It’s been a while since I last posted. This blog was
intended to be a place that I could highlight my aspirations to live a healthier
life. Unfortunately, over the course of the last year I lost that ambition in
many ways.
The last ten months of my life have been repeatedly plagued with
relapse, homelessness, and, a word I’ve grown all too familiar with, trauma. I
have been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s both
terrifying and comforting.
Methamphetamine is still a huge problem in my life. I last
used on July 22nd. The events of that weekend are still difficult
for me to fully process. I have never felt so horribly alone and broken in my
life. But through all the pain and kaleidoscopic broken memories there is
still something beautiful about falling apart. I hope someday I can show you
that.
I never quit writing. I’m not exactly sure what I want to do
with most of it, so for now it stays where it is. There is a piece I started about
a month ago that I’ll share with you now. It’s the story of when I was eight
years old, reconstructed and viewed through thirty-six-year-old eyes.
* * * *
Original Trauma
When I was eight years old I was run over by a Ford
Econoline Van. Sometimes things just are.
My siblings and I were cleaning the van in our driveway. I
was in the back, with both doors open, while they were in the drivers and
passenger seat. They began to fight over something highly trivial. If my memory
serves it was over which one of them got to sit behind the wheel as they
removed trash from between the seats. During their scuffle they managed to
release the emergency brake and then displace the gear shift into neutral. The
incline of our driveway was enough to cause the van to start rolling backward.
I thought that by bracing myself behind the vehicle I would be able to stop it
from rolling further. I was horribly wrong. My eight-year-old body was no match
for the weight of the vehicle. I tripped over my own feet while moving
backwards. I was then swept underneath the passenger side of the van where both
tires rolled directly over my pelvis. I would later be told that two inches
lower would have paralyzed me for life, two inches higher and I’d be dead where
I laid. By some strange hand of fate, it ran both tires directly over the one
part of my body that would be able to withstand the crushing weight. Sometimes
things just are.
Much of my memory around the incident has been dissociated.
I remember catching a glimpse of the van as it rolled into the neighbor’s yard,
veering significantly to the right and narrowly missing their house. I remember
screaming, everyone screaming. The neighbors were shouting directions to my
location as the ambulance arrived. The paramedics, two men in their early 30s,
told me not to move. They cut my pants off me, a new pair of jeans I’d only
worn once before. I remember my mother crying and my father trying to maintain
control. They were both in shock. It was summer time and we had a garden in our
front yard, near the shed. The rhubarb was doing especially well and took over
a whole quarter of the plot. My sister was crying, and my brother tried to hide.
I imagine he was crying more than everyone else. My mother wanted to punish
him, not because he was at fault but because she needed someone to blame. I
don’t remember crying. Sometimes things just are.
They carefully moved me to a board, each small motion flooding
my brain with so much pain that it was difficult to remain conscious. My mother
rode in the ambulance with me. There was a disagreement about where to take me.
The paramedics were insistent that we needed to go to Harborview, dispatch was
directing them to Highline. I remember one of them yelling, “I’m not taking a
child to Highline!” The next thing I remember I was in the emergency room at
Highline Hospital. I was surrounded by doctors. There must have been 12 or more
people in the room around me. The lights were bright and hot. They had begun to
medicate me for pain before rolling me onto my stomach. One of the doctors then
explained that he needed to check my internal organs and determine if anything
had ruptured. He then inserted most of his hand, or at least what felt like, in
my rectum. It would be nearly thirty years before I realized that my brain
processed this as a form of rape. Sometimes things just are.
“Miracle” was a word that I
heard frequently. The doctors told me that I would have to relearn how to walk.
I hated the walker and even more the crutches. I remember moving on all fours
out of my parents’ bedroom to the makeshift room they made for me in the living
room thinking that I didn’t learn to walk on crutches the first time. So, I
started to do it the way I did the first time, I crawled everywhere. Everyone was surprised at how quickly I was
recovering. I never missed a day of school. I don’t think it was a miracle.
Sometimes things just are.
* * * *
I spent a lot of time thinking about
this event and especially the words I used in describing it during my last relapse.
I originally went to Honolulu with the intention of running to my problems, not
away from them. I needed the experience I gained there to start
the process of realizing I carry my burdens with me everywhere I go.
The last year has been hard on
me and equally hard on those that love me. Despite how things may seem I have
been getting better. I know it’s not easy to see that. I still want to be
healthy again. I want to move beyond a life where every phase starts with re-
to a place where wounds heal, and I can look down on my scars as victories, each
one screaming out “I don’t think it was a miracle.” I haven’t given up.
Please, don’t give up on me
either.
