[Issue #10] If We’re Not Our Trauma, Who Are We?
An inner exploration of self identity
“I know it hurts. I know you feel like you weren’t good enough. But your breakthrough is coming. Don’t give up on yourself now. You came too far. Your value is still high and you’re still beautiful...”
― Keishorne Scott
Let’s go back to Colorado, when I was in my early 20s and still a pretty newly-minted Airman First Class. It was around 2004 or so, spring time, the dry air smelled like snow and the sun had waved goodnight hours ago.
I was getting gussied up to go to the only gay bar in town (at the time) but I had no one to go with.
I had become my own best friend because, to put it mildly, my mental health issues kept everyone away from me. No one wanted the chaos and the darkness of my energy back then and looking back, I don’t blame them. At the time, though, it hurt and it only drove the stake of loneliness deeper.
In my early 20’s, one of few female Airmen, and, as far as I knew, the only lesbian. But I couldn’t tell anyone. Or act too gay. Or dress too gay. Or behave too gay for fear of someone telling anyone at Command. And of course, it felt like there was a target on my back. I was given the duties of carrying the M203 (a grenade launcher that attaches to the M4 rifle) and all the ammo that came with it. It wasn’t just me getting the shaft - a lot of us young women were given the shaft in unimaginable ways. Another young woman I knew, on a different flight, was tasked to carry the grenade launcher and she had to be only 5 feet tall. But we did it. We did it all. I did it all, everything I was asked to do and more. Just in case. It was padded protection for my identity, my reputation, that I was strong and could do what the men could do. That I wasn’t just a lesbian.
The loneliness sunk me and it was only worsened by the passing of President Clinton’s policy, coined “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in February of ‘94, which effectively shut out any openly-gay persons from serving in the military. The policy was highly discriminatory and those of us that were “out”, or found out, or, worst of all, outed, were immediately issued ‘other than honorable’ discharge papers. What’s an ‘other than honorable’ discharge?
Quill Lawrence, in this article and transcript (discussing PTSD and military discharges) from NPR, puts it like this:
“An other than honorable discharge is an administrative discharge where your command can essentially kick you out… in lieu of court martial, et cetera. It can be for something like failing a drug test, lapses in military good order and discipline.”
There I was, sitting there, on the small bench just outside the door to the club. I sat with my legs crossed, black zip boots up to my knees and a tiny mini skirt that was woefully uncomfortable. The fluorescent bulb buzzed and the halo of light flickered behind me. It was cool but not cold and the goosebumps on my freshly shaven legs told me to go home. It wasn’t like I was sitting there, working up the gumption to enter the club. And I wasn’t waiting for anyone to meet me there. I just sat there, hoping someone, anyone, would walk up to me and what, take pity on me? Relieve me of my loneliness? Help me find a sense of belonging and self? Waiting for someone to tell me, again, who I am, who I should be? The answer was, quite plainly, yes.
It dawned on me that my external atmosphere did not match the inner shit show that seemed to bubble relentlessly beneath my thin skinned surface. I didn’t know what to do with the chronic continuation of internal incongruence I felt, so I tucked it away and the feelings of loneliness and sadness eventually overwhelmed me. Of course I acted out from those feelings. Those feelings, to this very day, still feel uncomfortable to contend with (I’m currently learning in therapy how not to hand off my deeply uncomfortable feelings to someone else, like my wife, to deal with them).
I don’t remember this much, but flipping through one of my journals from that time, I attempted to overdose (spoiler alert: I’m somehow still alive after all the shit I have been through, unless you’re reading this after I die). I don’t remember telling anyone, but I do remember feeling more shame when I woke up, seemingly perfectly fine. The same kind of shame that haunts me after a self-harm episode or a binge-eating one or after calling the suicide hotline. Then the shame seems to fuel all my other depressive/addict cycles and if I don’t call someone to help get me off the crazy train, well…choo-choo and off a fucking cliff I go.
Given all this, I asked my therapist, Elise, how I’m supposed to manage to be…whoever I am without the terrible behaviors rooted in PTSD. I asked how I’m supposed to be content and comfortable with a baseline of happiness instead of anger and sadness. I asked her how I’m supposed to find my inner grounding when there’s concrete slabs of trauma squeezing me together, into what can feel like nothing but a compacted shell filled with everyone else’s ideas of me. Or visions of me. Or dreams of me. Or expectations of me.
And while she didn’t exactly answer the question as point-blank as I wanted, Elise guided me into a perspective that is much more reflective of my version of who I want to be. Now. Not later. Not after I “work through my trauma”. Not next year.
Now.
Maybe the only way to learn who I am is only possible through, because of, my trauma. The things I’ve done. The things I’ve seen. And all the things I couldn’t control (or stop) that happened to me, around me.
How am I supposed to be just me without all all my baggage and dark anger? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can fully be within myself without darkness and anger and sadness. I don’t know what that would feel like. I do know that, after changing my name (did you notice?) to Adrian, it feels as though the shadows in my identity have been met with the light of self-compassion and patience. And of course, belonging from those around me.
Of course, self-compassion and patience are still things I’m working on (my support network, though, has been nothing short of incredible, loving, and kind about my name change).
Who am I, who will I be, without the weight of my trauma and PTSD?
I guess I’m still me. Imperfect, loyal, loving, emotional, intelligent, hilarious, prone to startle easily. Me, who goes to bed by 9pm most nights. Me, who loves to write and give away the gift of words and stories. Me, who loves spending time with her wife on the deck in the summer time watching the birds. Me, a lover of all things cannabis and me who enjoys smoking weed and lover of animals. Me, who’s socially akward, brash, candid and me who ponders life’s wonders. Me, the procrastinator and inventor of obstacles. Me, so good at burning down anything resembling happiness, learning not to light the match. Me, who does not like mushrooms or olives and me, lover of cheese and tacos.
Me.
Not lesbian. Not Airman. Not producer of things. Not “not enough”. Not white. Not black.
Fully fleshed and destined to the same fate as all us mere humans. Me. Here. Breathing. Facing shadows that have tried to end me. Facing fears that have tried to bend me.
I am, have been, will always be Me.
There is no outrunning yourself. There is no arriving to yourself. There’s no finding of you, like you’ve been lost on an island for centuries.
One of my favorite songs (and one that’s on my inevitable funeral playlist) is “Seasons of Love” from the Broadway play “Rent”, lyrics by Jonathan Larson (you can listen on YT here)-
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes
Five hundred, twenty five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?In daylights, in sunsets?
In midnights, in cups of coffee?
In inches, in miles?
In laughter, in strife?In five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in a life?How about love?
So, who are you compared to who you want to be? Maybe we can get there together.
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You are light and wisdom!
You are a beautiful soul, Adrian.