CHAPTER 1
Beginnings
My season in the sun has ended. The interesting thing about endings is that at some point, there must have been a beginning. Once begun, there can be gradual endings that gently occur over the passage of time; or there can be abrupt endings, as in kaput, bupkus, finiti, done. The camera shot fades to black and the movie is over. We are left to figure out the rest on our own. Whether gradual or abrupt, there are sometimes signs of forewarning, or at forewarnings worst, foreboding. With hindsight, people can go back and clearly identify a point that was the beginning of the end.
Even though there were perceptable signs of our societal beginning of the end, none of those events seemed like they would directly affect me personally. I observed believers and non believers on the topic of climate change. Each side spoke elequently about how climate change would or wouldn't influence our lives. There was also clear cut evidence that we were a nuclear world. Some of the world members played nice in the sandbox, and some did not. These are indeed large problems, yet I knew I was still OK. Even if one of these global events became our armegeddon, I personally felt I had all the resources I needed to not meet armegeddon kicking and screaming. If the asteroid hit, or the Earth returned to an ice age, or we were all obliterated by nukes, well for me that would just be that! I would merley show up. I would sit on the couch and read a good book, or perhaps I would stand at the edge of the shore waiting for the tidal wave to consume me and everything behind me. That type of sudden and cataclysmic end is completely unlike a world that seems to be slowly, but significantly, shifting into a state of darkness.
I was also becoming keenly aware of a different beginning of the end. The emotional and spiritual parts of the human climate were changing. As each year passed, people's spirits seemed to be getting more dim and dark. Once again though I still felt confident in my own emotional and spiritual stamina. I felt confident that I would navigate through these dark changes affected, but perhaps less affected than others. I point out the backdrop of the changing culture, because I think it is important to note that my immediate world did not go dark over time. My darkness was not a byproduct of the larger cultural darkness that was already brewing. There was no forewarning or foreboding. My sun fell suddenly. It fell as if there had been opaque theater curtains rolled up out of my sight, waiting for their cue to suddenly be released. When the cord was pulled, black velvet curtains cascaded down around me like a tube of dusty blackness across the stage of my world. As much as I tried to writhe away from the musty, choking blackness of the curtain, I could ultimately only admit there was no exit.
Certainly there had been those hints of a general societal darkness, before the stagehand unrolled my specific curtain. I am practical enough to know there will always be elements of darkness in an illuminated world. Before my specific curtain fell, my work in trauma had provided me with a keen awareness that we, as a culture, were experiencing a season of darkness. The season of darkness was creeping into the fabric of our day-to-day living. First the darkness happened to individuals. The individual darkness left unresolved, sprang from the individual to others. In the beginning it remained within a micro system; yet as each of the afflicted began to become complacent, and accept the darkness as the way it is, it began to go viral. Not only had clusters of affected people accepted it, they in turn often orchestrated intentional or unintentional flash mobs. Everyone they could reach would arrange to meet and learn to dance the same dance of trauma and darkness. The symptoms of trauma exposure began to spread like a high-load contagion. Symptoms jumped from person to person, person to community, community to community, and community to culture. By the time my curtain dropped, I had already begun to fear that this season of darkness was becoming the new culture of the world.
I worked in this world and had come to know it intimately. Yet within all my professional wanderings through darkness, I still believed I carried some sort of lantern that kept me safe. I would however be remiss to say that I was completely unaffected by this societal darkness.
Before my season of darkness, I believed things were fixable; and for the most part the world was a safe place. Without being naïve I remained hopeful that the things I saw as indicators of societal darkness could be ameliorated in some way. After all, I was a Social Worker, specifically a trauma therapist. Personally and professionally I possessed skills that allowed me to help people navigate through emotional perfect storms.
I continued to observe cultural changes in mindset and heartset. I intrinsically knew these changes, if allowed to continue over time, would result in the deterioration of many things I held sacred. Basic concepts like treating others the way you want to be treated and good overpowering evil, could potentially become obsolete. Things like hope, resiliency, decency, compassion, acceptance and empathy were beginning to feel watered down. I had even begun wondering if my own attempt to hold onto and advocate for those beliefs, was beginning to make me obsolete. It was frightening to think that my age of the dinosaur obsolescence would become more obvious, more public, than my stubborn insistance on holding onto the land line in our house, or the fact that my children were still required to hand write thank you cards. The message was becoming, "there are better, shorter, and simpler ways to do things." Problematically for me, some of those ways were to not do them at all. Clearly there were larger and smaller scale indicators of this impending darkness, yet they were indicators all the same.
