I recently had a revelation about my own personal trauma vortex, the pandora's box of the worst feelings imaginable that we all seem to have stowed away somewhere in our psyches. I have recently experienced inordinate amounts of upheaval, and loss, and shock, and love, and all of it. I have been "triggered" with such pounding regularity that my trigger might be broken at this point, and perhaps that is why I was able to have a deeper realization about what I used to think of as my pain. I was just too damn tired to feel all that shit again. I'm talking about deep grief, paralyzing terror, seemingly unending loss, and volcanic rage. Like what comes up when your lover walks out on you, or your boss screws you over in a big way, or your dad doesn't show up at your wedding, again. I was having one of those moments where one of those big things seemed to be happening, and it was as if I could see myself standing on the edge of the vortex. I could feel the power of the dark side, and I was just, yes, I think I was just too goddamned tired to go there. I had things to do that had to get done. And I just thought, no. I'm not going there. And I didn't. And I sat there in the car, talking to my dear friend Palma on the phone, and understood for the first time that I actually had a choice. And that the feelings in the trauma vortex, had absolutely nothing to do with what was happening to me right now.
It's like my therapist says, "You're a grown woman with a credit card. But you feel like a four year old whose just been thrown out of a car and abandoned in the desert on a moonless night." The trauma vortex is full of the horrific feelings that come from being a powerless child, experiencing abandonment, or abuse, and no way out. "It's not like you could hop on your big wheel and check in at the Four Seasons," says my therapist. "You were stuck."
That's no longer the case, though, and so those feelings in that trauma vortex no longer apply. I mean, if you're abducted and beaten by aliens or terrorists, that's different. That was not, nor has it ever been, the case with me. I was just losing lovers or being rejected as an artist, or failing at making money. Garden variety life issues. And yet I was always going there, feeling those dark and awful feelings, and even thinking that I had to, that this was what life was somehow about. I may have even considered myself brave for being willing to feel those feelings. Maybe I was brave. But I was also misguided.
Anyway, I sat in the car, almost stunned, wondering if this was maybe the first time I had ever experienced the present moment within the context of experiencing loss. Trauma vortex or no, there is still pain when you lose someone you love, or lose your job, or your best friend. But without the trauma vortex, it's present moment pain. Instead of falling into a pit of your own despair, you are just standing upright while the person you love most in the world walks away from you and disappears beyond the horizon line. For example. And you feel the loss. And you know you will survive it. That's what you didn't know when you were an infant, or a toddler, or a kid, or an adult trapped in her own trauma vortex. It is not, in fact, unbearable. You can bear it, and you will.
