Anniversary Reactions

This past weekend held two significant traumatic anniversaries for me, and in true Jen-fashion I had anniversary reactions. The older anniversary was from 1988, and I have done a lot to recover from that trauma and it might not have been so bad... but last year I had another trauma that is still pretty fresh and this was the first anniversary of that one so it compounded things. Two traumatic anniversaries in one day/weekend kinda sucked.

This won't happen every year; that first trauma - from 1988 - was a "night before Easter" thing... the actual date was really April 2/3. There have been many years where it haunted me but I didn't understand the whole "anniversary reaction" thing. Sadly, in it's association with Easter, I have not been a big fan of that holiday for quite some time... but I have learned to deal with my reactions and get by. Last year - on April 7 - I experienced another trauma, and the wounds are still pretty fresh and raw... and although I tried to not let the anniversary get to me too much, my anniversary reactions were pretty strong and a bit frustrating.

It may seem that by writing about this I am dwelling on the trauma and perpetuating the reactions. I don't believe that to be the case. What I am doing is acknowledging something that occurs whether I am conscious of it or not; my body remembers things that my conscious mind does not, and I become agitated and unusually "moody" during these times. Understanding the anniversary reaction helps me to be forgiving and gentle with myself when this happens, and I believe it helps me to heal. But it is still frustrating.

One kinda neat thing about this year is that when I woke up on Easter Sunday, it was a bit of my own resurrection; I had a new day and a new year and new healing. Maybe I can make new peace with the holiday too; I hadn't really realized the spiritual timing of my traumas before. Maybe what happened last year was a reminder that I hadn't fully understood the significance of my earlier traumas... I believe I still have lessons to learn.

I have some time before my next trauma anniversary in May. Perhaps I can spend some time looking at it more objectively and heal more of my wounds. I know that if I try to ignore it my body will just shout at me louder. But if I acknowledge it, I can make peace with it more gently... and I welcome that.

Peace and Love.

Happiness

Ok, I admit it. I am not a "happy" person. I am wary of too much happiness. I am suspicious of exceedingly happy people. I do not trust "happy". Bah humbug to "happy".
But that doesn't mean I am always miserable either.

Ok, so I also admit I have been my share of "miserable". It is a well-learned skill that I was taught growing up in my family. And I admit that when things go wrong, I do have a tendency to crash and burn. And well, things do sometimes go "wrong". But... well... I am trying to find that balance between the "happy" that I distrust, and the "miserable" that I unfortunately feel a bit more comfortable with.

Some people may be shocked to think that someone would be more comfortable with misery over happiness. And truthfully, I am rather puzzled with it myself. But the thing is, somehow I have internalized this belief that misery is safer than happiness. Crazy, huh? But then again, obviously I am not alone because otherwise there would not be such a market for positive inspiration... all that "do not be afraid" stuff is so popular because people *are* afraid, and often afraid of going after what they want and even being...happy.

In my own experience, I have internalized a notion that I don't deserve to be "happy". I have somehow come to believe - deep down - that I get punished when I am happy. I wrote about it a little in my post "When I Was Fifteen (an Introduction)"; because I do think that having a few traumatic experiences occur shortly after I have been "happy" has really taught me that happy is dangerous. I can actually think of many many examples throughout my life... but then I realize that if I can really look at things objectively, maybe "happy" is not the cause.... but as I said, it is a belief that I have internalized and the feeling is so strong that it is really tough to change.... I *am* working on changing it, though progress is pretty damn slow sometimes.

So I still don't trust "happy". If someone asks me what makes me happy, I think to myself that I don't want to be happy; I want to be at peace, and I want to experience love and maybe some joy once in awhile... but happy still feels dangerous to me. Still I will say that things make me happy - it is a word that gets used a lot - I will comment on places in nature being my "happy place",..., but really truly I am looking for peace...comfort...and once in awhile moments of contentment and even joy. But not too much. Too much joy = happy, and then my body starts to worry and look for trauma, and often then it seems to find it.

So please be understanding that I don't display much happy. It is still too closely associated with trauma, and I just can't go there right now. I'm tired and beaten down and for now it is safer to quietly go about my life and try to just get through it. Don't push happy on me.

On the other hand, I'm happy if you're happy. :)

When I Was Fifteen (a follow-up)

So, I wrote my introductory post to When I Was Fifteen, and nothing really came of it. I was pretty nervous putting it out there and I guess relatively thankfully, it didn't get much reaction. My daughter never said anything, so I figure she either didn't read it, or she doesn't want to know the details... and that's cool. Someone recently shared with me their own experience with finding things out about their mother, and how it scarred them, and I am glad that I didn't push anything on my own daughter. I'm not a big fan of pushing information on people.

A couple days after my last post was an anniversary for me; one that has caused great angst and strong anniversary reactions in me over the years. It was an anniversary of something that happened - not when I was fifteen - but rather when I was seventeen. I do believe that that incident occurred in part because of what happened when I was fifteen though. Unfortunately traumatic experiences can increase chances of other traumatic experiences - especially when we don't know how to deal with the earlier experiences... and unfortunately for me, I've had quite a few.

The concept of trauma is an interesting one for me as well. There are people who have gone through what I have gone through and not been as traumatized as I have. But I am someone who has always felt things very strongly (to the point where my entire life people have told me I am "over-sensitive"). I used to get really upset with myself for feeling things so intensely, but fortunately I discovered that that sensitivity is actually really useful for some things (such as being a mother, or a massage therapist). But for many many years I felt not only guilty about what happened to me, but also rather ashamed at my reactions; I felt like there was something wrong with me for not being able to just blow it off and forget about it. And believe me, I tried. But one thing I discovered is that I may have been able to push things out of my mind, but I couldn't push them out of my body. The body remembers even what the mind can forget....

So I still carry with me the things that happened to me when I was fifteen. I *have* managed to heal a lot of the injuries, but there are still scars, and occasionally the wounds will still open back up - though not nearly as frequently as they used to. I think that one of the most important things I have learned over the years is that I can't run away from it; I can't pretend that things didn't happen. It *is* my life and it is my history, and the scars are my scars and the healing is my healing. And just like the visible scars fade over time, my emotional scars have faded some... They aren't gone, but they don't hurt quite as much as they used to.