Unhinged

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

*Yesterday got away from me. Better to post late than not at all, I figure!

Why is it sometimes easier for others to predict what is going to happen next in our lives than it is for us to do so? Sometimes it’s because of denial. The power of denial is huge.

It soon became apparent that things with my student Roger weren’t going to get any better unless there was a major intervention. I wanted to think that I could handle it all on my own, but anyone except myself could see that this just wasn’t going to be the reality.

__________  

This passage follows the last excerpt and is from the chapter titled, “Unhinged.”

The school year kicked off, and a pattern began to emerge. Twenty two of my students would arrive on time and begin their opening activity. Five to ten minutes later, Donna would walk into the room with Roger in her arms. Both of them would be red-faced and sweaty, leaving me to wonder the extent to which Donna had to use physical force to get Roger ready for the day, into the car, and then into school – and the extent to which he resisted every single step of the way.

Whenever they arrived, Roger would clearly be upset with his mom, yet he also clung to her like a parasite the second they entered the room. As the days turned to weeks, the kids and I watched the same series of events unfold in our classroom every morning. Donna would unhinge Roger off of her, appendage by appendage. Next, Roger would wrap his arms around Donna’s legs, trapping her in place. Then Donna would shimmy her feet loose, one by one. Finally, Roger would run and hide behind the backpacks and stare me down.

I was left feeling uneasy and helpless. It was this feeling of helplessness that inevitably led to more unwanted memories rearing their ugly head.

On the way home from school one day, I found myself reliving a time when I felt especially helpless. After I had had a spinal tap and bone marrow biopsy, I couldn’t keep any food down. For a month. Thus, I had spent most of the month of January of 1986 cocooned on the couch as I watched tv. On January 28, I was resting on this same couch watching tv just like I had every other day that month. However, things unfolded differently on this day.

Today is the Challenger space shuttle launch, and my eyes are glued to the tv. Christa McAuliffe will be the first teacher to travel to space. I hear the announcer say that Christa’s son and his third-grade classmates have traveled from Boston to Florida to see history in the making. The camera scans to show the children standing in the bleachers.  

As the seconds tick down to lift off, the shuttle fills up the screen. The shuttle and the crystal-blue sky.

When I hear the announcer count down from “10,” I think this is the most excited I’ve felt in a long time. I watch the fiery tail grow bigger and bigger under the shuttle before it takes off. As the shuttle launches into the sky, the tail grows longer and longer, longer and longer.

And then, after only 73 seconds from take-off, my eyes blink. I can’t really be seeing this. I blink a few more times and shake my head to get rid of the picture. But when I look back at the tv, I realize that what I saw really did happen. The fiery tail grew so big that it took over the shuttle. Now there’s only one big blazing fireball. And the sky is smeared with gray and black.

As the day drags on, I watch the Challenger’s launch replay on the screen over and over. The space shuttle blows up again and again. Each time I watch it blow up, I feel more and more numb.

As I continued driving, I shifted my body around in the seat of the car. That feeling of helplessness? I hated it now just as much as I did when I was a kid. But what could I do to feel less helpless as it related to this Roger situation? As I stared ahead at the car in front of me, an answer materialized in my head. I know. I’ll just have to be even more organized and vigilant than I already was. It was through being hypervigilant that I might somehow catch Roger before things escalated and talk him down.

__________  

The experience of helplessness that I experienced in the classroom conjured up memories of times I felt helpless as a child, to the point where my past started to bleed into my present.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I consulted with Amy Quale of Wise Ink about how to best format my book. You may recall that she suggested I look at restructuring the chapters such that I was viewing the trauma I endured as a child from an adult’s perspective. I think this was excellent advice. While my medical journey is unique, it is my goal to tell my story in a way such that those readers who have also suffered childhood trauma can draw upon universal truths and emotions. After all, aren’t we ultimately interested in seeing ourselves reflected in the books that we read?

As an aside, I recently received developmental editing suggestions from Sara Letourneau (Heart of the Story: Editorial and Coaching Sessions), and she thought my book’s reformatted structure was on the mark. Yay!

*I’ll be taking next week off. I hope all of you have a wonderful 4th!