Fall With Grace

I have a very fragmented memory when it comes to my childhood. I remember very specific scenes vividly, but if you asked me what happened before or after, I couldn’t tell you. If you asked me what my home was like, I couldn’t really tell you, I have only glimpses and partial answers. That’s how your brain works, it hides the things that are just too painful to process so that you can survive.

As I have grown older, more memories have popped up- at times welcomed and at others bitterly uninvited. That’s how trauma works, in bursts, in misunderstood reactions, in unspoken fears so deep you don’t even name them to yourself. Then one day, something happens. It could be a sound, a smell, a person, a sight. You have an inexplicable reaction to something that externally appears to be a rather benign stimulus. Sometimes there is an associated memory, and you conscientiously recall something and link it to the current stimuli. More often, you don’t. At least, that has been my experience.

I remember clearly the first time a flashback ever happened and it was identifiable as abnormal to me. The first little glimpse I had into understanding myself. I was in early recovery after unraveling into an endless bottle of liquor for years. I don’t remember how far in I was, but it seems like it was probably around three months. The pink cloud that so often comes with significant change was wearing thin, reality was settling about me. My own mind was calming, my heart softening. And that’s when it happened.

I was living in the treatment building. It was a different setup, where everyone had their own rooms, but not showers or kitchens. You did however get your own toilet and sink, a pretty big deal in the land of drug and alcohol housing. The apartment was a tiny single room occupancy unit, there was a small closet across from the sink, and next to the hanging clothes within the closet sat the toilet.

For those who may not know, coffee, as much and as often as possible, is the cornerstone of early recovery. As a result, I peed constantly. I had used my bathroom hundreds of times. When I arrived in treatment, I had a messenger bag and the clothes on my back. Over time and through charity, my little closet rack had filled, and by three months in, I had a full rack next to my toilet. I was in there doing my business, and a lightweight scarf had moved with the air conditioner starting up. It brushed my cheek and neck on my right-hand side. Something about that sensation at that moment made me collapse into tears.

Not just any tears either. The hyperventilating, snot everywhere, soul being ripped in two type of tears, and I had no idea why. I thought I was losing my damn mind. Why on earth did a scarf brushing me cause me to have a complete emotional collapse?

I talked with my counselor. She suggested it could be trauma related. I completely dismissed this; I didn’t have a flashback. There was nothing happening that reminded me of anything at all. If it had been PTSD, I would have had a sight or sound remind me of something bad that had happened and feel like the event was happening now. That was what I knew a flashback to be. It was clearly not a flashback, it caused no recall of anything, I had no idea why it happened. But I knew it wasn’t PTSD, and at twenty-three years old and three months sober, clearly, I was right.

That night, alone in my room, I went to the toilet and set. I looked at the scarf and tried to remember something. I tried to brush the scarf against my face in whatever way had triggered my reaction. If it happened once, it should happen again my logical brain demanded. It didn’t. As I sat there thinking, trying to remember something, the most unexpected memory came to me. It was my foster mom. Not any specific memory, just her. There was nothing about the scarf or the sensation that I could tie it to. I thought I had just gotten off track in trying to focus on the scarf and ended up thinking about Janice. I let my mind wander though, thinking of her. It had been years since I had lived with her, about seven.

I was thinking about that time in my life. Going into foster care. Later, coming out of foster care unexpectedly and heartbreakingly. Suddenly I was thinking of that day. I was required to go to therapy and it was my therapy day. I’m not sure why but Janice couldn’t bring me. Her daughter, Penny was going out with her friends, and they’d be coming to pick her up. The plan was that they would drop me off. It was not much different than any other day really, they’d given me rides before. Little did I know what was coming.

I walked into the familiar room, expecting to see my counselor, Shawn. I did see Shawn, at his desk like usual. Across from him sat my father. I had last seen my father at my brother’s baseball game about two months prior. When I saw him, he almost immediately said to me, “Jesus, are you getting fatter?” My foster mom did the right thing, she said the visit was over, and we drove away. I was a sobbing puddle in the seat next to her.

I was getting fatter. I think my weight had climbed to around 340 lbs at that point. I knew it. I hated it. But even more, I knew my father hated it and hated me for it. He’s voiced it loudly since I was eight years old. But he had never said it in front of people. It hurt so much more with an audience.

