This evening the kids were in a car accident. Tim and I were here at home with Joie (who was sick). We were cleaning the kitchen while the rest of the gang delivered Christmas treats to neighbors. Nate was driving, and didn't anticipate the ice on a hill in our neighborhood. As they came down the hill and tried to turn into our neighborhood, the car slid into a fire hydrant. They hit hard enough that their seat belts locked up. (It just occurred to me right now that they were wearing seat belts. Thank you, kids, for listening.) The accident wasn't horrible, and everyone is ok, so why do we all feel this way? I wasn't even there, but watching them react has me feeling shaken up as well.
When the kids first got home, Tim and I didn't know what happened. We were just finishing up in the kitchen and Megan and Gabby came in and sat down at the island. Tim and I continued talking, but after a minute I noticed that Megan and Gabby were quiet and Nate and Jeran weren't in the house yet. I looked at Megan and she was staring off into the distance. I asked what was wrong. Silence. I asked again, and asked, "Where are the boys?" Gabby answered. "Nate and Jeran are outside looking at Nate's car." Megan hadn't moved, her eyes still fixed on some distant point in space while her mind was a thousand miles away from our conversation. A little at a time it came out that they were in an accident, but it was hard to get the details. The
Tim and I are good non-reactors (most of the time). It comes with living with five teenagers. As Nate and Jeran came in, and the story started to unfold, we were just glad everyone was ok.
Or at least kind of ok. Does fine on the outside and injured on the inside count as ok?
It was that not-so-ok energy I was picking up on and it was the huge emotions swirling beneath the surface that I recognized and wanted to push away, but couldn't.
Nate was very quiet, which is what he does when he's overwhelmed. Jeran was talking a lot, which is what he does when he's overwhelmed. And Megan... She was still downstairs in her room. Tim went outside with Nate to look at his car. I went find Megan.
She was laying on her bed with the lights off, and her beanie hat pulled over her eyes. She wouldn't let me coax her to open her eyes. She wouldn't talk. She was frozen. When I finally got her to sit up and open her eyes, she let me walk her through a few grounding exercises. (Sometimes being a therapist does come in handy.)
She relaxed a little, but it only lasted for a minute before she flopped back on the bed and pulled her hat back over her eyes. "We slid," I heard her say. There was no emotion. Her voice was flat and and seemed disconnected.
I was rubbing her head. "That sounds scary," I said, "Just sliding down the hill."
She was frozen again and just repeated herself. "We slid," she said.
Eventually she let me coax her upstairs where she sat again at the island with Gabby. I wanted to keep her talking about what happened, so I asked what they were doing before they slid. Megan didn't know.
"We were listening to music," Gabby answered.
"O yeah," Megan remembered.
"What were you listening to?" I asked, still trying to get Megan to talk a little more about it.
Gabby knew. She named the song, and said she remembered because they were talking about how they didn't like the singer's voice. Megan hadn't remembered that before Gabby reminded her.
I watched the differences in their responses, Gabby so relaxed and talking about it like she talks about a day at school. Megan was still frozen, trying to connect herself to what had happened, but still in shock. Gabby knows trauma, but not this trauma...the helpless feeling of life ending in a split second car accident.
Nate was in his room, alone. Tim had been with him and rubbed his shoulders and talked to him, but Nate hadn't responded much. I also gave it a try. Nate was laying on his bed playing his DS. I tried to talk to him for a few minutes, but he didn't respond much. I told him I'd check back again in a few minutes. I feel so helpless.
By the time I left Nate's room, I felt the anger and fear of grief and trauma building up inside me. I went in another room to find ribbon to put on more plates of treats for neighbors, but I couldn't find the ribbon and I couldn't concentrate long enough to think about where it might be. I started to cry. Alone in a closet full of storage bins, tears flowed down my cheeks, and the helplessness I was feeling sank in. Like so many times before, I sat with my children and instinctively talked them through the reactions that had them all stuck. And like so many times before, when things slowed down, the emotions of watching my children struggle through trauma symptoms finally hit me.
I hate trauma. I really, really, really hate trauma. I hate that 6+ years after the trauma, one fender bender on a snowy cold afternoon can put us all back here. Frozen. Emotional. Shut down. When will this all end? When will a slippery skid into a fire hydrant be just that? When will these tears not be for the losses our family has suffered?
A few hours later: The trauma is still here, but we got through it, at least enough. Now the monster feels a little more like this:
Sad. Exhausted. Defeated. No longer attacking, but still a monster. I still hate him.
Tim found me earlier when I was trying to type out my frustrations about trauma and I cried to him. We hate trauma together.
"I thought it would all go away after a few months, or even a year," he said.
"Me too." I said.
We talked some more, then we went downstairs together to see how Nate was doing. He was still on his bed, playing his DS. He didn't say a lot at first, but Tim hugged him and told him he loved him and knew this was hard.
I remembered that all of the kids had said one thing: They were skidding sideways into the fire hydrant, and could see it coming at the side of the car, and Nate turned the car so they drove front first into the fire hydrant instead.
"How did you turn the car?" I asked him. He wasn't sure what I was talking about until I told him what the others had said.
Still playing his DS, he said, "I did what Dad said to do. I turned into the skid."
And there it was. That one thing we needed...he needed... to know the helplessness they felt might not have been helplessness after all. In that moment where it mattered, where the others in the car saw the fire hydrant coming at them, he remembered what he had been taught and did what he could to keep himself and them safe.
"But it still wasn't enough," Nate said. "I couldn't stop it from happening."
The Ugly Trauma Monster was back. For a minute, I had hoped that helplessness wouldn't win, but it still had a grip on my son.
I tried again. "But somehow you remembered what dad told you," I said. Then I told him that in all the time I've been driving, whenever there is a moment of panic, I don't think. I get through it, but I don't think, and later I have no idea what I did or how I got through it. "You did exactly what you were supposed to do." I told him, "And it sounds like everyone felt safer because of what you did."
I could feel the Ugly Trauma Monster shrink back again. He still wanted to be ugly, but he looked pretty ridiculous.
By the time we all went to bed, the score for the day was:
Ugly Trauma Monster: 1
Jarman Family: 1
It's not a great ending. We wish we didn't have an Ugly Trauma Monster to fight. We wish he'd go away and leave us alone. In reality, we know he'll shrink back into his corner for a while, and lurk there for a few weeks, popping up when we feel helpless, but otherwise leaving us alone.
I'm thankful Joie wasn't in the car, and tonight she was pretty oblivious to all the goings on, absorbed in "It's A Wonderful Life." (Which most of the time it is.)
Now go away, Ugly Trauma Monster. We have a life to live. Disneyland is calling... We'll be there in 4 days, away from the snow and ice, soaking up the fun in 70+ degree weather.
Life goes on.
This story will one day be known as, "Kicking The Ugly Trauma Monster To the Curb."
I never now that you felt like that, that night. I cryed just reading it! Thank you for being by mom. I love you to the moon and back!!
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