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Trigger warning for assault and pregnancy or child loss:
I knew what he could do. I had seen the gun in his hand as he threatened a man across the street before the other man jumped into a car and drove off. As he walked towards me, I had nowhere to run to. The poorly lit and isolated bus stop was my only hope. This was in the days before cell phones, and I was waiting for the bus in the dark after my evening college art class.
He told me he would put his hand over my mouth, pull me into the bushes, rape and kill me. He said his hand would cover my mouth while he held me down and no one would hear me scream for help.
If the bus showed up soon I might be saved. If it didn’t his hand would be across my mouth, no hope.
The bus arrived just in time, but this is trauma.
I am not the woman or man, boy or girl who felt the hand across their mouth while they were held down. One in six woman have felt that hand, have been held down. One in four girls, one in six boys. Many of them in the houses they are now quarantined in. By the family members who are the only ones they are currently allowed to “gather” with.
I cannot imagine being isolated at the bus stop with that man for months. I would not have survived if the bus had not shown up to offer me my only way of escape. But now the yellow school buses are all parked and children feel the hand across their mouth, and they leave the house hidden in masks. This is trauma.
. . .
My child was dying inside of me. Grown healthy a full nine months, my body opening to birth him on his due date, the doctors were telling me now that something was wrong. They said to push, push, push.
It was the night before Halloween and all the nurses were masked, costumed. A witch and Taylor Swift dug their nails into my legs as I struggled to push my stillborn baby out.
I went home the next day to more masks, more costumes. My breasts swelling and hormones surging for an infant that was not there. From then on every October I would steel myself to endure the masks and gruesome decorations. It was a yearly twilight zone I would re-enter and relive pushing death from between my legs, holding a too still child that I had loved and waited for while everyone walked around masked and costumed oblivious to my invisible pain.
. . .
I woke to a small stream of blood; by the time I got to the hospital it was soaking my pants. I told the nurse no other birth had been like this. She said it was normal and left me sitting in a waiting room doubled in half gripping my bleeding, throbbing belly. Finally a doctor who knew my history arrived at the hospital and I was rushed to the OR, a needle stuck in my spine, body stripped and cut open.
They saved me.
My placenta was in shreds, hemorrhaging. If I would have sat in that waiting room much longer it would have been the last place I saw. But my child was not breathing. I lay there cut right in half, arms spread and strapped to a cross. Masked faces floating all around me. I could hear them talking about what bad shape I was in. I couldn’t hear a baby’s cry. “Another one lost, I can’t survive this” I thought. Then a cry pierced the air. My torn placenta, all the bleeding, the waiting for help had put my baby on the edge of life and death. They laid him in my arms but it would be months before I healed.
It would be months of rushing to the ER in the middle of the night bleeding. It would be months of needles, medicine, and hospitals before I could hold my baby and say that we were safe. Months of masked faces, and blood.
. . .
I lost two more children. One early and one mid-term miscarriage. I went into a comfortable office to a smiling doctor’s face eager to see my little one floating on an ultrasound screen.
There was nothing, no heartbeat. “Another one lost, how will I survive this?” I thought.
When they take your miscarried baby from your body, there are blood tests, surgery prep, then walking down a long hall holding your own IV. I climbed onto a table, shaped like a cross, a hole below my hips. I laid my arms out, no need to hold me down for what would be taken from me.
The last thing I saw while my children were still in my body were masked faces. The last thing I saw was the mask coming down onto my face. The mask that would put me to sleep while death was removed from me, an unseen funeral. A mask enveloping, blotting everything out.
. . .
This is trauma. There are many types.
These are my stories, there are many like them with their own nuances, their unique pain.
I have medical conditions, a disability, and a mental health diagnosis that prevent me from wearing a mask. I am not ashamed of these, but no one has the right to my private information.
My story is mine to share or keep within my own heart.
My story is much more than I could possibly type out in a blog post. These are snapshots, memories that I offer to you in the name of those who are unable to share. In the name of someone who needs your understanding. In the name of those who without empathy may not be able to survive this season.
Please be kind.
There are trauma survivors everywhere, and they do not need to show papers or wear a sign. They are the teenage girl walking past you on the street, the mother in line at the grocery store, the young boy you glimpse from a car window, the man at the desk six feet away from you at work.
This is the era of #metoo and still survivors suffer unknown. Still survivors are shamed daily.
There is more than we can know riding on our acceptance, inclusion, and kindness.