So that was the last time I had seen this man now abruptly in front of me. I panicked; I did not know what was going on but I felt trapped. I looked between the two men sitting there and saw that knowing look adults give to each other over the outcries of children who just don’t know better. I was told to sit down. I was informed that my time in foster care was ending, that Janice had packed my things and I would not return there that night.

My little sixteen-year-old heart was shattered. I had loved Janice. I had trusted in Janice’s love for me. After the day with my dad at the baseball game, she had picked me up and held me. She told me she loved me and I believed her. And I had not believed anyone had ever loved me.

But I wasn’t in her arms, and she didn’t want to love me anymore. It was more nuanced than that I know, but that is the only thing my young and aching self could take in- another person didn’t love me. I vaguely heard something about an upcoming surgery as being a reason.

Then they told me that my dad would allow me to return home, that he needed to have someone home in order to enroll in home care with hospice. He had lung cancer. He was trying to get a lung transplant, but the cancer had spread already. So it was terminal. Hospice required someone to be in the home 24/7, so I was offered that option. Or I could go to my mom’s. If I did not choose any of these, I could temporarily go to an emergency foster and then a group home, likely downstate.

I felt cornered. My biggest priority was to remain near my friends, so I had to choose between mom or dad. For a variety of reasons, I ended up choosing my dad. And that was how I left foster care. At least as I remember it. Trauma is a funny thing, it distorts things, but that is the way I recall it.

I hadn’t thought about that day in years. Maybe since right after it happened. From that time, my father’s illness progressed, I had officially dropped out of school, and my mind was filled with watching my father die. I don’t know that I ever thought about that day again. But I had carried it with me, clearly. Achingly, painfully buried like a splinter deep in your foot, too far in to work it’s way out, and far to painful to go in address. So you walk on it, until it worsens, until the pain is great enough that it outweighs the fear of action. Or you die. But one way or another, that splinter is coming to surface, it can only remain buried so long.

Trauma is like that. I had been in holding in so much pain from that day. Pain that I didn’t have capacity or tools or time to process. Once my dad died, then there was new pain. Turns out I couldn’t process that one either, then there was alcohol. Eventually, alcohol became it’s own brand of pain, until I was nothing more than a ball of pain floating deep in a pool of with reserve and tears.  

I still have no clue why that scarf provoked such a flashback and it would be many years before I believed it was a flashback, but I’ll save that story for another day. There was no scarf in my memory. No one in that memory brushed my face. But the pain that I felt on that scarf touching me was the same pain I felt when that memory flooded upon me.

I would not have imagined it back then, but those experiences that once traumatized me have also gifted me something. Someone recently asked what makes me so intense. I’ve heard that word before, but I never fully understood what people meant by it. Usually it’s framed as a criticism, one of the same my father used to throw at me. Too emotional. Too much. The world will eat you alive.

But this time, it wasn’t an insult. It was said as though it were a good thing. And I realized for the first time that someone could see me and like my intensity.

A few days or weeks later, with that idea still echoing, I went to work. I’m a PA. In a hospital. That day, I had a new patient, someone who was dying. Someone whose family needed support and guidance in that transition.

I walked into the room and met the patient; I met their loved ones. I pulled up a chair and sat with them, explaining what was happening and what would happen next. There was no awkwardness, no hesitation. There is never an elephant in the room with me. I don’t get nervous talking about pain, loss, or grief. I don’t pretend to have the right words. I am not afraid to sit in uncertainly and silence, because I have lived in them, repeatedly.

I sat with that family for an hour and grieved with them. I heard their stories. I shared their tears. I guided them through a moment that no one is ever ready for — because I have been there before. I know the pain of illness and of loss. My trauma gave me that. Processing it allowed me to use it.

I see now that trauma has made my heart bigger. It carved out space for me to fully feel — deeply, freely, and without shame. I know how to feel the feelings. I know how to laugh until I cry. I can cry until I laugh. I fall in love easily. I break easily. And I grow anyway. I’ve learned how to sit with discomfort, both my own and other people, without flinching. People call that intensity. But when you walk around with a heart that’s been made to feel, it’s simply who you are.

And it’s a gift. One I never could have learned any other way.