little t trauma
i slice through thin cucumber skin the way i imagine a skater’s blade cuts through ice—quick and precise and satisfying. i turn on the faucet to clean my dishes, using my favorite sponge. i meal prep and nestle my tupperware like cairns marking the route on a hike— precarious piles of rock unsteadily stacked and pointing toward a good destination. i shower and comb my hair. i pick out my outfit. i journal and stretch and text a friend. i sweep the floor just for fun. i am aware that tomorrow all of this could be lost.
You may have heard of the difference in psychology between big T and little T trauma. The idea is that big T trauma involves physical danger and violence—sexual assault, a bad car accident, combat, etc. Little T trauma may not be tied to a specific event and it usually takes the form of emotional stress, like getting bullied, a divorce, legal trouble, etc.
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This is a side note but: I know some people think we throw around the word trauma too often in the sense that it provides an excuse for any behavior and creates a helpless victim mentality. I know others think we use it too often in the sense that too many people claim it and thereby lessen its significance. I think that understanding the traumatic events that have wired our brains and bodies helps us take healthy responsibility for our behavior. And I think that we need to define our terms and really listen to the details of people's stories in order to understand what lived reality is behind the words they are using.
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I am aware that I am living a storybook life. I live in my Brooklyn apartment with three of my best friends. A couple nights ago I walked ten minutes down the street to my favorite pizzeria to buy a gluten-free pie for myself. I have a job that feels meaningful and a church community I love.
I also know there's a tendency in me to think that my suffering is what gives me value, that I only matter if I am a martyr. I don't want to give into that. But I write this in hopes that it will make someone else feel a little more seen.
Because underneath my storybook life, like a code running in the background, is a gut-deep and constant sense of fragility.
One day in the gym when I was sixteen I caught the barbell wrong while doing a clean and jerk and felt a sharp pain shoot up my left forearm. I recovered after a month of rest and stretches, my youthful optimism not much impaired.
An uneventful year later, I felt a twinge, scribbled in my journal, I think that arm pain is kind of coming back, I'll have to restart doing those exercises every night.
I didn't put pen to paper to journal for almost two years after that. The blank pages, the gaps between dates in my notebooks, make me feel sick to my stomach when I look at them even now.
I'm writing this via dictation and tonight I will press ice packs to my arms and try not to think about how you can wake up one day and find your whole world changed like the planet is listing on its axis and you're sliding about with no way to know where north is or how to steady your feet. How the way that you hold a fork changes, how the assumptions you have always held about what's possible for you are suddenly revealed to be made of tissue paper.
It's not just physical activities that pain has taken from me. It's the ability to wake up and not worry every day that this will be The Day It All Falls Apart Again. It's the freedom to not look at future hopes and think, there's a real possibility I won't be able to do any of that. It's the gift of not looking at present joy and thinking, I know how quickly this can be lost.
Part of this is growing up. Part of it is the little T trauma of chronic pain (and, I’m sure, many other griefs) that shatters your world one day like a freak lightning strike and leaves you to deal with the burns for—well, that's the worst part: for who knows how long. Maybe forever.
Like the Israelites painting their doorways with blood, I raise my arm over my head and pray every day that the Angel of Pain passes me by. Don't look at me. Ignore me, let me live my little life. One more normal day. One more, please.
And I keep asking and asking and knowing there is absolutely no guarantee the answer will be yes.
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I realize some people don't ever get normal days. I realize some people don't remember what it's like to hope for normal. I've redefined normal, and I don't remember what being pain-free feels like, but still I know my pain is mild, as mild as a white person's salsa, compared to most.
But comparisons destroy. That's the last thing people in pain need, more bridges between them burned.
And the thing is, the fragility I feel is the reality for all of us. The details aren't the same but we all of us live on the precipice and we none of are promised easy passage through this life. History is made of mundanity and catastrophes. We live suspended between them. You may get more than your fair share of both.
So what do we do? Write poems when we can and breathe through the terror and snatch at what beauty we're given and try to remember the Unchanging One. The only surety, the only guarantee. (Which is not always a comfort when you are in the midst of a crisis or whittled to the bone with unending pain. But it's true nonetheless.)
In Other Words…
goodreads (books)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (5 stars) | The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot (5 stars) | Beartown by Frederik Backman (4 stars)
Catching up on my book reviews! It’s been a great couple of months for new fiction reads, which is lovely. There’s nothing like the excitement of having a good story to dive back into on a commute or before going to sleep.
to staying awake,
Aberdeen