What Happens When Therapy Breaks You Wide Open at 34 Years Old?
spoiler: no rainbows, no butterflies--but there’s sunshine in the forecast.
A couple weeks ago, I watched a turtle get run over by an F-150. We were in bumper to bumper traffic on a country two-way street, but traffic going in the opposite direction was a ghost town—like we were leaving a Taylor Swift concert in our lane and their lane was closed down for her tour bus. While fixating on this bizarre phenomenon, I noticed a little turtle crossing the road. It was living up to its stereotypes taking all the time in the world, glistening in the kind of warm light only afternoon rain colliding with golden hour sun can provide. He was making his way, taking his time.
I opened my mouth to tell the kids to look at the sweet sight, but before I could make a sound, a truck came out of nowhere speeding toward it. It hit the turtle with the force of Hiroshima and I’ll spare you the imagery that is still stuck in my head. Lets just say Saw IV should have consulted turtle roadkill footage to up their stomach-turning special effects.
I shouted in a way I didn’t expect and varied between, “Oh my gosh” “Oh my goshhhhh” and “Oh. my. goodness,” able to hear my kids asking, “Mommy what is it?? Mommy, what’s wrong!!” But unable to answer. When I could finally close my mouth and compose myself, I told them I was watching a turtle cross the road as a truck came and ran over it. They asked things like, “Will it go to heaven, do you think?” “Was it a bad man who did it on purpose?” Zeameh, my four year old said, “I bet it survived, mommy. Don’t worry.” And I felt compelled to assure her with zero details to back up my confidence that it definitely didn’t survive.
I took a deep breath at the conclusion of the question answering and lively discussion and with my exhale said, “My goodness. That was traumatic!” To which Zeameh replied, “Mommy, you mean DRA-matic.” And that has clanged around in my head like coins in a tin can ever since.
What’s trauma to me may be drama to you.
And that’s scary and vulnerable. It feels like I’m inside out and everything is too sensitive lately. If I were right-side in, I wouldn’t feel this way. But the Lord has allowed me to, for a period of time, walk around more raw and more delicate, flesh exposed to allow that part to see the light to be changed in a way that lasts.
Before my friend passed away in February, she asked me to go see her therapist. She had been urging me for months because while in some ways we hardly knew each other, in others we were instant twin souls. Her cancer diagnosis came in the thick of her EMDR work in therapy and I preferred to be spoon-fed healing at a safe distance rather than dive into the waters myself. She asked me question after question one night when I was venting to her a deep frustration I couldn’t seem to move past within myself. She said she didn’t want to diagnose me or label me, but she was pretty sure I had OCD. Since she had it too, it’s something she had thought for a while but was waiting on a therapist to reveal it.
When Enakhe was in the hospital this time last year, a friend of mine came to bring me my favorite snacks and keep me company while O was holding down the fort with the older kids. I had unraveled, as one does when their two month old is in the hospital, but it was the unraveling that destroys layers of outer protection. The real me was exposed and there wasn’t a sewing kit or bandage big enough to hide it. After a few hours of sharing my questions and thoughts with her, she asked me as she had a few times in our years of friendship if I’d scheduled the first therapy appointment.
Therapy is something I always knew I needed as an unmedicated person with severe anxiety and bouts of depression, but it felt like the only thing I could lump in with pelvic floor exercises and physical therapy to be reserved for “someday.” It also is the exact thing that can always roll over into next month’s list. The doctor’s appointment and the meetings and the kids’ dentist and the deadline can’t wait—I guess I’ll push the appointment off again. Month after month, year after year. I had emailed Elayna’s therapist a few times before, making and rescheduling appointments for someday when the clouds parted and the stars aligned.
When Elayna passed away, I made the appointment. I stuck to it. I was in that office within a week.
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