There have been many times in my life that I have supported someone who experienced extreme emotional trauma. I’m cognizant that sharing other people’s experiences (or emotional injuries) isn’t right. If you find me being vague, it’s because I am mindful that the only story I have the right to tell, is my own.
I created this metaphor that seemed to help people experiencing trauma. Maybe I saw it on a YouTube video once? Perhaps a poem, or a short story that I read. Perhaps I created the imagery myself, because, when it comes to emotional trauma, I know that dance by heart.
Here it is:
“When you experience trauma, your first reaction as a human is to protect yourself from injury. The brain understands, and so, you take that trauma or emotionally destructive experience, and you put it in a little shoebox. Wrap it around with a bit of tape, and put that box in a locked closet.
Over time, because life can be like that, you keep adding the boxes. You’ve learned how to compartmentalize your pain and tuck it away neatly in a place that no one can see. The most important benefit is that YOU cannot see all the boxes. They are out of sight and out of mind.
Then one day, you come home, and the bloody door is wide open. The shelf holding all those heavy boxes has fallen, and they are scattered everywhere. If you are lucky, the lids stayed on. If you are less lucky, all the lids are off, and every single trauma you compartmentalized is roaring to be resolved immediately.
That’s usually when people have a breakdown. They sit on the floor with all the boxes of unresolved pain around them, feeling overwhelmed (naturally) and lost. Because each one of those heavy boxes is a substantial effort to cope with on its own. All of them at once is a bad thing.”
Or you are basically fucked.
You see, that human coping mechanism that tells us to put a bandaid on the injury, also applies to emotional pain and trauma. How do I know? I’ve got a pretty impressive locked closet with ample boxes of my own.
Resolving Emotional Injury One Box At A Time
This morning I woke up after having a vivid dream about someone I broke up with in 2009. Bear with me, because I am going to sound extremely stupid in this scenario. Please remember though, that I am a hopeless romantic. The drive to love (and be loved) has always been the propulsion behind great moments of elation, and conversely, utter and complete heartbreak and betrayal.
Oh, the lessons.
I had a dream about Adam. A ten-month online relationship that never bore fruit, but became something of a “Twin Flame” experience for me. I met my intellectual, creative, and entrepreneurial match, who was nine years younger than me (I knoooooooooooow!). Who lived in Manchester (I KNOW!!!).
Talking to Brent, I was able to (shockingly) keep the details pretty concise:
- I met him in Second Life.
- The mutual infatuation was fierce.
- I stopped dating in Toronto to have a long-distance relationship with him.
- We did very cool creative and business shit together.
- He never showed up at the convention in San Francisco (and broke the spell).
- He lost the mother of his child to cancer and fell into heavy grief.
- He shut me out in that grief.
- I broke up with him and encouraged him to stay offline to heal himself, and his son, as he was now a single parent. I started spending more time on my business, and less time in Second Life. I wanted tangibles, not virtual reality anymore.
- He seemed to take it well, and we agreed to remain friends.
- He lost his shit and began to harass me. Including blogging in a disparaging way about me. With the support of a California woman who had become a best friend. Heck, my Mom even knitted her a blanket which we gave her when she visited me in Ontario, Canada.
That completely gutted me. It was a lot to deal with at the same time. I was not the villain at all. But someone steadfastly defending her boundaries, to the chagrin of people with abandonment issues.
Betrayal and The Quest For a Healthy Balanced Life
Let’s take a moment here. I withdrew much of my time to reallocate it to my growing marketing consultancy. I was also dating a widower, with three young children, supporting my mother through a difficult financial period, and commuting about four hours per day. Then working from about 7:00 p.m. to midnight on the business, and getting up at 4:30 a.m. to drive to work.
How the fuck that didn’t kill me, I will never know. But it did almost kill me. A few years later, I would have an emergency hysterectomy because of 65% precancerous cells in my reproductive areas. That is the same experience my beloved Aunt would navigate, with less invasive or radical treatment. She died of Stage IV cancer in 2021.
The friend from California didn’t take it well that I withdrew my time, and had a tantrum. After seeing all my angst and pain with Mr. Manchester, she gleefully was passive-aggressive with my tormenter, disparaging me on his blog. Boy, that was tough. Diane couldn’t believe it, when I actually reconciled with her again.
Diane was right.
Turns out, she would do the exact same thing, in the exact same way, in Austin in 2021. Except there was no harrassing British online pseudo-boyfriend to concur with, this time. When I told her that spending every evening and all weekend with my ass planted and glued to a computer was not living, she took offense.
Going to buffets or eating out? Not my entertainment speed, as I wanted to lose weight and live healthier, not gorge myself on unhealthy food and gain weight. My life was going to go UP on the happy and adventure scale, while my weight was definitely going down. And I wanted to keep that momentum. I wanted my health and self-care to take priority.
Instead of understanding what I was trying to say, she had the worst tantrum. I said “I want to kayak, and go zip lining, go to Six Flags on the rollercoaster. I want to go bike riding and be active. I want to go to live music and bars, dance and meet people. You never want to do those things, so I am going to do them by myself.”
