Overly Traumatic

“In my biology class, we’d talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don’t, trees do, plastic doesn’t. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn’t settle; fire doesn’t tolerate; fire doesn’t ‘get by.’
Fire does.
Fire is.”

–Dan Wells, I Am Not A Serial Killer

I was driving home from work today and as I turned into my driveway, I caught a whiff of smoke. Suddenly it was January 2014. The sky was black with night, the moon hidden and my hands were glued in a death grip to my steering wheel as I pulled into the deli market down the street from my apartment. It was one of the coldest nights of the winter, but I didn’t notice the chill biting my skin as I turned toward my road, my sight obstructed by a fog of red flashing lights and smoke.

I think I jogged. I don’t remember getting from my car to the other side of the road. I remember navigating blindly through a crowd of people I didn’t recognize, through a shield of red mist, past people whispering and pointing. I remember hearing a young girl ask her mother “Are the people who live there homeless now? Where will they go?”

I needed to know the answers. I walked toward the building, the white siding stained black with smoke, watching firefighters investigate the charred remains of our downstairs neighbor’s apartment, observing the flashes of headlamps in my own apartment. I could see straight through her apartment to the backyard, it was completely black. They piled her possessions into our driveway. They were unidentifiable.

“There was a grease fire.”

“It spread so fast.”

“We have your cats.”

“Do you have a place to stay tonight? Should we call the Red Cross?”

“I made a mistake and now everything’s just gone.”

When I think back now, I can barely remember what happened, but that scent of smoke as I drove was as effective as a perfectly functioning time machine to transport me back to the moment when I stood outside of my old apartment waiting for the answers to the little girl’s questions, waiting to find my boyfriend among all the people, waiting to know if my cats were alive, waiting to know if I had anything left.

I was suddenly homeless, but my boyfriend and my cats were alive. Later that night we were allowed into the apartment to survey the damage. Most of our stuff survived. Most of our stuff was permanently stained with smoke. We had one week to move it all out.

My neighbor was nowhere near as fortunate. She lost her cat and everything she owned. Even her car was temporarily taken out of use by the fire. It had no mercy at all. Her boyfriend and she quickly abandoned any effort to fight the fire. It was useless, the fire was too powerful, it was wild and free and ready to take whatever it could.

I wasn’t there to see the fire, though someone showed me a video that a firefighter put on Facebook. For the most part, the fire was mostly a mild inconvenience for us: forcing us to move from our first home, an apartment we loved, within a week of the fire in the coldest part of the year. Yet, even over a year and a half later, triggers still bring me back to that day.

My phone vibrates on the counter and suddenly I’m talking to my now-fiancé as he explains “There was a fire, I’m okay and [our neighbor’s] okay. I couldn’t get the cats out, but I tried to keep them in the room farthest away from the fire. But it was bad.”

I see the red flashing lights and I’m wandering down an icy street in January, searching for someone familiar in a sea of spectators. I catch the scent of smoke and I’m standing outside the old apartment building waiting to know if I’m homeless, if my cats are alive, and wondering if I even have a place to go. I’m packing up my things, the windows are open despite the -20˚F chill, gently and pointlessly trying to wipe the brown stains off of photos and papers. I touch the blackened keys of the piano that my fiancé got me for Christmas that year and I’m desperately scrubbing them, while blinking away my tears.

Some people tell me I have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, but it makes me feel ashamed. I didn’t lose anything. I was the lucky one.

A medical professional who evaluated me suggested the fire may have something to do with my chronic pain. The fire occurred about two months before my pain started, on a week where I said I was ready to move on and leave it all behind. Is the pain a manifestation of the guilt I feel from that night? Maybe, in a way, I’m still standing outside of my old home waiting for answers in the cold, hoping that it never really happened at all. But if I never move from that spot, I will never have any answers at all.

I lost my first home to a fire. Maybe I didn’t lose my cats and I didn’t lose any objects, but I lost my peace of mind and I lost the place where I felt comfortable and safe. I lost a place that I loved. Maybe I don’t have to feel ashamed and guilty that I mourn that loss. Maybe I can’t move on until I do.

Regardless, I am still a better person today than I was yesterday.

Secrets of the Heart

“Teccam explains there are two types of secrets. There are secrets of the mouth and secrets of the heart.

Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. There secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you’re barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free.

Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become.

Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them.”

–Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

I am sitting in the orthopedic surgeon’s office, waiting for him to arrive. My pain cannot be defined as chronic yet, it has “only” been two and a half months. I grasp my hip. I’m mildly aware that sitting for too long exacerbates the pain, but if I pace, I might appear anxious. I already know the MRI must be negative. If they had found anything they would have called. I hope anyway for answers, for a diagnosis, for a direction to head.

“There is nothing wrong with you.”

