Undammed, if I do; damned, if I don’t

I have spent every one of the last 35 days trying to write this post – and in a way, I’ve been trying to write it since January.

I have been in a state they call ‘functional freeze’. It’s a common, fairly awful, parting gift left after trauma. At some point, I will write about it at greater length. It is an experience I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend prior. At its simplest level, it is exactly what the term implies – a state of being functional… ish… but frozen in a paralysis which is not total but isn’t far off. You can do… the things you absolutely have to. You can function at the base level, at least, but outside of that, you are in this dazed fog which feels like walking in mud.

The two things I can tell you about my being in ‘functional freeze’ are: 1) It has sucked. Lord, has it sucked. It has just been the most miserable slogging, unshakeable torpor in the world; and 2) It is entirely normal, my being in that state… and what that state has been like.

Over the past year and a half, I experienced a very long series of things which were very abnormal. My being impacted in the way I have, on the other hand, has been normal.

How I have been impacted and the degree to which I have been are not just within the normal range of how people are affected by experiences like the ones I have had, it is common to the point of typical.

I haven’t, as yet, shed enough light on what those experiences were…

They are what I have been trying to write about.

They are the subject of the piece I have been trying to write… and I have, literally, done nothing other than try to write it for over a month. I have just tried and tried and tried. There was a week when I was away on annual trip. I spent 80% of it trying to write this. There hasn’t been a day when I haven’t sat down at my computer and tried.

Between my attempts earlier this year and my attempts this time around, I have probably written close to 250,000 words trying to write one piece – whether it be 2,500 words or 10,000.

I have literally written the equivalent of two and a half books trying to get something out that I haven’t been able to get out.

The fact that you are reading this means something has changed. A dam has broken.

I’d love to tell you I made that happen, but I didn’t. I wish I had… I’d love nothing more than to say I achieved some great triumph in Overcoming Adversity and that it was me who dynamited the dam, but I haven’t, and it wasn’t.

This entry exists. There is a reason why.

As much as I would have wished otherwise, it just isn’t because of my effort, determination, hard work, resilience, recovery, or healing.

It isn’t a result of all of my deep personal work to find old wounds and bring them to healing.

It isn’t because I found the key in what is now a compendium of knowledge on the psychology, neurology, and physiology of emotional trauma.

It’s not because I can now explain to you why my hippocampus looks like a squashed grape while my amygdala is throbbing like a good damn bass in some club in Ibiza.

Worst of all, it isn’t because of my strength.

That is the worst of it.

It isn’t because I was strong… or because I refused to give up or give in or let something break me. Goddamn it. It should have been. That should have been why. I’ve done so much work. Why couldn’t that have been why?

Why couldn’t it be because I won.

Why couldn’t it just be that.

Because I haven’t.

As cruel and unjust and unfair as it is, the thing that broke the dam wasn’t me winning; it was suffering one last brutal blow… and then ceding ground and ceding ground and ceding ground until there was no more ground to give up and my back was to the wall… and then, in feeling my back up against it, the most primal instinct of them all kicked in: survival… and when it did, in the irony of all ironies, the systemic response that had been an errant, ruinous runaway train earlier this year was exactly what I needed…because this time, there really was only fight or flight.

I didn’t win. I was brought to the brink of being defeated entirely. I refuse.

It isn’t cognitive anymore. It’s primal. I refuse to be defeated by something that has held me hostage for a year and brought me to my knees but not yet onto my back.

You are about to hear from me again.

Something DID break the dam.

It was sudden and abrupt. It happened on a Friday night.

It was an act of abject cruelty and utter selfishness. It was a violation of the portion of the basic moral code we as humans all share regardless of whether we have the rest of in common. It was amoral and wrong. It was something good and decent people don’t do… or reverse if they, in a bad moment, accidentally have.

It was just cruelty.

It was just despicable, deplorable selfishness.

And it wasn’t new.

It was just worse.

Being on the receiving end of it plunged me right back to where I was in February. I had a silent panic attack in the car the next morning after fleeing a Panera in an attempt to stave it off.

I was… right… back… where… I… was… five months earlier.

And the reason was the same: a vulgar indecency and a depraved disregard for another human being.

I have been dealing with something for over a year.

I have kept it to myself.

It is heavy.

Carrying it in silence – carrying it in secret - has made it heavier to the point of near crushing.

Doing so hasn’t been voluntary.

