I’m approaching the one-year anniversary of when I began working with a trauma therapist. The first day I sat on her suck-you-in kind of couch, I wore a bright green dress and rainbow earrings. I perched myself on the edge of the couch with my arms and legs tightly crossed, determined not to be sucked into the abyss.
Ama asked what I hoped to get from working with her. It was a question I hadn’t anticipated; one whose answer I hadn’t rehearsed or given much thought to. I spent the first 40 minutes filling her in on the traumatic memories that were consuming me. Or more aptly, destroying me. But what did I want to get out of it? “I just want to know who I am,” I said.
This simple answer led to the most harrowing work of my life.
Ama guided me to face brutal memories, question identities I’ve been assigned (or gave myself), and revisit stories I constructed to make people who I wanted them to be, instead of acknowledging who they are. Before therapy, I felt like I was an honest person. During therapy, I realized how impressively I’d contorted reality to make it fit a story I wanted.
Seeking the truth meant that, for a bit, my entire reality crumbled. My guard went up as I wondered if I had remembered anything correctly. It felt like I was floating in outer space– connected to nothing in the external world. Then, the feeling spread internally: I was empty. Empty felt bad. Terrifying. Boring. But it was in this emptiness, Ama taught me, that I could begin to fill my life with what I loved.
Pursuing joy felt silly and frivolous, it felt like something I didn’t deserve. “How am I supposed to know what I like?” I asked Ama one morning. “You have to try things,” she said simply. So I did. This year, I learned I like: Rainbows. Bright colors. The smell of Tide laundry detergent. Candles, particularly the odd-shaped ones. I like smoothies, couch snuggles, and newborn babies, crafts, painting, yoga, and walking (to Starbucks and back). I love the kind of joy or hilarity that gut punches out of nowhere– doubling over in unexpected laughter with other people.
I like how I can be in the middle of a therapy session with tears streaming down my cheeks, and Ama can say something that makes me snort with laughter– how I don’t have to be one extreme or the other. At first, this concept was something I struggled with, how multiple, seemingly conflicting, emotions can be present at once. “It’s confusing,” Ama said. “You’re feeling confused.” She explained that trauma can be like that. And I’ve learned, that joy is like that too. It doesn’t have to be experienced in perfect conditions. And, it can be present along with many other emotions.
Healing, I’ve learned, won’t look like me never being triggered, or never dipping my toes (or, let’s be honest, fully submerging) into the abyss of anxiety and fear. But it will look like me remembering that this too, shall pass. And that while I wait, I might as well sprinkle in some joy.
