*excerpt from work-in-progress memoir
The alarm has sounded and I have turned it off. It always sounds like a good idea the night before to get up at 5 am. Nighttime Me is very ambitious compared to 5 am Me. I lay there and contemplate going back to sleep. 5:01 am Me is stronger, though, and remembers Nighttime Me and all those feelings well, so I remind myself that it’s always hard to wake up and get moving no matter what time I get up, that I got enough sleep, that I will be fine shortly. Still, I don’t move.
Then I hear it: among the symphony of the morning birds is the distinct hoot of an owl. I’m wide awake now, not because I’m rushing up to find the owl, but because I am reminded with absolute clarity of a morning like this one just a few months into my last job where I had closed my eyes and leaned my head back for just a few moments around the same 5:00 am hour, my overnight shift kicking my butt, and that was all it took for bizarre chaos to begin.
One moment I was so close to the end of the night part of the shift, the hours when so much is quiet the minutes stretch by one hour at a time, and the next, a frantic knocking at the office door, which I rarely closed, brought me to my feet immediately. When I opened the door and was alerted to the situation, I felt the warmest blanket of calm settle on my shoulders. Ah, a crisis. I can handle a crisis.
The hour that followed ended up with me outside on the phone to medical services to get help for my client who needed more than I or our organization could provide, and all I could hear was an owl hooting. The morning was chilly, as they most often are in Colorado, but I didn’t really feel that. My adrenaline was a heater of its own, and I realized it was a good adrenaline rush, the kind that spoke truth to me: I can do hard things. And the owl spoke to me, keeping me company, a witness to that which I would never really be able to talk about in detail outside of the walls of the organization, no matter how much I needed to process it.
And I did need to process it. I needed to process my part in it, how I felt, how I reacted. Not as an advocate, but as a person. Why was I so comfortable in crisis? Why did the mundane and slow hours make me reconsider what I was doing there, but the crises were exciting? How awful did it make me that I enjoyed thriving in a crisis, how I needed moments like that to make me feel like I was alive and doing a good job?
I hear the owl this morning and I am right back there, standing in the darkness, watching my client, waiting on medical services, watching the sun slowly start to rise, feeling my heart beat excitedly in my chest. I’m right back to those questions, and my work on myself has led me to understanding that excitement a bit more. Yes, I’m good in a crisis because I have a tremendous amount of experience, but it’s also that experience that created pathways in my brain that crave the drama of some trauma. Even today I can find myself bored without much happening. No crisis? Meh.
To see that in myself is also hard. Yet, to understand it helps me to see. I must be careful not to be Chicken Little, looking for parts of the sky to fall. But I also must accept that part of me, that I can use it as a strength, something I can offer for others. I’m a good port in the storm, a lighthouse to help guide away from the dangerous rocks.
A conversation with a friend in crisis last night gives me just the clarity I need. Her situation breaks my heart and I am not at all happy or excited that she has experienced trauma. Still, I feel the joy bubble up and spread throughout my body as she turns to me and asks for help and advice and resources. This! I can do this! Halfway through giving her my truth in love, I can feel my heart beating in my chest, a rhythm that reminds me that I thrive in helping, in being in the muck with others, not because I enjoy their pain but because I get to use the pain I went through to help them get through theirs. It’s not a perfect system, but it also isn’t broken. You use what you have — for helping, for writing, for everything.
We creatives are like little hoarders, little squirrels, tucking away every experience, every nugget of conversation that delights us or moves us or angers us, darting from idea to idea, our little arms full, shoving ideas into our cheeks so we can grab more, and then plopping all those things we hoarded onto the table to examine them, understand them, file them. And when the moment arises, when the question is asked, when the owl hoots and takes you on a trip through time, we have just the right bit of red thread you need to bound up your wounds or tie your own ideas together, to just help.
Today I’ve written myself right to what I want to write about for a submission. I’m never sure where my practice writing is taking place — in my journal, my blog, this book? Regardless, it all counts, and every word counts, and relaunching means leaning into what counts and what works, even if there isn’t a certainty of where it all goes.
Sadly, I don’t remember the name of the client from that night long ago. You’d think it’d be hard to forget, but the crises came by the dozens in that work, and though I can see her face clear as day, along with all the others — and I would surely recognize them if I ran into them at the grocery store — her name eludes me. I wonder about her, as I often wonder about all my clients, and then I wonder if the people who knew me during my own crisis think about me. I’m easily found, and my clients are not (hopefully due to good advice on how to be safe and disappear), but I wonder. Because as of today, I’m doing all right. I hear that owl hooting, and I think that’s what she’s asking: are you still OK? I wasn’t, but I am. Thank you for asking.
If you’re just joining me: I’m a survivor of complex trauma and am on my healing journey. I share openly and candidly of my experiences with child abuse, neglect, sexual assault, teen pregnancy (and teen marriage), domestic violence, and all the complicated living that comes with it, alongside the beauty that is life. This whole blog comes with a TRIGGER WARNING. Almost everything I share is pretty much stream of consciousness writing. I am not a doctor or counselor (but I am a trauma informed coach and advocate). What’s with the tiara? Watch This!
Header image stock photo by Sheri Hooley via Unsplash.
