Pain
Good morning! From the bath, because where else would I be on an easy like Sunday morning…
There’s a new Dr. Teals and I’m enjoying it. The house is cleaning person clean (something I never imagined having), and I’m trying to find ways to keep it that way. They carve a path and make a special reset, and we scuttle around attempting to emulate.
Do you want to emulate or carve a path?
The girls are being celebrated (Graduation) in upstate New York, with beloved friends and family. Just us chickens here. Chickens ha. A phrase my grandparents would say. I remember more these days, about the little things that weren’t as terrifying as the others.
Speaking of terrifying, the other morning I was driving to an early morning appointment in New Haven. Just relaxing and driving on the highway. Right lane around 55 mph, slow for me 😉 and Bang….. my drivers side window explodes. I mean explodes. So dazed. Looking for a bullet hole. Confused. Pull off the highway onto some exit and into a laundromat liquor store combo near West Haven. I think.
Parked across two spots, door open, standing. What does one do when each movement risks a cut, never mind getting home. It’s natural for me not to panic in panicky situations, I save that for nearly all regularly daily situations. Backwards in every sense of the word. The panic tried to mount when I realized I had an ass full of glass literally. And as I tried to wipe it away began to cut myself and my back.
Still looking for a bullet hole that shock prevented me from feeling. Thinking when I’d lift my shirt up there would be glass lodged into my back. A wound matching the emotional distress I was under that made sense of it all.
I’ve been looking, hoping maybe even, for that visible wound my whole life.
I wandered into the liquor store at 8 am…. And they sent me next door to the laundromat where there was a dirty bathroom and a gentleman on a folding chair drinking a Corona. Didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about that. Was not however going to ask for assistance with glass removal. I’ll do that myself. Normal for me.
Got the glass out of my pants, though scratchy parts within the waistband would remain. Went back outside and used glovebox napkins to break out the rest of the glass so it didn’t hit me as I was driving home. It’s all down inside the door and sounds like a box full of broken glass when the car down is open or shut. Tinkle tinkle.
Came home made calls, Google searched and attempted to understand. The most interesting aspect of this for me of course was my response of trying to figure out how I felt about what happened. Not surprisingly I didn’t know.
As I observed myself throughout the day my focus was nil. Just very out of it. Like it hadn’t happened. By the afternoon I began to entertain the idea it was real and did actually happen and imagine getting in the car again and hearing that noise and began to shake.
Finally it registered that one of my favorite and safest places, sacred to me had just been changed probably forever, at least in some small corner of my mind. Forever is a long time. I’ll always wonder now if that will happen or could happen to one of my children. I’ll always wonder what would have happened it trauma hadn’t given me military like training to remain completely calm in a situation like that.
I should have been in an accident. Swerved. All sorts of things. Instead that typically dissociative reaction took over. Silver linings, am I right ?!
By the late afternoon I ached so bad and couldn’t hang on another second and canceled my evening. I broke down in tears as I allowed myself to think about the lack of safety I had just experienced and to entertain it in reality Vs the dreamlike state our brain tries to keep us in when unthinkable things are happening.
Unthinkable things…..
My nervous system is shot, it was already shot, and pardon the metaphor.
So anyway that happened. The window will be fixed, just like new …. Maybe? But will I ever trust a car window again!? One more layer of jumpy, like the cherry on top. Just what I needed, ironic it’s a Cars song I enjoy.
Am I being dramatic? The question we women particularly are trained to ask ourselves. The answer of course is always yes. Programming is powerful stuff.
Dark humor sticks a toe in the water and I’ve thought of why do you keep me walking on broken glass. A fave old Annie Lennox song. I’ve been nostalgic lately.
Once you have become unsafe enough even when something breaks you lose the ability to feel about it. Desensitization. Therapy is at times RE sensitization. It’s hard not to get all what’s the point about it, when one realizes how quickly safety can be shattered, seemingly, again…. And again.
I spent a couple of years in the shards of shattered dreams. Every where I turned, everything I would touch, tiny cuts. Tinkle tinkle. Oh another song …. https://youtu.be/hVNBC1LI8hs. I will never get tired of the 80’s. Johnny Hates Jazz.
Am I being dramatic?
Today it’s a relaxing Sunday. There is no glass. Going for a nice drive and to see James Taylor this evening. Wading in my dreams in the bath this morning. Gentle. Warm. Safe.
Preparing, always preparing to enter the harrows of the world again.
What dangers may lurk in a typical mundane concert filled evening…..
Stay tuned