Day 207

It was busy at the museum and by 1 PM I was tired and did not go to Tracy. Maybe tomorrow as my neck still aches. I slept well and had memories of group experiences. It was a pleasant reverie. This morning I will get busy with my housework. The floors need attention after a couple of wet days. It’s Tea and Stories day. Laurie and Delia won’t be here and four is still a group. I’m feeling strong and ready for domestic chores.

Way back when my car was young, I went to a workshop with my women’s group called Art as Medicine. It was facilitated by Bill Kucha, an artist and shaman. It was a tight group with trust and deep sharing. As part of the process, we each picked out a part of our mutual painting as personally meaningful. I found a castle and talked about it. One of my friends said, “It has no doors or windows. How do you get out?” My reply,” It’s a safe place. Nobody can get in.” Bill asked me how long I had needed a safe place. A long time was my answer. One of the women said she was sorry that she hadn’t noticed my withdrawal as I was good at faking my social participation.

Later, at home, I painted the castle and kept it where I could see it. It triggered a need to get out of the substantial walls I had built. I had a phone number for a therapist in Arcata and connected to Marilyn Fox. In our first session, I described my flat line emotional range and how I manufactured social energy. She called my condition unresolved grief. Grief comes from loss, regret, guilt, disappointment, errors in judgement, mistakes, all the human ways we break trust with ourselves. If I refused to feel pain, then I couldn’t feel joy either. Little by little over time I lost emotional range. Every time I said “Oh well” and moved on, I lost more emotional choice. Marilyn gave me tools to sort out and unpack the past and how to notice quickly if I was about to fall into the emotional abyss again. And I went back to my painting and added windows, doors, and a bridge across the moat.

What does this have to do with our prompt? Write about a time when everything changed in the blink of an eye. August 5^th, at 2;30 PM at the corner of Ninth and H streets when I was walking home from the post office, I was an inch from dying under a blue truck. It brushed my arm as I sprinted.  I got to the stop sign post by magic, heart beating hard and short of breath. The woman driving the truck parked about a half block away and yelled out her window, “I’m sorry.”

My life changed in that split second. I have always enjoyed walking. It’s why I bought my house so I could walk to work and walk to town. Now I no longer feel confident that I was safe in the crosswalk even with my years of experience as a pedestrian. Now I feel vulnerable and fragile. I wait for signals from drivers and I know the woman did not have her turn signal light on. I think she was on her phone. The result of the incident is flashbacks of the vehicle’s grill right at eye level in front of me. When I grabbed onto the post I held myself up while my knees wanted to give way but I didn’t want the drama of collapsing on the sidewalk. I wobbled home and sat for an hour waiting for my heart and breath to resume normal rhythms.

What tools do I have for clearing this experience? Desensitizing. So, the next day, I walked across the intersection several times. Felt okay. See, it’s over already. I’m alive and the incident is history. Wait, Not so fast. Even with several trips across the intersection, the deep shock was just beginning to wear off and the next phase was getting hold of my well-being. A few days later as I was killing a shrub in the front yard, my neighbor, John Wood, came along and asked if I was doing okay with the veh vs me experience. Well, I said, if you count sudden flare ups of anger, fuzzy brain, light to no sleep, inability to focus etc.as okay, then I guess I am. Well, he said you have checked all the boxes for PTSD. John is a vet with the condition and has gone to trainings at the VA to start groups here. Our conversation helped. Later, I walked down H st. and saw an old friend, Linda Boatman. She asked too. I told her my status. She grabbed my arm and we walked across the street together. That helped too. Allowing support from others who understand are part of the tool kit.

Tell the story. I wrote and posted the incident on facebook. Telling the story also takes the emotional charge from it. The post response was supportive and I felt the care from my friends. Nearly everyone has had a traumatic happening. Hearing from others has helped too.

The tool kit includes writing. I’m doing that now. By the time the trauma is word ripe, it’s ready to move into history. By writing and sharing I am losing the flashbacks of the grill right at eye level. I used my survival instinct to live and that’s what matters. I will be mindful of my mental state as I know processes are spiral and a bit could come back and bite me again.

I do not want to build any thick walled fortresses