Maybe for most this would be positive. If it was a routine check-up, I would want to hear nothing else. However, this is not normal. Something is wrong. My pain is constant. It isn’t relieved by rest or Advil or meditation or exercise or any number of things I tried before admitting that the pain was out of my hands. Trying to remain calm I ask him what I should do.

“Return to your normal activities. There is nothing wrong with you.”

I had. I tried running through the pain. I tried yoga and stretches. I tried not to be “weak”. I tried simply ignoring it. I tell him something is wrong, my pain is constant.

“Well, physically there is nothing wrong with you.”

I do not know if I imagined the emphasis on physically. I felt the sting of the subtle accusation: your pain is not real, your pain is imagined, your pain is caused by your negative psychological state.

When I relayed the results to friends, I felt like they believed the diagnosis too. I was just complaining or looking for attention. I did everything I could to look like I wasn’t in pain for fear of losing my job (where I coincidentally study pain). I didn’t look like I was in pain. Soon, I started to believe it too.

I caused my own pain. If I was happier, if I could let go of my stress, maybe it would go away. I immersed myself in hobbies, trying to find my “cure”. I gave them up one by one and soon I had nothing left but the pain.

There wasn’t any particular day I woke up and announced to myself I was a chronic pain patient. In fact, the months rolled by and suddenly I had been living more than six months with my pain. For the most part my pain was moderate, always rating between four and six. Every so often, I would have what’s called a “flare-up”, where my pain jumped up to an eight.

I could never let anyone know or see. The pain wasn’t real, no one believed me. When I wasn’t paying attention all the walls went up and I was looking through a window at everyone I loved and I was alone. Everyone was there, but I was alone.

---

Shortly before my freshmen year of high school, I met my first love. My mother sent me away for part of the summer. Despite my docility, she believed I would become rebellious in high school and she wanted to send me to a boarding school. She promised if I was good and worked hard during the last part of the summer, I could stay with the family. Though I can never be defined as “rebellious”, especially in high school, I believe this “deal” sparked what little defiance I had at the time.

I met him when I “got lost” while hiking. I was heading up the trail, I looked up at him, our eyes met briefly and I smiled politely before passing by him. I didn’t get more than a few feet before his hand grasped my shoulder and he asked me to wait. He asked me why I had smiled at him. I laughed and told him that everyone deserves a smile.

He walked with me to the top and we talked for a long while. Over the next few weeks we would sneak out to meet each other. He was a few years older, his father was abusive and both his parents were alcoholics. He ran away from home and was working to save money for college. He smoked, but he was trying to quit. “I wish I never started.”

In a world where we felt rejected by the people who, by society’s standards, should love us move than anyone, found love in each other. I was only fourteen and I know many would dismiss our love as teenage hormones and lust, but, to this day, I really believe that I loved him.

I left to go work for my mother, but we sent each other handwritten letters which I’ve kept to this day. We talked about our daily lives, our dreams of me moving there to continue school, how we would go to college and then get married and live happily ever after. My mother decided to keep me because I worked so hard. At the time I was glad, but I never got the affection I wanted from her and even twelve years later, I can’t help but think how things might have been if I had left. It’s a worthless and painful exercise, but one I participate in nonetheless.

We kept writing to each other until his last letter to me he told me about how his father had killed his sister’s dog and she subsequently took her own life. I wrote back with my sympathies, explaining how I wish I could be there for him and how horrible the situation was. Even now, I don’t know how to write that letter. I did the best I could as a fourteen year old who had never experienced such a loss, but he never wrote back. To this day, I don’t even know if he ever received it.

The day of his sister’s funeral, his best friend caught him drinking. A lot. I didn’t know at the time that he was an alcoholic. Having grown up in a household where drinking was so pervasive, he picked up the habit young and it controlled his life. Until he met a girl who told him that everyone deserves a smile.

I almost wish I had said something more potent, however stupid that sounds. In a fictitious story, I would have. Something that really resonated. Something that would really stop someone from jumping off a cliff, if they were tempted to do so, as he was that day. Apparently what I said had been good enough. Or maybe it hadn’t been the words, maybe he just needed to know that someone out there would show him any sort of kindness.

The sort of kindness that was better than the numbing effects of alcohol. The sort of kindness that was worth trying to regain control of his life. I think he just needed someone to hear his story. He needed someone to let him know he didn’t deserve to be constantly inflicted with pain just for existing. He needed someone to be there.

His friend, who had become a mutual friend, caught him drinking and, knowing that he had been an alcoholic and had quit, lambasted him for giving up at his sister’s funeral. Ashamed and drunk, he left the funeral and drove to the mountain where we had met and jumped as he intended to do six months before.

Most of this I learned from his diary and the note he left behind. I can’t help but wish I had been there. I can never know if I would have stopped him or if our relationship would have lasted, but I can’t help but feel like I belonged there, comforting him after the loss of his sister.

