Guest Post: On Living Trauma Adjacent
Photo: Anton Cancre
This week's guest post comes from a friend who is a great writer and general all-around swell human.
On Living Trauma Adjacent
By Anton Cancre
Neither of my parents beat me when I was growing
up. They didn’t yell at me all that much, either. They tended to take that
aggression out on each other. I distinctly remember, back when I was somewhere
around 4 years old, being taken to my grandparents’ house in a police car. When
I was much older, I found out that my father had removed the distributor cap
from the car and was threatening to kill my mom. There was also the time that
she had to hit him on the head with one of those obscenely large and heavy beer
steins to get him off of her. For so much of my young life, it seems like the
house was filled with screaming and anger.
But it wasn’t directed at me.
I tend not to talk about this much, but I was
never molested as a child. I was never a little kid, sitting down with my
mother and trying to find a way to tell her what had happened. I never had to
sit in a cold, sterile room with some stranger and talk about the humiliation
and horror of the ordeal. I never had to deal with my paternal grandparents
telling me that I lied and making me write an apology letter. I never had to
deal with relatives who held tightly onto the belief that I was making things
up to get my father in trouble, even after he admitted his guilt. My sister was
the one who got to experience that bit of joy.
But nothing happened to me.
So, I should be fine. Right? RIGHT? Please,
someone, tell me that everything should be hunky fucking dory in the skull
house of Anton-ville. Because it sure as hell has never felt that way, even
though that is what I told myself for most of my life. If it didn’t happen to
me, then I don’t have any right to bitch about how tough I have it.
Because it wasn’t my trauma.
Here is what did happen to me: I spent more
nights than I care to count with my body tightly wrapped around one pillow
while I gripped another one around my head to keep out the screams. I never
knew quite when things would go just that touch too far and I’d get another
trip in the back of a police car or, ooh yay, an ambulance. That would’ve been
a new experience. I spent most days wound tight, anticipating the next spark
that would set off another round of explosions.
I have a memory of my sister and I sitting
around on a dull Saturday, complaining about being bored. Her telling me that
she would show me her toy if I showed her mine. Me lifting up the tank I was
playing with and her answering “not that one.” Me being confused by it, but
going back to what I was doing without realizing what had happened. I remember
being in what I guess was the courthouse, with someone I didn’t know asking me
a bunch of questions I didn’t quite understand and being scared out of my wits
about it. I remember realizing that I was pretty certain my sister hated me and
realizing that it may well have been because she saw my father in my face. Then
there is the abject terror that consumed my teen years, the fear that I would
grow up to be just like him.
There are the long term effects, like my
persistent, fairly unreasonable fear of dealing with the police in even on the
most pleasant of circumstances. My poor wife has to cope with my assumption
that every silence is indicative of some looming problem and that every problem
is a sign that it has all finally come crashing down. Conflict horrifies me and
I’m anxious as fuck pretty well constantly.
As much as I tell other people to stop looking
at their pain as a dick measuring contest, that it isn’t about who has more or
less as much as it is about acknowledging that it exists and working to heal as
much of it as we can, I’ve always had a hard time applying that to myself. It’s
hard to allow that my own experience carries its own special scars. Harder
still to admit or recognize the continued effect on who I am and what I do as a
grown ass man at the ripe age of forty.
This is the point where I feel like I am supposed
to say something comforting. Where I feel like I should have some kind of
solution to the problem for those others bearing the trauma of bearing witness
to the trauma of others. I don’t have one, though. If that’s what you came for,
then I’m sorry. But if you stopped by for reassurance that you aren’t the only
one struggling through this confusion and ache each day, then I guess there can
be some comfort in that.
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