Looking back, I began to more personally feel the intensity of the societal darkness, in early December of 2007. I remember saying to myself, "man that was an interesting week!" Perhaps for me, that week was the staging for the beginning of the end; it was the warning of, "Alas, the season she is a changing"!
Let me tell you about that week, because I can remember it vividly.
December 03 - December 07, 2007
Early in the week I did a full day presentation on the impact of trauma exposure on children. I speak nationally on this topic. I usually start slowing down my speaking schedule around the end of the year holidays. This past Tuesday was the last full day presentation of my speaking season.
I tend to try and put a lot of imagery into my presentations. The imagery helps the audience walk away with concrete images. Concrete images allow them to fully embrace the great and grave importance of this topic. My hope is if they can embrace that reality, then they might want to be an advocate or healer within the trauma community. "What will they be healing", you ask? They will be healing the darkness that lives in the souls of children who suffer effects of trauma exposure. Keep in mind, one day those very same children will become the adults and leaders of our world.
Perhaps because I had a particularly busy speaking schedule this season; or perhaps because the imagery I chose to use in this final workshop was so poignantly graphic; or because of other influences or factors going on in my life, I couldn't sleep the night after my last presentation.
For the first time in a long while, I couldn't sleep a wink. At times during the night, I entered a sort of almost sleep. It felt like I was out of it enough that it prevented me from standing up or getting out of bed; but my mind was as active and awake as it is in broad daylight. In this sort of non-restful paralysis, I played and replayed the events of the day. I remembered the trauma references I had used. I remembered the cases I referenced with minute detail. My thoughts around these cases was as if I still had the cases open and active on my caseload. I work a great deal with children impacted by the trauma and horror of domestic violence. In my half asleep state, I was formulating responses to children who asked, "Why did Daddy hurt Mommy?" "Where does Mommy go when she is dead?" "Will Santa bring Mommy home from heaven for Christmas this year?"
There came a point during my visitations from the children of the night, when my dreams exploded into an actual surreal dream convention. In attendance in my dreams were not only people I have treated, but they were co-mingled with people I have loved, people from my past, and even people I had yet to meet.
One dream guest in particular was a fighter, a boxer. I had seen this very boxer in a professional bout some 43 years ago. I was just a child when I saw him. I had gone to the boxing event with my Dad. In my dream, the boxer leaned over the side of the ropes and stared at me. There was something about the way he stared at me. I clearly knew and understood, "he really can't see me at all." His eyes were open and they seemed to be directly fixated on me, but there was an observable vacancy in his eyes. Nothing was really registering for him.
I actually paused during my dream and remembered that disconnected look. I remembered it really was the way he looked at me when I was the kid in the audience.
In the real life part, so many years ago, the ring referee wheeled him around from the ropes and started shouting at him and counting numbers. It took until well after we had left the arena for my Dad to be able to explain what "won by a TKO" meant. In essence, this is what he told me:
Technical Knock Out (T.K.O.): Category: Boxing A Knockout, is a winning criterion in boxing. It is achieved when one participant is unable to rise from the canvas within a specified period of time, a ten count; or when one participant loses consciousness, for any duration of time. In boxing, a referee can also declare a technical knockout (t.k.o.) when a participant is sufficiently injured, unbalanced, or confused so that they are unable to continue the fight. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Category: Boxing
That is exactly what happened that night. The boxer, who stared at me with turned off eyes, had lost the fight to the other guy because he was too dazed and confused to continue. My boxer lost the match by a TKO.
My sleepless night continued to be one tumultuous event after another, until ultimately the alarm went off at its usual time. I had long before given up on sleep and was actually already up. I scooted back into the bedroom so the alarm didn't wake my still peacefully resting husband. I had been up pre-alarm by almost two hours. I was tired, but I'd been tired before. I knew I'd survive. I knew I would make it through the day, and I already looked forward to when I got home, hopefully early. I planned to come home and have time to wind down, rest, relax and ultimately sleep. I had already planned to go to bed early.