I was depressed when I learned what had happened. I was guilty and I felt like it had been my fault. I couldn’t tell my parents, I had gone against their wishes. I never told my friends about this boy and it didn’t seem right to now. Who would even believe a timid girl such as I had a boyfriend in a different state? I felt the blame from our mutual friends. We were all in shock and sad and the ties between us seemed permanently severed. I went about my daily routine, but everything was different.

I forced the secret down into my heart and I was never that timid, smiling fourteen year old girl again.

---

The weight of the burdens we hold, the secrets of our hearts, can crush us if we let them. No matter how deep we push them, they are ever present, waiting to break free.

I’ve held my secret of the heart closely, allowing it free a few times in moments of vulnerability, moments where I choose to write, such as this one. Sometimes in the months of pain, the secret pushed against the walls, threatening to come alive, and I wondered if the secret caused my pain. The guilt, the sadness, the shock bubbled below the surface as it had for eleven years. Maybe it was taking revenge for its captivity. Maybe it could never be controlled.

I’m releasing the secret. If the right person reads this blog, there are enough details to know it’s me. I lost my best friend, I lost someone I truly loved, and for a long time I believed it was because I was selfish. No, it was a tragedy, and he needed someone to share his own secrets with, but it was not my fault.

I’m releasing the secret, but not because I believe it will cure my pain. I’ve since released the secret of my pain, and while I feel the relief of the burden, it did not cure me or make my pain better. It did help me though. I don’t feel the paranoia anymore, like everyone is waiting for my pain to overtake me. I feel now like I’m building a solid support system where I can talk about it freely, I just had to take a chance on the right people.

I’m sharing the secret with you in the hopes that you can see how deadly secrets of the heart can be. They’re a ticking time-bomb, a parasite leeching away you energy, the seas slowly drowning you without mercy. Sharing the secrets of the heart make us vulnerable, but I know I am strong. I know I can survive the secret that has been fighting to defeat me for twelve years. I hope others can find the courage to set their secrets free as well.

Today, I am a better person than I was yesterday.

As Good A Day As Any

I’ve been procrastinating on this project for quite a while now. I love writing and it’s one of the few things I feel comfortable doing. It’s one of the few things I feel I actually have a talent for. And yet, the past few years, I’ve avoided it. I’ve thought about starting projects, but pushed them off for days and weeks and months and even years. I always come up with an excuse: this week is too busy; I’ll start first thing on Monday; I’m not in the mood today, but I will be tomorrow. None of them are good excuses, but they seem all right at the time.

Isn’t it funny how we do that? It’s easier than we think to find time for the things we love. At the end of the day, none of these excuses are the real reason I choose not to write. Writing can be a little scary. No matter what you’re writing, fact or fiction, you’re sharing your deepest thoughts. You let your subconscious out to take the wheel and drive. Everything that you push down and keep hidden, every emotion you quell, every thought you suppress is waiting for this moment to break free. The words you write define you. Even if you never share your writing publicly, it can be frightening to learn what we’re hiding from ourselves.

So why am I finally facing my fear today? At the beginning of the month, I promised my friend I would do Camp NaNoWriMo. Our freshman year of college, we did NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month which takes place in November) and it became somewhat of a tradition, but I only succeeded the first year. Every year since I’ve failed miserably, making it maybe the first few days. I think I attempted Camp twice with the same results. Well, it’s now July 5 and do you want to take a guess at how many words I’ve written before this post? I think it’s probably obvious that number is zero. I’ve been using the same excuses as I always use: too busy, too tired, too unmotivated. Really I’m just not even trying. So when I went to go to work today, promising myself I would try once I got done work (which would have inevitably evolved into being too tired because I worked all day), imagine my great fortune when I got to my car and realized I didn’t have my keys. Any of my keys. I couldn’t use my car, get back into my apartment or get into my lab. I’m way too cheap to pay my landlord to let me back in, so I’m waiting for my fiancé to return from his Fourth of July escapades. I have a lot of time and my computer and I really don’t have any excuse not to: fate has backed me into a corner.

I suppose I could be sitting outside my apartment door, wallowing in self-pity, or I could call my landlord, hand over the fee, and then wallow in self-pity, but since both those options involve wallowing in self-pity, I’m choosing the only route left: finally confronting myself and putting the words down on the page (hope you’re enjoying my run-on sentences).

So far I’m happy with my choice. I decided to walk to a part of town called the Riverwalk. I’ve lived here for about eight years now and the river walk has been developed over the past couple years. I’ve really only been here to enjoy it once and only for a few minutes (and I didn’t actually do the walk, so much as walk to a railing and watch the river for a bit, before telling myself I had “important” things to be doing). It’s really beautiful and the pictures don’t really do it justice (partly because they were taken with my camera phone). I haven’t really been here because I told myself that the Riverwalk would be there tomorrow and I had things I had to do today. I often use that excuse to avoid going out. There will always be other opportunities is what I tell myself.

