Flashbacks

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

*My Internet connection has been flakey the last couple of days, and it just came to my attention that this post didn’t get published on Monday like I initially thought. Here’s another attempt.:)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been working on rewriting my chapters in past tense while also incorporating flashbacks. This way, you as the reader will have a better understanding as to the way in which my childhood illness was impacting my adult life.

Reclaiming my childhood self was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, since that entailed seeing — and feeling — the trauma I experienced at a deeper level. But doing this made me a stronger and more authentic person.

I’m not unique in suffering trauma as a child. Further, I’m not unique in realizing the extent to which this trauma was impacting my adult self. Perhaps some of you might be able to relate to this slow unfolding.

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This passage is from the chapter, “Flashbacks.” Note that the “flashback” included here is actually a repeat of what I included in an earlier post titled “R-E-A-D-I-N-G” (October 18, 2021). By comparing my earlier post to this one, you’ll be able to see the differences and how my rewritten manuscript is more centered on how I, as an adult, am processing my childhood illness. Further, you’ll be able to witness how I’m slowly connecting how my present discomfort is tied to memories from my past.

One year later, Dan and I got engaged, and, the year after that, we got married. I had married my best friend and someone who encouraged me to be true to myself. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

However, to my annoyance, my thoughts didn’t always follow my preconceived script.

It was a couple of days into our honeymoon in Hawaii, and Dan and I had brought our bag full of suntan lotion and books to the beach by the ocean. We didn’t have a care in the world – or we shouldn’t have, at least. But there I was, with my book cracked open, trying to get comfortable in my chaise lounge. I adjusted the tilt of the chair, thinking that I just needed to be more upright. When that didn’t do it, I adjusted my towel. Smoothed out the creases. All I wanted to do was enjoy my time with my new husband, get some sun, and get lost in a good book. Yet I still felt uncomfortable after adjusting everything I could think of – and I sat there rereading the same sentence again and again.

I wanted to get up then and there, dive into the water, and lose myself in movement like I usually did. However, it wasn’t just me anymore. I now had a husband, and I desperately wanted to make this work. So I sat there and I felt all the restless energy traveling throughout my body. In my arms. In my legs. And in my brain. I could tell energetically that my brain was working hard, yet I still didn’t want to listen to the connections that it was making. I didn’t want to hear that inner voice. I had learned to dodge it for so long by doing, doing – and then doing some more.

As uncomfortable as it was, I realized that I needed to sit still and listen to my jumbled thoughts. So I did.

Do you know that you’ve read that same sentence like ten times? Do you think you can outsmart those doctors who told you that you’d never be “normal”? When Dan promised to marry you “in sickness and in health,” he sure didn’t anticipate being married to someone who couldn’t do simple things, like read. 

I pressed my hands against my chest and became aware of how ragged my breathing was. And then I became aware of an unwelcome memory.

I run my finger along the binding of “Little Women,” my favorite book. Its creases remind me of an easier time. I sigh before turning to the first page and placing my finger under the first word. My eye is distracted by my jagged fingernail. Chewing my nails down has become a bad habit of mine, to the point where the tips of my fingers have become sensitive to the touch. Focus, Megan, I remind myself. Focus.

I look above my finger to see the letters C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s. I can see the letters just fine. Perfectly fine, in fact. But my Swatch makes a tick, tick, tick, tick sound while I wait for the word to click in my head. I wait a full four seconds. I hate all of this. I hate it. But I also know that things aren’t going to get better unless I try, try, and try again.

I stab at the word with my finger, feeling the nerves at my fingertip, feeling the dull pain from where I’ve chewed the nail off, as I tell my brain that it says, Christmas. It says Christmas! How do you not get that it says, Christmas! 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dan wiping the sweat off his forehead. “Wanna hop in the water?” he asked.

I smiled and nodded. I welcomed a break from my thoughts. At the same time, I consciously acknowledged that this wasn’t a good long-term strategy for dealing with these unwanted thoughts. The challenge though was how to put these scary memories into words without feeling retraumatized.

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At this juncture, it’s slowly dawning on me that my old strategies of coping aren’t going to work as well. It’s not that I don’t busy myself (with running, biking, moving) at times when I feel discomfort; it’s that there’s a shift and I’m consciously aware that I’m choosing to avoid the unwanted thoughts.

In addition to starting to see more flashback scenes, I start to sit still just long enough to grasp that the doctors’ narrative that I heard when I was younger has become my own inner narrative.

This awareness is an important first step, but the challenge is that I have no idea what, if anything, I can do at this point to change the script that had been encoded at a cellular level 20 years ago.

Maybe that’s another reason I’m driven to tell my story. I want it to be common knowledge that those negative beliefs that others put on you and you in turn metabolized can be rewritten through intentional work.