When I close my eyes I see visions of last night’s dreams. An endless, expansive night, swimming though temperature-less pools with you standing there watching, and as I wander down dark pathways, you follow, accosting me in empty corners. When I open my eyes again it is all gone.
When I awoke this morning, I realized once again that you were gone, still. I lay in bed unmoving, closing my eyes again trying to recapture those fleeting moments of subconscious.
Eventually, I had to move again. Return to my life, my reality.
Everyone has their own narrative for their life. A story that they tell themselves that makes sense, that leads them where they want to go. This may change over time. You may think now that five years from now you’ll have a family with three kids and working a full time job. But next year you might decide, “in five years I think I want to be sailing around the world.” But the day-to-day narrative generally stays the same: this is who I am, this is what I do, and if I continue to be and do these things this is where I’ll go. Yesterday, I was at work. Today, I’m going to work. Tomorrow, it’s the weekend, so I think I’m going to do projects around the house. The fact that you have a house is part of your narrative. The fact that you work is part of your narrative, and all of it is carefully described in your mind so that it’s understandable and controllable. The problem happens, not when things change subtly over time, but when they change suddenly. When that narrative is broken, when a trauma occurs. Suddenly things are no longer understandable. Things aren’t under control. You have no idea what you’re going to be doing tomorrow or the day after that. There is no concept of five years from now. Where you were yesterday has no relation to where you are today and tomorrow. That is what the human psyche cannot deal with. There needs to be a concept of continuous, linear identity and story. When that changes there is a sense of being lost. Being in an uncontrollable situation. Which drives a lot of people mad.
The key to recovering from a sudden break, a sudden trauma, is to be able to reincorporate it into the narrative, to make it part of who you are, to claim it as who you are, and integrate it into who you were before, and were your story was going previously. That’s why changes over time, those subtle changes about where you are going, don’t really have much of a negative effect. The fact is that we’re constantly integrating, reintegrating and reevaluating and we have time to figure these things out, to make it part of our story to write, and rewrite our story. The sudden break the break in the story causes the most problems when it’s not recovered, when the story line isn’t picked up again and linked to the past.
There is also the mass narrative that we have to contend with, the societal narrative. What it is to be a member of this society? What is an appropriate story to have? What’s an appropriate identity? Where should you be going and where should you have been from? These are all issues to contend with. When there’s a break in the narrative, there is also often a break with the mass narrative. Reintegrating that trauma into your story and picking up the pieces, picking up the story line again is difficult when it doesn’t quite match with that overall narrative, when you are constantly faced with the idea that your story is no longer their story. The human instinct is a tribal one, we all want to fit in, we want to be a part of this group, and we want to be accepted by others. When you no longer fit in and when you have something that’s off, that doesn’t connect with that larger story, it makes it even harder to integrate your own story, because it sets you apart. But if the trauma is denied if it isn’t integrated then the person is not whole.
The worst thing that could happen is to forever be caught in that moment, forever be obsessed with that point in time. For those who continue dwell, living only in that moment unable to integrate it into a whole identity, it becomes their identity. That moment in time becomes their story. They become the victim, not just someone who was once victimized, always repeating that role of the victim. They are always reliving, maybe not in the exact same way, but reliving the trauma, the break, there is no continuation, just an endless cycle. Until they can figure out how to break the cycle and pick up where they left off and start over again, well not start over again, but integrate, integrate is the key word.
This is my theory, at least, and this is what I’ve been trying to do. And it might be a little easier if it weren’t for the damn dreams.
It was the third time in two weeks that I was late for work. Fortunately, I have an overly understanding boss. Though, my plan is to not push it with a fourth time. Getting over the urge to curl up in a little ball and stay in bed has been the hardest part of this whole ordeal.
This morning I was just in time for an HR meeting. I don’t mind meetings, especially now. I’m not that important to the proceedings, so I can let my mind wander. But maybe that’s not such a good thing.
“Cady…Cady?”
“Hmmm…oh, yes?”
“I just wanted to know how long before that performance report is going to be done,” said my boss, Linda.
“I think I can have it to you by the end of the day.”
“Good. Sarah, how are we on the development side?”
The meeting continued around me as I drifted back into my thoughts of things not right. I would get the report done. Most of it was finished already. I was working on it before, when I was in my old reality.
After the meeting it was time for lunch. Like I have done since I started working in my current position, I took my bag lunch that I had put together the night before, and went to the park two blocks down and one block over from the office. It’s a tiny little park, maybe half a square block. It has a curvy cement path that cuts it diagonally and on either side is grass and a couple of large trees that have probably been there forever. Alternating sides down the edge of the path are benches, the metal coated in black plastic kind, with the tiny crisscross pattern, so that if you sit on them with shorts you’ll have crisscrosses on the back of you thighs when you stand up. I like to sit on the very first one, right when I enter the park. It is a good place for people watching. I can see the people walking past the park, through the park, and into a tiny little café across the street. On nice days the café has tables outside on the sidewalk.