Instead I should tell myself “today’s as good a day as any”. Did I really need to spend eight hours at work today? Why can’t it wait until tomorrow? It isn’t like I’d get paid for the hours I put in today. It won’t make tomorrow any easier. Why shouldn’t I spend this gorgeous day outdoors, enjoying the sites I said would be there the next time, and finally writing the words I said I would?

For me that’s always been really hard. I’m truly a workaholic and sometimes it feels like I do it so people will admire me for being so hardworking. I started working as a child in my mother’s restaurant and I always worked as hard as I could so she would praise me, though it never happened. Eventually, I just kept working because I set that high standard and I didn’t want to be scolded for “slacking off”. I carried that standard into every job I’ve held since then and it feels wrong to be doing something fun instead of working. No one praises me for my hard work, my boss has just come to expect this level of progress from me and any time I don’t reach it, he expresses his disappointment. Co-workers hate me for “making them look bad”. I justify it by telling myself you only get out of a job what you put into it. For the most part that’s true, but even if I could work 24/7, I would never finish anything. There will always be more work to do. I get so tired that I make mistakes and, in the end, I’m barely more productive than anyone else, and potentially more costly. It isn’t efficient for me to work constantly and I miss out on so much that is important to me.

But, you know, it’s easier to be a workaholic sometimes. I avoid getting too invested in anything else, things that can end in disappointment or failure or loss. As a workaholic, I invest everything into my job, but those risks exist there too. Especially in research, I face a lot of disappointment and failure. I’m not sure why it’s different, maybe it’s just easier to move on to the next experiment or the next project without feeling the loss too heavily. I don’t think that’s true, so I’ll have to think on it a bit more.

I know I said I was a good writer and this post is clearly a not-well-written stream-of-consciousness journal entry, but that’s what I intend this project to be. I’ve struggled my whole life with being a perfectionist. Some people wear that label as a badge of honor, but it has cost me dearly like a chronic disease. I’ve started over on things that were of fine quality and wasted time trying to make perfect, things that were never going to be perfect. I think soon it will be identified as a seriously debilitating anxiety disorder, as it should be. I’ve been paralyzed by the fear of not being perfect and I know I’m not alone. I like to watch the YouTuber Hannah Hart and her YouTube show “My Drunk Kitchen” (I live vicariously through her drunken escapades), but, other than her entertainment value, she dishes out some great advice. She seems to struggle with some of the things I struggle with and she always talks about how she’s trying to be a better person today than the day before. I will never be perfect and I have to embrace that. I have to face that fear so I can at least work toward being a better person than I was yesterday.

I’m calling this project “The Other Side of the Window”. At the university where I work, many of the researchers study chronic pain. One researcher, whose parents live with chronic pain, has talked about what it’s like to live with a loved one who suffers from chronic pain. He says it’s like looking at them through a window. Having had loved ones who have had chronic pain or other chronic diseases I can understand that sentiment. You feel separated from them, you can’t reach out to them like you could before. You see them, but not as clearly, they seem a little fuzzy, a little out-of-focus, not like they were before. It’s a good analogy. But if living with a loved one who has chronic pain is like looking at them through a window, then what is it like to be on the other side of the window?

Recently I’ve been diagnosed with chronic pain myself and I’ve finally accepted it. I wanted to start this project to talk about the other side of the window. I’m not arrogant enough to think that my side of the window is the same for everyone living with chronic pain. Pain is different for everyone and the way it affects them is different and my life is not the same as anyone else’s. I hope to confront some of the stigmas of chronic pain sufferers, but this is only my side of the story. I don’t know how many people will read my story, but I think I’ll put it out here because maybe something I say will resonate with someone. Maybe someone else with chronic pain or perfectionism or who is a workaholic will be encouraged to speak out themselves and confront their own fears. Even if that doesn’t happen, this is how I’m choosing to confront my own fears.

I don’t want to be paralyzed by fear. I want to keep moving forward. I want to be a better version of myself today than I was yesterday. I want to be a strong person, a courageous person, and an inspirational person. It isn’t enough to want that and really it’s a simple as just being that person. I have to admit that it’s easier said than done, but I’m going to work towards it. I will stumble and sometimes I will fail, but I’m at least going to try. I have a piece of paper that I always carry around with me that has two phrases: “Every storm has an ending; every night a new morning” and “Per ardua ad astra” (translated “through adversity to the stars”). Today, I’m adding two new phrases: “Be a better person today than you were yesterday” and “Today’s as good a day as any”.

Today, I am a better person than I was yesterday.