Rather Suspect

For a long while I’ve tried to work through the deep trauma of losing my mother when I was a young boy.

Trauma is a sneaking, insidious creature. Its first job is to hide, and it does this by burrowing deep into your identity. There’s no better place to conceal itself. Trauma is the computer virus that interweaves itself into the operating system so that no matter how many times you later run that anti-virus software, you won’t uncover it.

The metaphor is an easy one of course: you need to study yourself to uncover the trauma. And with enough examination, you do see it. First just a little, then more and more.

I always thought that becoming aware of that trauma was “the work.” I thought once I spotted it in myself, doors would unlock. Those doors might have rusted shut, of course, but the key was to break those locks and then it was simply a matter of time: open a few and find the joy on the other side.

But there is another layer to the process — and that’s extricating yourself from the trauma or, rather, it from you. And that is delicate, difficult surgery, because over time it’s wrapped its tentacles around so many different parts of you. It’s not that you can point at an action you’ve taken and say “that wasn’t me, that was the trauma.” Those actions were yours, and the results your life. So where is the boundary?

For example, I value qualities like strength and independence. I admire people who stand up for themselves and for others. But — why do I say I value those qualities any more than, say, the ability for one to be vulnerable and to work alongside another? Do those values I admire belong to “me” — or did the trauma tell me those qualities were important because I needed them to survive when I was younger?

And if that is the case — where does the trauma end and the “me” begin? Easy enough to say, of course, that it’s all “me” — that we are the total of all our experiences, no matter how sharp or negative. But I think anyone who has felt the effects of something so difficult will find that statement unsatisfying. There is a point in which there is a desire to free oneself from the beast, to drive a dagger into its tentacles and wriggle free.

But perhaps one doesn’t feee oneself by killing it. Perhaps you need to speak to the trauma, to tell it to release you, to let go. Or — perhaps — you need to speak to those parts of you that you wish to develop and give them the strength to break free of their own accord.