She heard: “You are too fat to hang out with.”
When your knees are painful daily because you are inactive, and carrying hundreds of pounds more than your body should be carrying… I guess a friend who says “Let’s go OFFLINE and get fit, healthy, and happy!” is the worst kind of person. I really wanted her to come with me. I loved her.
She chose a sedentary surreality. That’s where our friendship ended for good.
Happiness was defined differently for me than it was for her. I had already experienced a gross waste of time invested in an online relationship. I wanted NO ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP to be clear. I wanted to fall in love with myself, instead, and take better care of myself.
What little I have heard of her version of the story angered me. But then I remembered, people who are afraid to change, make up all kinds of stories that demonize anyone who challenges their unhealthy behaviors. Addicts are like that, aren’t they? And trust me, I know a thing or two about addicts.
What Really Happened With Adam?
At some point, the Manchester reformed Lesbian girlfriend opted to cheat on Adam. At the time, she was pregnant with his child. This infuriated him, and he made overtures to reconnect.
I considered him to be an unhealthy emotional addiction. I mean, I fought so hard to get over him. Arguably (judge me as you will) I rushed into a relationship with Scott, to deter Adam. It worked. Except, I then had three beautiful children I loved, and a trailer trash white muscle man (who was a fabulous lover) but had the IQ of a river rock.
Makeup. Break up. Makeup. The ever-indecisive Adam toyed with my emotions for a long time. I was also in denial. My God, how many conversations Diane and I had about him. Diane too, knows what it feels like to be in a powerful manipulative spin cycle. Thankfully, my best friend helped me break that cycle, and move on with my life.
Sorry I drove you so crazy in that period Diane.
You know, you saved me. Thank you, my love.
So, when his pregnant fiance’s betrayal was evident, I allowed him to speak with me. But my message was clear: “I’ve moved on. We’re done. Sort your life out with your future wife and mother of your child.”
I meant seriously, grow the fuck up.
He started an SEO business, just as I had started a content marketing side hustle (which was doing very well, and pulling me out of the post-divorce poverty I found myself in). Hella proud! It took so much hard work, and that business supported me, and a family for over ten years. #Flex
I was working at the College of Pharmacists, and as luck would have it, I would be working the weekend that Adam and his friend were due to visit Toronto.
- I got emails from Adam begging (not kidding) BEGGING me to meet with him in Toronto. He was told a big fat NOPE!
- I got emails from Adams’s buddy (or perhaps it was Adam, who knows, he was weird) BEGGING me to meet with them for dinner.
NOPE!
Then one day a large bouquet of long-stemmed red roses arrived at the College of Pharmacists. Red. With a card from Adam. I threw them in the garbage. The receptionist later removed them, and put them on the front desk, which elicited a conversation: “Take them home, or I am throwing them out. I do not want to see them, please.”
She complied.
I was so concerned that Adam would make an unhinged appearance at my workplace, that the College hired a security officer for the weekend event.
I stopped lamenting him, and the experience. I was angry at his persistence and harassment. However, it wasn’t until I got into a serious relationship (and openly blogged about it) that he faded into obscurity. And I moved on with my life, noting that the traffic from the UK to my blogs remained a little while after the birth of his daughter.
My favorite part? The little jerk blogged about “keeping in touch with his pregnant fiance” because she knew he was in Toronto, and I was in Toronto. Of course, he did not wrong in his blogs. Years later, he would write something of an anonymous apology, to me, on his blog. Reflecting on what a psychotic, manipulative, piece of human shit he was. And a liar.
Dreaming About Meeting Him
You can imagine how upset I was this morning to wake from a vivid dream of meeting him. Not only meeting him, but hosting him in my house (I didn’t recognize the house), and having the same wash of romantic feelings I once had.
Seriously? What the fuck.
There were no images of the *cough* act or anything. But I woke up very upset. It’s been ten years for Christ’s sake. Why the hell did my brain go there?
Everything I am writing here, I discussed with Brent. Why? Because he is the partner I always deserved and wanted. I couldn’t love him more, and so, we are transparent and honest always with each other. Even when shit is a little awkward.
He listened patiently, and then made coffee. Then I got two of the biggest hugs ever. “Dreams are weird. All they mean, is that your brain is processing something,” said my fella. That made a lot of sense to me, but most importantly, I marveled at this wonderful man, who, when the boxes come flying open, sits patiently with me, while I review the contents.
Peering inside now, at this stage of my healing, isn’t disruptive or painful. Peering in, my thoughts are more like this:
“If you came at me today to take a bite, the woman I am now? You’d break every tooth. I would end you conversationally in a nanosecond, you abusive little shit.”
With zero regrets. Because I have changed. So much, for the better.
Onward and upward to the next box. Whenever my mind, body, and heart are ready. I’m letting my soul dictate this process. And my self-love.
But my shelf is already feeling so much lighter.
