Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop

I have noticed something about myself recently that has made me wonder what the deal is. It appears that while enduring and surviving my trauma, the biology inside me changed and as a result, there is a part of me that I can feel is waiting for the other shoe to drop. In my case, it is more like searching for the next boogeyman, the next problem, the next bomb to explode that will annihilate my world. I want to come upon a day when my trauma is no longer a part of my existence. It’s not that it didn’t happen, it’s just that the impact and carnage it created while it was happening did not leave shrapnel inside of me that I must learn to live with. Whenever I’ve talked to my therapist about this, he corrects me and says, “Well Dani, it will always be there with you, you will just learn how to live with it.” When he says this, I can feel my body tighten and the anger inside me rise. While I respect his feedback, I can feel myself physically resisting his statement, his belief, and his valuable knowledge about trauma and its impact.  I don’t want my trauma to be there forever, like some omnipotent albatross I have been forced to bear. I want to believe that there will come a day when it will not be sitting there idle in the background. Just what I need, an inactive landmine living inside of me waiting for some inopportune time to go off so that it can show the world some aberration of my personality that is only there because hurt people hurt me. Like watching an exorcism, I imagine the trauma leaving my body, freeing up space for love and kindness – keeping the lessons but removing the pain. The defiant and stubborn part of me is convinced that I can and will reprogram my body and nervous system to relearn how to live and be again sans trauma.

I keep reminding myself I did the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time. That helps. What is not helpful is reliving it. Each time an old coping mechanism of mine shows up uninvited, I want to slam the door in its face. Sadly, since the trauma is within me, it cannot be separated, ignored or overlooked. It requires my attention. There is a reason the phrase, the only way past something is through it, exists. Whether I want to deal with it or not, it is there. Like an unwanted package I have to open, I must carefully cut the tape so I can get inside and take a closer look.  Imagine trying to rewire your brain and body in such a way that it no longer plays a record it was taught to air. I must recondition my music player to select a different tune. A happier one.

It is a very odd sensation when you watch your brain straddle the past and the present simultaneously.  I always thought that I had to be in a war to experience the trauma I endured and survived. Regrettably, this is not the truth. My truth as it stands now, is to not only survive but thrive. To do so, I must stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. I must stop looking for the boogeyman or focusing on the negativity. I must be patient with myself and have more compassion. It takes time to learn how to play a different record when you are used to hearing the same tune again and again. Just as it did not take a day to break me, it will take longer than a day to make me the happy hopeful person I was innately born to be. One of the things my therapist and I have discussed that does help is to stop fearing my trauma when it bubbles to the surface. Like some scary monster in a nightmare, I now turn and face it. By confronting it, I realize I am no longer powerless. Should the other shoe drop or the boogeyman decide to show its face, it should be prepared for the stronger version of me it has yet to meet.

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