mainstream.

We’re quick to get help, from a variety of channels. And we’re willing to talk proudly about the help we’re getting.

The upshot of all this is that our invisible marks are now out in the open. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is being accounted for, with the promise of healing the afflicted.

This is a positive change, no doubt. But also one that’s oversold.

For better is not back. And it never will be.

Some mornings, I’ll look down at the pockmarks on my ankle.

They’ve all faded now, to the point where they’re less notable.

But I still see them clearly. And I yearn to go back to the days when they weren’t there.

Sure, I was injured. Unable to run the turn on the track without feeling like a 2×4 was digging into my bones.

But I didn’t have this visible reminder of that ordeal then. And now, I always will.

I’ll admit that I’ve had similar thoughts about September 11th. If the attacks had never happened, how much better would life have been?

But such questions are foolhardy.

Time moves in but one direction. You can’t erase the marks it’s made.

Perhaps it’s time I let go of that fantasy. Perhaps it’s time we all did.

Yes, it’s time to face the music.

With time and with help, we can move forward from the trauma we endure. But we won’t be able to move fully past it. No matter how much we might desire to.

There is no post trauma. There is only a new equilibrium.

Our task is to make the most of it.

Things We’ve Lost

I got the call early in the morning some years ago.

It was a beautiful February day in Dallas, and I was at work. I stepped outside in the cool, crisp air to answer the phone, watching the sunlight illuminate the trees across the parking lot.

But the call did not match the resplendent mood of the morning. For my grandfather had passed away.

Now, this news was not exactly a surprise. My grandfather had just turned 89 years old, and his health had been deteriorating for weeks. He had also suffered a stroke several years prior — a stroke that took away his wit, his intellect and much of his personality.

With all this in mind, word of my grandfather’s passing seemed to more the tail-end of an epilogue than a stunning break with normalcy.

And so, I acted accordingly. I went back into the office, and walked over to the Human Resource manager’s office. I calmly explained what had happened. Then, I requested bereavement leave, asking to keep the reason for my impending absence secret from the rest of the company.

That bit of bureaucracy handled, I returned to my desk and got back to work.

Several days later, I sat at a gate at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, waiting to board a flight headed halfway across the country.

All around me, there were business professionals returning home from on-site meetings and conferences. This was nothing out of the ordinary for a midweek flight — those generally tend to be business-heavy, and Dallas is a corporate hub. Yet, I felt strangely out of place among these professionals, knowing that I’d abandoned my job responsibilities for the rest of the week.

As I boarded the flight, I reminded myself that I was also on a business trip. Only the business I had to attend to was the matter of saying goodbye.

The next morning, I stood at a hilly gravesite about 90 minutes north of New York City. Dressed in a suit and an overcoat, I delivered my grandfather’s eulogy. Three carefully crafted pages meant to reflect the life of someone who meant so much to me.

After I’d finished, the rest of my family shared assorted tidbits about my grandfather — stories he’d told, and stories he’d lived. After we’d finished, we lowered the urn holding his ashes into the ground and watched as the cemetery workers covered it with dirt.

By then, we could no longer tolerate the 25 degree conditions. We retreated to the car, and headed to a nearby town to eat lunch.

And with the car in motion, I put the process of saying goodbye behind me.

My handling of my grandfather’s passing flew in the face of convention. In a time of grief and mourning, I was calculated and reserved.

There was no need for me to make a big deal out of this event, I thought. Death comes to all of us eventually, and my grandfather had been blessed with a long and fulfilling life. I had no reason to feel sorry for myself, or for others to feel sorry for me. Better to focus on the positives, and then to move on.

This approach led to some uncomfortable moments. My family seemed irked that I was so emotionally detached from the moment at hand. And when my co-workers eventually learned why I’d disappeared for close to a week, they felt awkward addressing it.

Even some friends of mine — friends who had met my grandfather and were fond of him — didn’t learn of his passing for months. And when they did, it was only because they happened to ask. I would never have brought it up on my own.

Looking back, I’m not proud of any of this. It’s clear I didn’t handle my grandfather’s passing all that well.

But I’m not too hard on myself about it. For my blunders are practically par for the course.

Many of us struggle to deal with loss.

Whenever we encounter the end of a life, a relationship or a job, we try not to talk about it. We swallow our emotions and move on.

It’s unclear where this tradition of silence came from. Perhaps our nation’s rugged frontier roots spawned it. Or our omnipresent machismo.

Regardless, we handle loss like a hot potato. It’s the object we try not to touch. It’s the elephant in the room that is never addressed.

And now, in the wake of a pandemic that’s upended everything, we’re returning to these well-worn paths of avoidance.

Life looks markedly different than it did mere months ago. That much should be clear. The threat of a lethal virus has forced us to change the way we work, socialize and care for ourselves. Many traditions we’ve long taken for granted have gone on hiatus.

Yet, we’ve done our best not to dwell on any of this. After all, we’re still in survival mode. Best to put our blinders on and consider what lies ahead. At least that’s how the prevailing thinking goes.

In a vacuum, this strategy seems rational. But I’m not sure it’s the right approach for this moment.

No matter how loathe we are to admit it, we have all lost something recently.

Yes, some of us have sustained more significant losses than others. A loved one, maybe. Or a job. But no one has been untouched by the ongoing pandemic — or the ensuing recession.

We’ve all lost something — even if that something was as simple as the ability to go out on the town.

Some of what we’ve lost will return someday. The more trivial things, mostly. But even when they come back, our cavalier attitude won’t accompany them. Once burned, twice shy.

There is precedent here. It’s been decades since the 9/11 attacks, and yet entering an important building still gives us pause. We find the security protocols both reassuring and unnerving.

The events of that one fateful day have left an indelible mark on us. And this tragedy — which has lasted for months — will surely leave its scars as well.

But while old patterns are sure to repeat themselves, we’re far less likely to address them this time around.

For there are no images of burning buildings. No towers of rubble demanding our attention. The trauma is taking place out of sight — in homes, in hospital corridors and in our own minds.

It’s all too easy to do what we so often do when facing a loss. To do what I did after my grandfather passed.

To hide from it all. To stow our emotions away. To race to move on.

But let’s make this time different.

Instead of taking the easy road, let’s take the inconvenient path. The one that forces us to account for the shock we’ve endured. The one that embraces our own vulnerability.

This won’t be pretty, and it won’t be comfortable. But it will pay dividends down the line.

And in such volatile times, that’s a trade that we should readily make.

The things we’ve lost are significant. It’s time to stop hiding from that fact.