I stepped into the garage as my brain silently shouted, "Wow, 19 degrees Fahrenheit!" It was much colder than when I had pulled into the garage the night before. I was grateful for my travel mug of Leaf N' Bean, Blueberry Cobbler coffee. I threw my two briefcases into the car and I headed off to the job I love. Please keep in mind, I really do. I genuinely love my job!
I am the clinical director of a trauma program. I design groups, co-create treatment plans, and supervise a staff of dedicated, skilled, hard working, and compassionate women. I have been blessed to have a job that feeds my mind, heart and pocketbook. Even though this job is sometimes wrapped in tragedy and sorrow, I can't imagine doing anything I would prefer more than this. I do not embellish when I once again say, "I love it!"
Before I had even pulled out of the garage it had become alarmingly clear that my radio/CD player was not working. It had worked the night before when I pulled in. The challenge of not being able to figure out what was wrong with it was secondary to the dismay of not having it operational.
I stared at the voiceless CD player and began to learn things about myself. I discovered that I am a person of ritual. I am a person that uses rituals to keep myself at, or restore myself to, a sense of well-being. After a tough case, speaking, or a medical examiner review, I will choose a musical selection that can potentially restore me to equilibrium. Music is powerful, and the CD's in my car encompass everything from Janis Joplin belting out encouragement for tyranny; to Glenn Miller coaxing the memory of my parents dancing in the grand ballroom of the now long gone, Hotel Buffalo. There are CD's by Supertramp, Michael Crawford, Shania Twain, Mr. Louis Armstrong (as my mother liked to call him), Enigma, Avril Lavigne, Phoebe Snow (On A Train Of The Same Name), to U2 etc. There is no rhyme or reason to them, there is no particular genre. The wide range of music covers and elicits the wide range of emotions I might feel on any given day. There is no opera! I have never reaped solace from opera. I don't know why. As I write this I find it quite interesting, considering that opera is one of the most emotional forms of music there is. "Hmm, the self learning continues."
I give you this much detail, because it was truly that much mental detail I put myself through when I discovered the car CD system would not work. After my sleepless night, I had immediately realized, "I truly need some particular type of music to listen to on the way in to work." I was thinking about the variety of CD's I could have picked to fit the demand, all to no avail. I heard myself thinking, "The CD player will not sing", and with that random thought I immediately shifted and began to think about my all time favorite book, Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird. The words, "It's a sin to kill a Mockingbird, Scout", began echoing in my over taxed brain. My brain, both through the night and now, was operating like a pinball machine.
As each random thought pinged into the next random thought, it occurred to me, "Good God, I am already losing my mind, and I'm not even off our street. Talk about being dependant on a radio!"
I was now on the highway and realized that my mind continued to ping from random thought to random thought. First I would ruminate about what CD I would have picked; then I had a fleeting, intermittent memory flash of the amateur boxer. I could imagine him staring at me, leaning heavily on the ropes. I kept thinking about the boxer and the thoughts I had had about him. I remember as a child thinking, "He doesn't look hurt, but he sure does act hurt!" I desperately wanted to make sense of that random thought and figure out what it had to do with my morning. I remember thinking to myself, "There must be some reason that I keep thinking of this boxer." I didn't have time to finish this analysis because I had begun to observe a silver Cadillac SUV barreling down the entrance ramp to my right.
In my mind I knew the SUV was going too fast. I also knew the vehicle would probably arrive at the place where the ramp met the highway, about the same time I would get there. There now came a point of decision. I know now the decision would have been much more healthfully made, if Mr. Louis Armstrong had come through my CD player and convinced me, "It's a Wonderful World." Alas he had not! Had I successfully been in the wonderful world mindset I would have eased over to the left and allowed this poor fellow, who was obviously running late, to just merge. Since I was not in my or Louis's, "Wonderful World", I began to think. Thinking means I had moved from a place of empathy, up into my head. I began to resort to logic! I rapidly but logically concluded, "I had just gotten on the highway one entrance ramp back. Like all reasonable people I had to wait until the three or four cars that were in the right lane passed by until I could safely merge onto the highway behind them. It would have been unreasonable to have tried to merge in between car three and car four, just because that was when the almighty I had arrived there." Through this logical thought process, I had now decided that the speeding Cadillac SUV should do the same. I quickly learned that he did not agree with my silent analysis of the situation. His I analysis for himself, did not match my I analysis for him.