I was coerced into silence partially under threat… and then frozen into a state of shocked silence by that threat both materializing and growing more severe. It began with a threat dangled for the first time last July… which then became real… and then began hurting me… and causing me harm… and then got worse… and escalated… until finally, it threatened to destroy aspects of my life altogether in ways that were irrecoverable.

I tell the truth for a living.

There is something I haven’t told the truth about… and the reason is because I was cowed into silence under threat of harm.

My outages here… all of the times I have gone dark dating back to last summer… the reasons why you have read only a dozen or so pieces from me since last September instead of the 40+ you would have read otherwise… they have been the result of only two things:

1) A silence I was extorted into against my will, under duress, and out of fear; and
2) The trauma caused by the situation in which I was being effectively blackmailed

I have been dealing with something privately for over a year now.

A year. An entire year. An entire year of my life.

And I have kept it in and kept it in and kept it in…

Doing so has been the most lonely, isolating experience of my life.

I have never felt so alone.

I have never felt so alone in something.

I have been trying to talk about it since January.

Now, I have to.

I have no choice.

I have to talk about it.

I have to talk about it now.

I cannot not talk about it.

And it cannot wait.

And, so, now… now am I going to talk about it.

After a miserable year I suffered more painfully than any other in my life, now I’m going to talk about it.

This past year has been more painful than the one when I experienced some trauma, tragedy, or newfound hardship every three weeks for months upon months - the year when three people in my life died… and my marriage ended… and my job went away. It has been more stressful than a year when I racked up *FIVE* separate experiences that fell in the Top 10 of the most stressful things an adult can go through.

And I…

have…

kept…

it…

to…

myself.

Now, I’m going to talk about it, because I need to.

Given how impossible that has proven up until now, my doing so will likely be a messy affair. The writing will likely be more a divulgence than an authorship. I describe our meetups as ‘noisy dinners’. This will not be one of them. I call this place of ours a ‘long table’. This will not be at that table. It will be at yours.

I need to talk.

I don’t need anything from you in receiving it other than that you do. What I need is an hour with you at your kitchen table where the only thing you offer me is the very best thing you can offer someone carrying something heavy which they have suffered in isolation and can no longer bear alone:

Seeing them.

Doing nothing more than seeing them.

I need to be seen now.

More than that, I need to see myself seen.

Along the way, I will explain why that is.

I need to see myself seen…

in this room… in this community… by you and the person next to you and everyone to the left, right, and across.

I need to be seen by the people at my own table so as to return to it.

To do that, I first need a seat at yours with nothing more than you in another and with you offering me nothing more than seeing me… because that is not nothing. Right now, it is everything.

I have been keeping something under seal. I just need to loosen the hatch and let in some air… by letting out something I have been keeping in.

I was always going to get to this place.

I was always going to talk about it at some point.

I was always going to tell the story.

I just wanted so badly to change the narrative, to have the character in it change; to be able to write it differently as a result and have it reach a different ending.

I wanted so badly for there to be a redemption at the end of Shawshank.

Instead, I lost another month of my life; suffered another wasted July: and reached a point of resignation for the second August in a row… and for the same reason as last August: a betrayal. Last year, it was a betrayal of trust. This year, it was the betrayal of faith.

A month ago, I was on the receiving end of the most deplorably heartless, cruel mistreatment I have ever experienced in my life… and it was in response to an offer of kindness.

This was a new low. New lows just haven’t been new at all.

I have been going through something for an entire year.

It’s time that I talked about it. It is just time.

I will be back with at least the start of that within the next two days.

I would say within the next day, but tomorrow is my birthday, and while I’m not feeling particularly celebratory, my son and I are heading off to my mom’s for cake with a few of my siblings.

I turn 55 tomorrow. 54 was terrible. The goddamn whole of it was terrible…

but as the song I held onto through other hard years goes:

‘A long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last’

Tomorrow, I start a new year in my life. I will usher it in with the hope of that second line being a wish made with closed eyes while blowing out candles…

…but the next day, I will get up and start the work to make it real.

This year will be better than the last.

I have a year of restoration ahead.

I have to restore myself, my life.

I have to restore this place…

and that starts with me being restored within it.

For that to happen, I need to be seen now.

Which means I need to be heard.

Which means I need to talk.

So, now I will.

It has been a long time coming.

[While I *hate* turning off comments, I think it is better if I get out what I need to get out before we create space for conversation. If people desire, I can be reached via private message with the only caveat being that I am going to need some time to catch my breath. This is all… a lot. It has been more than a lot for a very long time. Writing about it is a lot, a lot. I can’t even remember what it feels like to be out from under it.]