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Changing the Conversation

Victorious

04/22/15 02:16 PM | Marc Dones | Trauma

The other day I said to someone, The thing about trauma is that it just puts you in this place of chronic mourning. You just spend a lot of time mourning losses that were a long time ago and what you will lose in the future as a result. I was thinking about a time I was sitting in my therapist’s office and felt like crying when I said, What would I be capable of if I didn’t have to spend so much energy managing my own mind? Who could I have been?

I can no more remember

What brought me here

Than bone answers bone in the arm

Or shadow sees shadow—

Billy the Kid, Jack Spicer

 

The other day I said to someone, The thing about trauma is that it just puts you in this place of chronic mourning. You just spend a lot of time mourning losses that were a long time ago and what you will lose in the future as a result. I was thinking about a time I was sitting in my therapist’s office and felt like crying when I said, What would I be capable of if I didn’t have to spend so much energy managing my own mind? Who could I have been?

What brought me here is a question I ask myself a lot—sitting in meetings, sitting in my office. The other day the question of why I do the work I do came up and I said, Because I have PTSD and someone I loved very dearly was a heroin addict and so now I don’t know what else to do. What brought me here is that it seemed like there was a lot of work to be done and it seemed like some of it might be my work to do. This reminded me of the first time I was hospitalized. After I’d been there a little over a week and was being discharged one of the psych nurses pulled me aside and said, I want you to know what happened to you isn’t your fault and never will be. But I also want you to know that it will be your responsibility. Only you can put you back together. And that will be the final injustice.

I’ve been thinking about trauma and justice lately because I’ve been thinking about America and the deep wounds we carry around race, around homelessness, around the notion that somewhere there is a form of justice in the world that is ideal—that is fundamentally right. I’ve been thinking about Big Truths (capital letter concepts) because I’ve been trying to figure out whether or not they have become so worn out with constant use that they’ve become bankrupt—puppet ideologies we trot out when we need to sound inspiring.

Only you can put you back together. And that will be the final injustice.

I think this phrase has stood out for so many years because she didn’t say that it would be an injustice. She said it would be the final injustice. The last one I had to face down. In this way I think she saw something in those early challenges that I didn’t understand yet: I would face this injustice again and again. It would be final not because I would conquer it, that I would finally see the peak of this mountain and then be done, but because I would have to keep conquering it. That I would always have to work at it.

I’m thinking about trauma and justice because justice seems fundamentally linked to victory—and I don’t know that we can win. When I think about all of the big concepts we throw around like love and justice I am frequently baffled. I don’t know where those concepts fit into my life and find it difficult to find myself. I remember once at a job, we did an exercise that was supposed to help people understand the power dynamics that sometimes exist inside therapeutic settings if we don’t work carefully to build person-centered care. We wrote three statements that described us on a notecard and passed the card to the left. The person we gave our card to was supposed to cross one thing out and return it. Mine came back with a single bright blue line through I have PTSD. Just like that. Crossed out. Victory.

I’ve been trying to think about the frameworks (clinical, ideological, political) that are thrust on us because these frameworks force our discourse—force the way in which we find the words to talk about things. And it seems to me that we’ve been so long mired in the fog of war: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror, that we only know how to fight. We only know how to vanquish (or be vanquished). But where is the language for small solace and serenity? Where is the language for the things that actually keep us alive?

The other day I had the benefit of hearing Mark Horvath speak at a conference. He talked eloquently about the joy a person experiencing homelessness could get from obtaining a smart phone or a tablet. The ability to look for work without having to subject yourself to the 45-minute limit in libraries or sneak into Apple stores, to check the weather, to connect with community via blogs and forums (none of which is housing and so is often overlooked) is life saving. When I look back over the things that have kept me alive over the years, that have kept my feet on the ground, my heart beating and my bones aligned, it’s bike rides and crocuses, friendly dogs, whiskey in moderation and in excess. These are the things that brought me here.

In another essay for this blog I wrote, “I don’t want my ability to survive to be mistaken for wisdom… It was all dumb luck. There’s so little that separates me from the one’s who did not make it back that it’s enough to keep a person up at night. And sometimes it does.” I’m thinking now that I want to elaborate on that ‘dumb luck.’ I want to find the words to describe all the times that I started to come apart and found, through happenstance or active seeking, something that was able to keep my seams together and how when I found those things I made sure to try to keep them as close as possible for as long as I could.

Only you can put you back together. And that will be the final injustice.

These words were true. These words have become my life. And it is an injustice—but not one that I can conquer. It’s only one I can repeat, again. As a rape victim (I personally eschew the term “sexual assault survivor” because I find it sterilized of the terror I deal(t) with and don’t want to pretend that it was anything other than terror) I want to find ways to valorize the small inglorious things that we stitch into our everyday lives—not to be victorious but simply to survive. To live.

Some mornings in Boston the wind blows off the ocean so the entire city smells like sea salt and brine. It reminds me that out there, just to the east, is something bigger than me and my life. Older than all of us. A testament to nothing else beyond the power of existing. Of continuing to exist.

 

Image by Marc Dones

Marc Dones

Written by Marc Dones

Marc Dones was a trainer for t3 and the Center for Social Innovation supporting human service providers in delivering recovery-oriented, trauma-informed services to people living with substance use disorders, HIV/AIDS, and other related challenges. Previously, Marc worked at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, focusing on youth violence prevention and reduction as well as systemic responses to youth homelessness. Marc was also the Director of Project Management for Child and Adolescent Services at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. They served on the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth and co-chaired the Administration Committee. Marc is a graduate of New York University's Gallatin School with a concentration in Psychiatric Anthropology. In their spare time, Marc hangs out with their dog, rides a bike, and is generally impractical. Marc's favorite color is chartreuse.