Trauma is always there.
I put it to sleep with work. Work, especially if it’s something I have to do out of obligation to someone else always keeps trauma at bay.
I tune it out with mindless scrolling. Oh, sometimes my mind completely checks out while I fumble through pins or shorts. Hours go by without a tear, without a sigh.
I keep it quiet spending time with friends and loved ones. Safe people.
I seduce it with stories. It doesn’t matter if I read a book, watch a movie, or I absorb a graphic novel. If there is a story, Trauma gets enraptured. It loves magic and absurdity. It shivers around love.
But now I am here, with days to spend on nothing.
The less medication I take, the more I am myself again.
Today I took very little by comparison to the previous days of my recovery. The codeine is gone. The ibuprofen is gone. I am lowering the dosage of paracetamol. Very soon, it’s going to be me and trauma.
The physical pain is too little now.
A numbness akin to depression had helped me in the past to cover up my trauma, a wooden lid and a blanket upon the well of tears, but I don’t want to go there anymore. That numbness is a monster in itself, who wants to swallow me.
I am too well, now, to listen to its call, to think about ending things, and find it consolating.
There is a stubbornness in me, now. I want to get better. I want to live and stop surviving. I bought a course about meditation.
I am so scared to use it.
Because meditation is effective but it also unbottles everything. I meditate and I cry. I meditate and trauma rises from its grave in a cloud of mould and moths.
I need a guardian angel as I practice meditation. I need a sword to protect me. I need some grounding technique to escort me, a reminder that I am safe, now. Will my crystal wand be enough?
Nina Trema 