Days 0516 & 0517

It’s bugging me. I’m going to have to go and sit in a witness box for the second time in my life and although it’s an extremely different situation this time around, I can feel it stirring everything up from decades ago.
Is it really decades ago?
Sometimes it seems ancient. Other times I can still smell my fear and relief.
Mostly I just remember the world being grey for that entire year leading up to the preliminary hearing and then the court date.
Like that movie, Schindler’s List, where the little girl’s red coat was the only colour in the bleakness.
Except there were no colours in my situation. My eyes were seeing the world like it was one of the crappy black and white TVs my parents still insisted on buying in the early 1990s.
The world had no flavour either; no scent, no feeling. It was just standing next to me, cold and dull.
That was the time in my life where I’d return to my empty family home each winter night: parents off in the former eastern bloc practically uncontactable, sister off who knows where, coming back only to try to bully me into writing her cheques to cash on our parents’ account.
I drew myself lots of hot hot hot baths that year. Because the house was cold and I thought it might bring some feeling back into my skin. I soaked for ages, too afraid to go to sleep in that house on my own; suddenly, sadly aware that the world had monsters in it.
And wondering how to bring the feeling back into my heart, my body, my eyes.

Day 0324

On the Eve of A Very Big Long Day I am trying to recall the feeling of emotional relief, that moment when the world lifts off my shoulders and for a second at least I feel light as a feather.
And that made me think of this:
I once submitted to a therapy called EMDR. It’s used for PTSD and it seems A-OK.
But seriously …
In layperson’s terms it’s meant to help your rational brain, which knows you are safe and sound, to connect with your emotional brain which is still poised in that terrifying fight or flight moment that led to your PTSD.
They do this by talking you back to That Moment, by leaving you there for a few days and then talking you through your thoughts. They then drop a new thought in. The whole time this is happening the therapist moves their fingers from side to side and your eyes must follow the fingers’ movement. Like a very structured tennis match or a mesmerizing windshield wiper.
When I did this, I thought it sounded vaguely ridiculous. But I’m also very polite so I did it.
And it was just as I reached the point of ‘am I going to have to tell her it kind of worked to save her from feeling bad?’ when the therapist’s fingers flicked one more time and …
It was like being reborn. No. Really.
I went from feeling terror – breathtaking and indescribable, and a constant companion in my life – to relief, the feeling of a gush of air flowing through my whole body and tears, tears and more tears. I hate hate hate crying in front of people but there I was bawling. And laughing. And smiling.
And in place of the terror and vulnerability of that horrible moment, I was picturing myself kneeing the jerk in his family jewels, and my goodness if I didn’t feel like it was over. After 15 years, it was over.
And that sense of relief, it was such a beautiful thing. To be released. And free.
And I know that feeling is out here for this somewhere. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in four months, or five. But it’s out there.
I don’t want to have to wait for it, but I will if I have to.