The Universe Is Trying to Tell Me Something

This is an archived post that was originally published at beyond-terminal.com

Have you ever felt as though the universe is trying to teach you the same lesson, again and again?

At this point in my life, I had experienced several flashbacks. However, because I was good at avoidance, I somehow kept pushing them out of my mind with the belief that I could do so indefinitely. Yet, now when I did this, the flashbacks started to occur with greater frequency and to exact an even higher emotional toll.

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This passage follows the last and is from the chapter “Desperation.”

On an especially gray day in November, Roger started to hurl chairs in the air shortly after he entered our classroom. I called the secretary, who called the special ed department. Once again, Anne found a replacement for her class and came to help. This wasn’t super-efficient, but it definitely was a better plan than having the other students and me idle in the hallway while the classroom was destroyed. Better to remove Roger before things escalated even more.

It was not that I had become desensitized to Roger’s behavior. In fact, it was anything but this. I was barely sleeping because I was terrified of what the next day would bring.

And today, today, somehow seemed even worse than the day before. Roger threw the chairs at a faster velocity. The chairs hit the tables with a sharper, louder clang. He sprang up and then stood on top of my desk quicker than usual. He scrambled across the tops of the bookcases in even more of a blur.

Anne showed up not a moment too soon. I had my 22 other students move to the carpeted square away from the door in the hope that there was a clear pathway and no one would get hurt as Anne escorted Roger out of the room.

Roger had extra reserves of adrenaline, anger, and aggression this morning though, and even Anne, with her strong basket hold restraint upon Roger, struggled to get him out of the room. The students and I watched as Anne and Roger, moving as one unit, inched their way to the door while Roger tried to suction onto anything within arm’s length.

After five endless minutes, Anne got Roger to the “safety” room that she and I had created out of half of the staff lounge.

Within the hour, I brought my students to their music class and then checked in on Roger and Anne. It wasn’t unusual for it to take at least 30 minutes before Roger could regulate his emotions and be brought back to my room. An hour was long, but not out of the range of what I had seen. But, given that it was nearing in on an hour, he must be close to being regulated, I thought.

However, when I went into the safety room, Roger was still running around the room like an animal. He spun around at a dizzying speed and seemed to take flight. Anne sat in the corner, looking exhausted and sweaty – yet still on high alert with her arms outstretched and her pupils enlarged.

It was after school that day that Anne and I met and talked about our concerns. We worried that Roger, in his enraged state, might break a bone or crack open his head – or injure Anne. After all, the “safety” room really wasn’t that safe: It had a concrete floor and hard, drywall walls. So we went to the storage closet and grabbed all the extra primary-colored gym mats. We then padded the floor, the walls, every spot we could reach.

I wasn’t sleeping well at this point, and my past was bleeding into the present. As I drove home that night, I couldn’t escape the thought that we were recreating the room where I did O.T. as an 11-year-old. Now that the safety room was covered in primary colors, I felt like I was being transported back to The Hospital. As a kid, the O.T. room had seemed a bit like an oasis, an escape from all the white. However, in this moment, the safety room kept reminding me of how scared I felt during those therapy sessions when my body had the hardest time doing what I wanted it to do. As I stared at the pile of debris that I had thrown in a corner and still needed to clean up, I lost track of time.

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After this passage comes a flashback of me in occupational therapy. While I didn’t want to admit it, these flashbacks that I was having as a 32-year-old were leading to some serious mental anguish. I was constantly tense and having difficulty sleeping.

I’d like to think I was brave and chose to go to therapy by choice. This was not the case. Things were spiraling out of control, and I needed to be thrown a lifeline. I needed Dan and my mom, two people I trusted 100 percent, to tell me that I needed help.

Talk therapy – and the opportunity to process my past with a fabulous therapist – helped me move toward acceptance. It was a lot of work, but the universe is no longer presenting me with similar experiences since I learned what I was meant to learn.