Waking: Trauma and Separation

Trauma and Separation.......reading the title of this sections of the book now helps me understand chapters that follow it; I can’t help but think to myself “Man I should have read the title before I started reading the words”.  When I began reading this section of the book, I couldn’t help but wonder “How am I going to right about this……what am I going to say…..how can I make sense of something that doesn’t make sense to me”? However, the further I got into the story the more I connected with the story. With each turn of the page I felt more connect with the thirteen year Matt, the mom and the big brother. The more I read the more I felt and the more I feel I have to say. So in order to organize my thoughts as well as guide you through the labyrinth that is my thinking process I will outline the things I will talk about. First will be my over impression of the story thus far: how I felt at the beginning of my readings, the middle, and the end. Next, I will write down some quotes I felt were powerful in that story and explain why I feel them powerful and how I tried to connect them in my life in some way. Finally, I will just talk and say anything I may have missed in the earlier topics.

So I am not going to lie the first couple of chapters (maybe not even the first couple) were difficult for me to follow. I think this was more to not reading them in one sitting but instead reading a page here and a page there. Also, I feel like I expected something different. I couldn’t tell you what or how I saw this book play out in my mind but I want instantaneous enlightening. I wanted a hero. I wanted a design plot. I wanted to see where the story was going but instead I got detail; vivid, graphic, and frightening detail. Thinking about it now I am grateful for the details but in the beginning I was just waiting for it to get to the good part. Since I am on the topic of details I must say I felt his words. I felt his hopelessness at times, fear, laughter, need to help others, need for silence and it sucked. Every time he describes a procedure I cringe. The screws in his head made me touch my temple. The IV description made me rub my arms. I laugh at the hairy ape he saw and cussed right along with him when they broke one wrist and not the one he was expecting. Most of all I felt how there was no since of time. There are dates and specific moments when he says this many months later but for the most part time one together. It hid in the silence. I am still not sure how long he stayed in the comma or how long before he left the first hospital but I do know it all happened before he turned fourteen. Before I move on to the quotes I want to address the idea of dreams forewarning us or déjà vu. It is eerie to me how Matt and his family received all those signs that something bad was going to happen and no of it was relevant until something happen because if the tragic accident didn’t happen then all those dreams, visions, and poems would have just been freaky dreams, visions, or poems. I like how he says that connecting what dreams or bad feelings helps people feel like they have more control in something they had no control of at all. I like this way of thinking because I can relate. I can relate because I have use it. I used this train of that is answering why I handle my dad suicide so well. See I used imagine what would happen if my family died and left me here all alone…….I still imagine that. I used to think about what would I do if my dad killed himself and I cried…I cried for hours and in my mind I picked up the pieces(mind you I am like a teenager in high school thinking this way). As crazy and unrealistic as it sound when my dad shot himself in the living room while one the phone with my mom April 2, 2008(it was a Wednesday)…….I was able to handle it better because in my mind this has happened so many times before. My brother ,nickname Peanut, and my mom told me later that they “knew’ it was coming to many signs pointed to it(they didn’t take any action though because this wasn’t the first time he was going to kill himself just the first time no one was there to take the gun out of his hand).

Now that you know about my traumatic event (well at least one of them) now is the perfect time to bring in the quotes I felt were powerful.

“After saying good-bye to her husband and only daughter, my mom wandered around aimlessly, gathering up the clothing and personal belongings spewed by the violence. Already she was starting to pick up the pieces. There was no rhyme nor reason to what she was doing. My brother, on the other hand, sat next to me, praying”.  In my opinion these are the two way people deal with trauma. You have to pick up the pieces after a death……the world demands it. You get what a week or two to morn and then it is back to work……in that week or two you have to plan the funeral……you have to settle to debts…..you have collect insurance…..you have to confront….you have to____________. You have to say goodbye and start to move on but usually you don’t know how hence the aimlessly wandering…..there is usually no rhyme or reason because your mind can’t comprehend such thing(you just know that no one is going to pick up these clothes so you should do it). Then there is the holding on to the last thing that keep you sane and praying that it survives. In the books case it was Matt brother praying for him. In my case it was coming back to Baylor…..still wanting to be biology pre-med and in,  my mom’s case it was keeping my dad’s clothes hanging in the closet for two years after his death. So yeah the two was of dealing with trauma…..picking up the pieces while praying that something of your old life survives.

“For the first time in more than five days, I was my own rhythm-maker, my own connection to time. Although the fresh air pouring through my body was shockingly cold, it was there with my consent”. For me there is no deep philosophical meaning behind this……it is just the moment after a trauma that you can breathe again.

‘’ But Dr. McMeken performs an essential healing task. He relights my imagination.’’ All I can say is that this is true.

“This is the silence rushing forward, and the price of befriending it. While it has protected me, the silence has also put a distance between my actions and finding joy in things”.  I wanted to point out two things here. First I wanted to connect the silence to a virtti and the sutra saying a virtti can either be bad or good. Silence in this case brought him peace and a way out of physical pain but it also opened door way to emotional pain(I could have wrote a whole 2,000 words on that….just saying). The other thing I wanted to point out is I know how it feels to not feel joy in something. However, for me, that was my safe guard I honestly didn’t care about much and when I did it was either anger or despair (I forgot where I was going with this other than I know what it is like to not feel joy in something that should bring it to you). This thought ties in with the next passage in the book: “This is a familiar moment to most of us, a time when life suddenly becomes different, like the day when getting kissed by a parent is no longer comfortable or skipping no longer feels cool”. Basically it is that point in your life when you out grow something…..for whatever reason it just doesn’t hold the appeal that it used to.

“‘Mom, I want a gin and tonic,’ I announced”. While I know his reasoning for this statement was marking that he grew up……I can’t help but thinking to myself “yep sometimes you just want a drink”.

That is the last of my quotes analysis and now time for my finals thoughts. One of them being writing this took a lot out of me but I am hoping that the second and third responses will be shorter and hopefully happier. That way I can connect it to me finding art and later yoga. Another thing I noticed while reading is I thanked God constantly for not letting me go through anything as physically traumatic as what Matt went through. The reason I feel like silence didn’t become an option for me because I had so many other things: walking around listening to music, driving, exercising, and running….just moving in general so I didn’t have to sit with my own thoughts. I can’t imagine and don’t want to imagine what it would be like dealing with all the emotional scares and physical ones as well. So thank you God that I haven’t had to.