The Flashbacks Continue

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

As you will see in the excerpt below, the flashbacks continue. They had always been there, but they were different now in that I was more conscious of them and more aware of the way in which they were impacting me. Further, I was aware of the way in which they potentially could impact Dan if I didn’t learn how to open up more.

As previously stated, a big challenge was that I didn’t know how to talk about the things I had never talked about – and, the few times I had attempted to put these experiences into words, I was left feeling traumatized all over again.

However, like it or not, I was at a place where I couldn’t not see some of these memories. It was as though the pressure valve was on perpetual slow release.

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This passage is from the same chapter as last week. The title of the chapter is “Flashbacks.”

Our first year of marriage cruised by and, before we knew it, we were driving to Colorado to spend some time in the mountains.

A few days into our trip, we woke up early and made our way to the river. It had been a while since I had fly fished, so Dan stood next to me on the riverbank and guided my right hand back and forth, back and forth, like I was conducting the gurgling water as it flowed from east to west.

When he placed the rod in my hand, I felt ready. I remembered what to do. Once Dan made sure I was comfortable, he proceeded to wade down the river in search of another good hole.

After an hour of casting and mending, I made a bad cast and my line got caught in the bush nearby. Dan was on the other side of the river at this point. I tried unraveling the line, but after a minute I realized that it was a big mess. My line had gotten so knotted that it was throttling the branch. Rather than get frustrated dealing with the knot, I decided to just sit down on the riverbank and enjoy the scenery.

It was peaceful and calm. Until it wasn’t – and I became aware of the inner chatter inside my mind.

During this idle moment, I found myself worried about getting sick. Again. My thoughts spiraled down so fast that I found myself thinking that there was a possibility, a strong possibility, that I could wake up in a couple of months, and, just like that, I would lose everything all over again. Everything that I had worked so hard to regain – the walking, the talking, the reading, the writing – it would be gone. All gone.

These thoughts became so amplified that my head started to throb. The pulsating was disorienting and intense. Hoping that I could leave the thoughts behind, I moved to a rocky outcrop. But the thoughts followed me there, too.

I swiped at the air. I thought I was swiping at the caddisflies, but I wasn’t sure.

It was at this point that Dan noticed me sitting on my new perch and motioned that he would come over and help me out. 

After detangling my line, Dan asked, “Ready to call it a morning?”

“Sure,” I said.

As we walked through the tall grasses with our rods pointed to the sky, I thought about telling Dan about my incessant thoughts, but then decided against it.

That said, with each step I took, I became angrier and angrier with myself. I had spent enough time being sick as a kid. I didn’t want to dedicate any additional headspace to any of this stuff ever again.

“Meg, you okay?” Dan asked. “You seem preoccupied.”

“Um,” I hesitated. I knew Dan would listen to my concerns. He would be patient and sympathetic. My hesitancy wasn’t because of him. It was because of me. My biggest adversary continued to be my inner voice, that voice that kept saying, C’mon, you’re an adult. Why are you still so hung up on what happened to you as a kid?

“Meg?”

“I – I don’t know quite how to say this other than to say…I feel scared.”

“Of what?”

“That I’m going to get sick all over again. That I’m going to get sick and be a burden to you. I don’t want to be a burden.”

“Sweetheart, you’ll never be a burden. Even if you got sick.”

“But I don’t know if I could live with myself if I got sick and it impacted you. It was one thing when I was younger. But now, now if I got sick…it’d just be so unfair to you.” My voice started to falter, but I persisted. “And…and these thoughts? These thoughts in my head just won’t go away. They’re so…so pervasive.”

At this moment, Dan took my hand and stopped walking. “Meg?” he said. “Meg, can you stop for a sec?”

I didn’t want to stop walking. I just wanted to keep moving and get this conversation over with. But I had a husband who cared. Who wanted to help. So I stopped walking.

The tears welled in my eyes as I stared at the ground. I wanted to be tough. That’s who I had built myself up to be – the tough one. Why couldn’t I be that person right now?

“Meg? Can you look at me?” Dan asked.

I looked up at my husband of a year, this man who was the most Zen person I had ever met. I wanted to be strong like him. I wanted to be present and calm, just like him. Instead, silent tears spilled down my cheeks as jagged images from my childhood flashed through my head.

“Have you thought about seeing a therapist?” Dan asked.

With this question lingering in the air, I continued walking, looking ahead, with my rod pointing forward, but my thoughts traveling to the past.

__________  

I’ve often wondered why these memories started revealing themselves more clearly when they did. I’m not totally sure, but I’ve got some guesses. Perhaps things can be locked up for only so long. Perhaps I recognized that, if my relationship with Dan was going to work, I couldn’t hide things from him. And I was 100 percent committed to making our relationship work.

When Dan suggested that I consider seeing a therapist, I couldn’t help but initially balk at this idea. The therapist Dr. Burns whom I saw when I was younger was a joke. Because I had zero interest in playing with anatomically correct dolls and had difficulty drawing my parents’ bodies (due to poor motor coordination), he concluded that I had been sexually assaulted. Notwithstanding this horrible experience, I questioned how talking about traumatic experiences could make a difference. Anytime I had tried to do so had left me shaken and distraught.

But avoidance didn’t seem like the best route to go either. I was at a crossroads.