Running From What Hurts

“Trauma, which is stored differently in the brain than memory, seeps out of us as warnings of worse to come.” [1]

I’m putting my makeup on in the morning when a text from my fiancé, Benjamin, pops up on my phone screen. It’s a single, frustrated emoji: 😒.

My stomach instantly drops. I know this feeling. Something is wrong. I wait a moment for a follow-up text, a photo, a screenshot, anything to explain this lone emoji. But it’s just the emoji. Two minutes go by and I text him, “Are you okay babe?” An eternal four minutes later he responds, “Yeah! Sorry, that was for JINK.”

jink (noun) a quick evasive turn; dodge or juke

Of course it was. Fifteen minutes before my stomach dropped, I had played JINK against the man I love and also love to beat in Crossplay (an online version of Scrabble), and he reacted with mock aggravation that I had just surged into the lead with an obscure 58-point word. But me? I actually spent seven full minutes near panic, thinking that really bad news was coming.

The amount of times I have asked myself out loud, What the heck is wrong with you, Katie? Innumerable.

“I wish you knew me when I was younger, before everything [2] happened. Because I wasn’t always like this,” I tell Benj. I can see him adjust his posture on our FaceTime call, sitting up a bit more, just enough for me to be able to see how much he wants to hold the weight of a comment like that.

“Well, tell me about who Katie was when she was younger,” he says.

I think for a minute before saying anything, because I don’t know how to respond, not exactly. “I just know,” I muster, “that I was different. I didn’t feel like I was always bracing myself for the worst.”

Trauma, man. All I want in the world is for the way it seeps out of my body to go away.

///

Parenting my oldest daughter has always come easily to me. She was born confident, assertive, sure of herself. And while that, of course, has meant more than one struggle of wills between the two of us in her life, we’ve always come out the other side just fine. She’s a leader and a go-getter, and more than that, she’s now a young woman I’ve relied so much on.

But she’s 13, and what 13-year-old is still sure of herself?

She’s also followed in her mother’s footsteps: she’s buried what she doesn’t want to feel.

///

“You can’t lead people where you’re not willing to go,” our couples counselor tells me, and damn it, I know he’s right, but I’m not sure how he knew to say that.

(Okay, God, I get it. You’re good at set-ups.)

Because here’s the thing, I hate going there, to those places where feelings take over your body. Where memories give you whiplash. Where you have to try to understand what happened to you again with new information. I hate it. For more than two years I have absolutely, positively insisted that my body do nothing but parent and Peloton. No feeling. Just moving forward.

And that would have been fine, (maybe?), if I never planned on loving someone again. (Which I didn’t). But an unspeakably amazing gift is sitting next to me—my future husband—holding my hand on the couch, listening to an objective and very wise man say what has been obvious to everyone but me: you are okay, Katie. And you’re also not.

“If you tell me I have to try EMDR [3] again, I’m going to be mad at you,” I joke with our counselor. But then I add, very seriously, “I don’t know why, but I cannot access the parts of me that need to go there for EMDR.”

He smiles back, “No, I’m not going to make you do that if you’re not ready. There are other ways we process trauma and its ripple effects. But,” he adds, “You do have someone safe next to you now. I wonder if it would be different with him here? What would it be like for you to let him really feel the weight of you sometimes?”

And Benj squeezes my hand tighter.

///

My daughter and I have just had our third late-night argument in a week. The third time she’s gone to bed frustrated, and I’ve gone to bed frustrated, and this is not who we are. Middle school is hard, hormones are unfair, teenagers are inundated with pathologizing language for their angst, but I do fear they are making it an identity and not a normal tension in life. That’s tough, to think you are something when you might really just be feeling something.

But there is more she’s holding: over two years of being the other mother in the house.

Harper, can you hold your brother?
Harper, can you make your sister a sandwich?
Harper, can you watch Cannon while I take Jordi to baseball practice?
Harper? Harper? Harper?

And my girl has answered to her name every time. She’s carried a lot. I don’t know if it’s more than most—there are many seventh graders who have seen a lot by 13—but it is still a lot. Her parents promised her something and we did not keep that promise. Broken paradigms, like parents staying married, are especially jarring for kids.

And I think I am seeing with much clearer eyes now: she’s okay, too. And she’s also not okay.

///

“You two have homework until I see you next time,” the counselor tells us “I want you to practice being a burden to each other.”

My eyes get a bit wider, because that sounds truly terrible.

“Seriously, I want you to work on being a burden: ask for what you need, tell each other what you’re feeling about something. Don’t stuff it when you’re scared. This is how you keep healing: you give someone a part of you that you’re scared to give him, and he holds it safely.”

I know he’s right. And I do believe that the man I love, he’ll hold the weight so patiently. He already has. My calmest waters are with him.

///

My daughter comes home from volleyball practice and after a few minutes of debriefing, of one topic leading to another and another, I can feel us going there again. An argument is brewing. Except this time, I’m getting on the balcony of my own mind a bit, and I’m real clear on something: these moments are not just about her. They are about me.

Because you cannot lead someone to a place you’re not willing to go.

I have been running hard from what hurts. So much so that I’ve damaged my own capacity to sit with what hurts my daughter, to attune to her in the exact moments that she’s rubbing up against pain and learning where to put it. Because all I’ve wanted to say since 24 hours after my life changed was, Look everyone, I’m really okay!

So the truth is, I would not have been okay, even if I had just stayed single, if God had never brought someone to love into my life. I would be strong on the Peloton, I would be efficient in my work, I would be doing my best to put a brave face on for everyone else and probably doing so impressively.

But I would be, quite honestly, jinking my feelings–quickly evading and dodging all I still need to dig out. My heart and mind would always be flailing, still protecting my body from the terrible feeling of dread that overtakes your stomach and your limbs and your nervous system without your consent. That is not someone who is really okay.

///

“Babe, I have to admit something to you: I kind of always thought of couples counseling as a referee of sorts. Like, two people have an issue and they bring it to a counselor and the counselor tells them which person is right, then the other person has no choice but to fall in line.” I say it lightheartedly, but I mean it. Benj laughs at me. “Seriously. I did not understand that counseling was about this much work on myself. But it’s so obvious now: healing everything [2, again] is how I’m going to show up best in the world. For everyone.”

“So, will you let me feel the weight of you?” he asks.

///

It’s all a miracle, isn’t it?
That somehow we grow and we don’t stay the same.
That healing really does happen, if you don’t run from it.
That our capacity to love might get buried by life, but it doesn’t have to stay buried.
That our safest places are with people who are not afraid to feel the weight of our burdens.
That teenage girls can be so strong and still need their mom to hold them.
That we’re all a mess, and God is still reaching for us every single day.

///

[1] Anne Lamott, Hallelujah Anyway

[2] Everything: addiction, betrayal, a near constant stream of “finding out”, half-truths, and ultimately, divorce. Being lied to is impossible.

[3] I know EMDR has been nothing short of miraculous for so many people. I have just had a hard time with it in the past. Our couples counselor shed some light on this for me when he said that for some people, EMDR can circumvent the self-protection they still need, and that’s okay. But that’s why we are in counseling 🙃 I’ll get there. I see the goal with clear eyes more than ever, and it’s not just for marriage. You can read more about EMDR here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22641-emdr-therapy