This is what I want to tell you about meeting your trauma self…

In November of 2024, I was happily getting my groove on in a fitness dance class, and I heard the first notes of a song I hadn’t heard in a very long time. My first thought was, why isn’t this song on any of my playlists? Dancing and singing at the top of my lungs, I couldn’t stop wondering why I hadn’t encountered this song in well over twenty years. Weird because I LOVE 90’s and 2000’s music.  

After class I felt heavier than usual, not weight heavy but as if my limbs were becoming cement-like. A post-workout headache sent me to the couch for rest. Later that night, the shower could not get hot enough to eliminate the chill that was coursing through my body. I had no appetite and was bone tired. This type of exhaustion was heavier in my body than the exhaustion that accompanied depressive episodes in the past.

Not connecting my depression to the song quite yet, I recognized that I could possibly be processing a suppressed memory. Our experiences live deep within our bodies and even when our thinking mind isn’t processing a “trigger”, our physical body can and will.

Taking care of myself is my top priority so I nurtured whatever was happening. I would sit in the tub and sob. I took a couple days off work, and house maintenance, even parenting and daily responsibility so I could rest. I could not figure it out. I was starting to believe I was coming down with something, maybe the flu?

After a particularly somber class that I taught, I drove home, sobbing. I no longer force myself to swallow the sobs, so I continued and let it out. I had been crying off and on for a few days now. Maybe this is because my period is coming.

I pulled into the driveway and as I parked my car, there it was. Ahead of me through my windshield, my surfaced trauma was playing out like a movie. I was not sure this was still real. I questioned if I was getting sick or having a reaction to something I ate or I desperately needed to sleep(this is common in people who have significantly suppressed trauma).

(*What follows contains a multitude of potential triggers*)

Through the windshield of my car, in my driveway, in November of 2024, I saw clips of memories; a night I had not thought of in over twenty years.

Twenty-four to be exact.

I saw a beautiful, smart, intelligent, vivacious, and fun college kid at Ruby Tuesdays with her Bay Path College friends. I saw her awkwardly give her beeper number to a guy she met at the restaurant bar that night and then I saw her return his page from a pay phone (insert plug about ‘kids these days not knowing what a pay phone is ha-ha.’).

I saw her in a bedroom, and she is not feeling well. Unsure what to do about how she was feeling, she chalked that up to a migraine and I saw her take her newly prescribed migraine medication. And then I see her on the Bay Path campus, lost, confused, unsure of her surroundings, alone, afraid.

Later, in the emergency room, she would be told she was most likely allergic to the new migraine medication she took; it caused hallucinations, sweating, confusion Chalking this experience up to a “medication reaction”, she wiped Imitrex off her tolerated medications list and was discharged after a couple bags of fluid.

She could never quite understand why for years and years after that night, medical providers would look at her cockeyed when she said her main symptom of anaphylaxis was hallucinating and sweating.  (Those are a-typical anaphylaxis symptoms).  

And then, through the windshield of my car, in my driveway, in November of 2024, I put all the pieces together.

She was me.

I am her.

What I saw was my own experience. An experience that was never talked about, validated, processed, comforted. For twenty-four years, my body kept that experience, that trauma, a secret until I was ready to hear it, process it and heal it.

This is what I want to tell you about that night in 2000.

When I was in college, I was drugged and assaulted, otherwise known to my generation as date raped. My roommate and I had no reason to believe this wasn’t an allergic reaction to a medication. We had no reason to believe anything out of the ordinary happened. The night I met that guy, that song from Mya was on in the bar of Ruby Tuesdays. I was infatuated with it and played it constantly. Most likely I played it while driving away from the scene of the assault.

Modern science tells us that our brain will do anything to protect us, including suppressing a reality that is too hard and painful to process. I have done a lot of hard work to process the traumas I know. I did not expect a trauma that I didn’t know to surface when it did.

And I am grateful that it did. Now, I can comfort that traumatized woman. I can hold space for her and allow her to feel seen when she discovers that there is a lot of evil in the world. I can hold her when she cries because she doesn’t understand how people can be so cruel. I can tell her this was not your fault. I can validate her and reinforce that what she experienced was real. I can heal her; reminding her that she doesn’t have to forgive or excuse disgusting behavior to heal. I can encourage her to have compassion for her traumatized self and in that compassion is softening, healing.  

Dear 20-year-old Melissa,

What you experienced is valid and real. You are safe now. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. Let your judgement dissolve by accepting your humanness. It’s going to be ok, keep breathing, I’ve got you.