When I got to the park, I sat down on my usual bench. I opened up my lunch bag and pulled out my juice box, the 100% juice kind that are supposed to be for kids, and my turkey and cheese sandwich. I left the piece of the fudge my grandmother gave me in the bag for later. It was the same piece of fudge I had been leaving in the bag until later since my grandmother brought it over a couple days after it happened. Well, at least she would be happy I was eating the sandwich. I remembered how difficult it was to eat anything for the first couple of days.
I sat there taking bites of my sandwich and sips from the juice box, watching the people across the street. The tables were out at the café today. I wondered what their stories were. Were things going as they planned? Or had any of them, like me, experienced sudden stops along the way? I’m sure they had. As I’m sure we’ve all been told, things happen. I know things happen, but it knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. There was a woman sitting alone at one of the small round tables reading a book, and sipping something from a small white mug. At her feet was a small terrier of some sort, sitting quietly, appearing to do what I was doing, watching people walk by. The woman was pretty with long sleek blonde hair, good bone structure, and, by her bare arms, a muscular body. She was very well dressed and was wearing fashionable sunglasses. I couldn’t tell from where I sat if they were designer or not. I imagined things were going well for her. Her life was probably going exactly as she had always planned right down to the well-behaved dog to carry around in her tote as she went around town pretending to do errands for her well off husband. But I suppose she could have had some tragedy in her life as well. Maybe she couldn’t have children and that’s why she got the dog.
Another person caught my eye walking up to the café, an older man. As he walked into the café I could see that he was tall and husky, a little on the chubby side with signs of good beer drinking showing on his belly. A blue truckers hat, the kind with snaps on the back, covered his graying hair. His blue t-shirt was faded, but looked fairly clean. His cotton shorts were also faded, green, with what looked like small bleach stains and small holes speckled over the front. He went inside and came back out a couple of minutes later with a mug and sat down at one of the tables. He was facing me and I could see his face clearly, though he didn’t seem to notice me looking. His face was like one you’d often see somewhere on a Midwestern farm, and his 80's style glasses were changing from clear to tinted, underlined by a mustache any man would be proud of. He crossed his legs and I could see that his white socks were speckled by gray lint. Or maybe that was just the design. The socks climbed halfway up his bare calves, the bottoms of which were covered by sturdy looking brown shoes. His life I imagined not exactly full of roses. He was trying. His clothes were clean if worn, and he liked to treat himself to a cup of good coffee when he had his lunch break, or maybe he didn’t work. I tried to imagine what kind of job would let you dress like that, probably not a corporate office. Maybe he was an artisan, fine woodworking maybe, with his own little shop down the street. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t seem to fit but I thought for sure he looked like someone who had had a lot of bumps along the way. I don’t know why, but for some reason I feel better after imagining hardship in someone else’s life.
I finished my sandwich and juice, picked up my brown bag, and headed back to the office. I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the performance report. It felt like tedious mindless work that didn’t really mean anything, which was perfect. I couldn’t really put my all into anything yet. I was finished with it by five and emailed it to my boss. I walked down the hall to her office to make sure she had received it.
“ Just a second, let me check. Yup, there it is,” she said, “I’ll look it over first thing in the morning and let you know what I think.”
“Thanks.”
“How are you holding up, Cady? You know, if you need to take another day or two off, I’ll be happy to sign off on it. I know how tough it can be.”
“I’ll be okay. I’m going to try not to be late anymore,” I said.
“Well, I’ll let it slide for another week and then we’ll talk. But remember to take care of yourself. Go home and get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she turned back to her computer.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and then head back to my desk to get my things.
At home I fixed myself a small salad and then sat down in front of the T.V. It had definitely been a good friend recently. I never appreciated mindlessness so much before. When it was time for bed I got up, turned the T.V. off, and put my dishes in the kitchen sink. I went and put on my pajamas, and brushed my teeth. All the routine things. Then I got into bed and here am thinking.
I wonder if Linda really does know how tough it can be. She is an attractive woman in her late 40's. Beautiful shoulder length dark brown hair and a perfect complexion. She is very successful in her work. Everyone loves her. She has a good husband and children. It’s a story that I’m sure many people are aspiring to. Did she have a different story once upon a time? And what happened to break it? Well, obviously she recovered quite well. Me? I’m still working on my theory, on integrating, on recovering my story line. I doesn’t seem to be going too well at the moment. I still feel lost. I’m just happy I made it through the day. And I’m hoping I won’t have any more dreams tonight.
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