For as long as I can remember my work has always centered around
the essential inquiry of how trauma penetrates the depths of the soul and psyche.
How does trauma reshape both your external and internal environments entirely?
How does trauma reconfigure your relationship to your own body?
How does it intervene in your connections to others?
My work does not strive to answer these large questions in the slightest but more so
explore them through the lens of individuals other than myself.
For some reason, what sticks firmly in my mind is a scene in Finding Nemo when Dory and Marlin are confronted
with a haunting and eerie underwater trench. They argue back and forth about whether they should go through the trench or go over it for quite sometime.
Despite, Dory's reassurance to Marlin
that they will go through the uncertainty that lays within the trench together, Marlin continues to attempt
to convince Dory that going over the trench is the best choice.
This notion of going through or over is big driver in my body of work.
In Val Walker's book, 'The Art of Comforting: What to Say and Do for People in Distress,' she discusses the struggle society has of viewing trauma more
so as a disease or injury that is in desperate need of being immeaditely cured and as something to "get over" with ease.
If only it were that simple.
I crave for the masses to experience true community through their struggles.
Society has carefully mapped out and pushed onto those suffering, a council that's soley made up of doctors, therapists, pastors and self help books.
They treat trauma and mental illness the same as a physical injury.
"With the right medication and professional support you'll get better soon," they promise.
But what's important in this phrase in not the fake and artificial nature behind these empty words
but looking more closely at a two single words in particular.
Instead of being nurtured and having attempts made to grow research and
evolve understandings surrounding trauma, individuals are told three of the most hurtful words,
in the English language.
"Get over it."
Who knew that these three simple words could
cut
so deeply beyond
skin, veins, and blood.
The sad truth is there is no immeadiate cure or recipe
for healing from trauma because like so many other things in life once it caresses
you with it icy and weighted grip it doesn't let go.
It becomes embedded in your structure.
Becoming intertwined with your genetic makeup.
Uninvitedly shifting the ways you make choices,
take action and speak words from that day forward.
It's a load that you eventually learn through trail and error how to balance on your aching and buckling spine.
But why is so much of this learning process done alone?
Why does this journey have to take place through isolation?
THIS.
This is what I try to avoid most.
You pace around your room which is littered with dirty laundry,
partially drank water bottle and crushed beer cans.
Your naked feet step gingerly on used tissues,
paper plates as you lock eyes with a deteriorating sandwhich
that has been rotting in your room all week. You're too tired to toss it in the garbage
can that hauntingly waits with a pile of dishes in the musty sink for you downstairs.
Why bother texting Tanya, Tony or Tim? They're busy with their jobs, their relationships, their families and they have plenty of their own shit already
taking up space on their plates so why would you want to add more?
Or better yet why would you want to bring them down with discussing the miserable reality
that you call your life when there's seem to be going so well? Ravaged and exhausted by all these questions,
you collapse back into your unmade bed that wreaks of sweat, tears and whatever meals you ate that week in front
of the TV that never seems to have anything good on.
Your eyes circle around the dusty corners of your room,
from pile to pile
of unattended clothing and trash.
You decide maybe today will be different.
Maybe today I'll make a change to this depressing routine
and get out of my funk. Your hands paw for a book that's stuffed underneath your bed.
You stretch your fingertips to reach it, your body refusing to remove itself from its fixated laying positioning on the slumped mattress.
Finally feeling the slippery and glossy cover brush against your pinkie,
you clench your teeth as you wrap your fingertips around the book.
You raise it up to meet your eyes, tracing your fingers along the satiny feeling white pages,
gazing at the 12 point times new roman text that populates the page.
'HOW TO CHANGE YOUR ROUTINE'
It reads in all caps at the top of the page.
Your eyes shakily make their way down the lines,
each one feeling more hollow and empty than the last.
THIS.
This is what I try to avoid most.
I want to prevent and help others from feeling this crushing and plummeting meteor of abandonment.
I want to begin a never ending conversation of how we can comfort one another more tenderly in these moments.
I want to remind others that they are not the only ones struggling or having these intrusive thoughts.
I want to be the Dory to their Marlins,
reassuring them that going through the underwater trench may be scary,
but with another beside you, supporting you along the way it will be alright.