Reflections on childhood trauma

 Ok, maybe “trauma” is melodramatic for my personal experiences, but looking back as an adult nearly at the age of 40 years old, the experiences still bring pain to me. Not physical pain, but definitely a lot of anger and bitterness, mingled with the sorrow and heartbreak I felt as a child, teenager, and young adult.

I was talking to my husband the other day about how angry a certain person made me. How that certain person had caused so much grief and agony as I grew up. But not just for me - for my beloved pets as well - and that was why I want to write a novel from the perspective of my childhood cat. It isn’t enough for me to talk about the things I went through as a child. It isn’t enough for me to just write about how I felt and perceived things as a child, teenager, and young adult. No, it doesn’t give justice to my beloved pets who were mistreated by this person.

My traumatic experiences, however, didn’t just start when I had pets. I felt like my traumatic experiences began very early in my life - before my family even moved from my birthplace to California. It stemmed from the earliest memories of feeling rejection: from the kids at preschool not wanting anything to do with me, to my own parents ignoring me and treating me like I was nothing more than a nuisance, to my brother having his way of letting me know that he didn’t care if I was his little sister: he didn’t want anything to do with me either. 

But the ultimate traumatic experience for me before we moved to California was literally the day I found out we were moving. My parents didn’t ever even try to explain to me what was happening, that I can recall. Just one day out of the blue, they say we’re going to the airport, and it’s while we are minutes away from getting on an airplane that I find out this is for good - not a vacation. It was there, while we stood in the airport with my grandma and Aunty, that I truly felt betrayed and like the whole world must be against me because I was being torn away from all the family I really loved. And not just that - but I was never given a chance to really spend time with my grandpa and grandma before then. I had something torn away that I could never get back. I cried out for my grandma and Aunty, because I would have rather stay with them than be taken thousands of miles away to a place even more unfamiliar and where more trauama would take place.

Maybe it’s a little silly, but I was just thinking about the silliness of this blog’s title: Purr-sonal Reflections of a Cat Lady. Hardly anything in this blog even had anything to do with cats. Up until now.

Kitty litter boxes. That’s life. The nuggets kitties bury in the litter box: those are all our traumas, negative experiences, bad memories. So life is what you make it. You can be like some people who don’t scoop very often, and the box stinks up the whole house. Or you can scoop every day, digging those negative things out of your life, and chunking them - giving them up to God really - and saying NO MORE! I am DONE with hanging on to the garbage of yesterday, last year, and decades ago. 

I know, that was almost sappy. And what’s worse is that I am having this epiphany now. Am I taking the scooper and digging those chunky stink bombs every day? Well, I would like to think that I am. I’m trying to anyway. I know one thing for certain: I don’t say this tidbit about kitty litter like it’s some kind of magic wand fix-it; nor do I say it without consideration to those who might struggle with processing trauma. I was there. I know what it’s like to have well-meaning people come along and rattle off some wisdom like Job’s friends, and then be left feeling even worse off because I don’t know where to begin. I know what it’s like to struggle for years on end, feeling like every little step I take is never good enough. I know what it’s like to make some small improvement, only to take find myself sliding back into my old struggles not even a year later.

So here’s what I have learned after all these years about dealing with trauma and the effects it has on your well-being: it is going to take a real intervention of some kind. You can’t deal with this stuff alone. You need a support group; people who really do care about your well-being and aren’t just there to tell you what you want to hear. You sometimes will have to hear difficult things - like that you aren’t helping your situation by doing x, y, or z. You sometimes will have to do difficult things - like confront your worst fears and face them head on because if you don’t, then you will just down-spiral back into the pit you just tried to crawl out of. But you need others around you. You really can’t make progress without others to help reel you back in when you start floating out into oblivion.

If you are struggling with any trauma from your past, or just life in general, please seek help: you can find a therapist, Christian counselor, or just talk to your Pastor or a close friend to start out with. 

There are lots of online resources available nowadays, thanks to COVID, so if you really can’t find someone in person, you can always search for help online. Some ministries even will have someone there to talk to you over the phone.