Last week, a friend and I were mugged. We were parked in my car, waiting to meet someone when our windows were smashed open, my keys taken out of the ignition, and a knife pressed against my throat as our attackers demanded that we empty my car of all valuables. I always carry a knife in my bag, and while they were emptying it out, one of them found the knife, picked it up, paused, and shook his head, saying, “you guys were gonna die today, but we’ll let you go.” (Thankfully, I have nothing more than a few scratches from the glass shards; my friend needed stitches). And then they were gone as quickly as they came. The whole ordeal couldn’t have lasted longer than 10 minutes, yet it dragged on, like a teenage boy being asked to come out of his room to “socialize.” Honestly, I’m not sure how I drove us back home, other than the fact that “we do what we need to do when we need to do it.” And quite frankly, that’s been what’s driving me ever since. I’ll freak out about it once I’ve managed to pick up the pieces of my life (new phone, new laptop, fix my car, reopen my accounts, file claims, get my documents back), because a panic attack would only detract from the tasks at hand.
The (not so) funny thing about trauma is that one way or another, it will make sure that it gets the attention it feels it's owed.
I thought that I was managing until I caught myself panicking while trying to input my destination into my phone while pulled over on the side of the road. I thought that I was doing okay until a car door slammed shut next to me at a red light, and I screamed. I thought that I was getting by until I saw a group of boys approaching my car and held my breath, clutching onto my steering wheel so hard that I still have little white marks on my palms. So, maybe I’m not doing so great after all.
Not sure if I even feel that I qualify to say that I have survivor’s guilt. More than anything, my life has been inconvenienced.
I joke a lot that I don’t want to go back to therapy because I’m worried that if I heal “too much” I’ll lose my personality because a good 80% of it is a trauma response.
I think that I've gotten used to the concept of laughing my way through a situation because honestly, we could cry about it – or we could laugh and move on. I will always choose the latter because, while tears are a great form of skincare, there isn't enough haemorrhoid cream in the world to reduce the designer bags under my eyes that would come with the amount of crying that I probably need to do. So, we laugh.
I don't completely ignore the trauma; quite the contrary, I'm willing to talk very openly about it. The actual issue is that it sounds like I don't take it seriously, and people sometimes don't realize how hurt/scared/traumatized I am. To be honest, sometimes I don't either. I've gotten so good at "not looking like my problems" that sometimes I even forget they're there. I mean, less than 12 hours after my ex used a belt to whip me (and my friend) out of sleep, I was laying my wig and doing our makeup to go see Trevor Noah because we deserved a laugh and a cute night.
I was still doing my makeup when my ex came into the bathroom and asked if she must bring the belt back for round two and started laughing about it.
Talk about my delulu becoming my solulu.
Everything was absolutely fine. Until it wasn't. Like I said, "The (not so) funny thing about trauma is that, one way or another, it will make sure that it gets the attention it feels it's owed."
And this trauma feels that it is owed a lot.
It started that night at the show. I managed to get all the way through the first 45 minutes of the show and then Trevor started on this joke about “coming home”. I realised that our night would be over at some point, and my friend and I would have to go back home. Back home to where my probably still not sober ex who refused to leave my house because she had nowhere to go was waiting.
And so the trauma decided that the attention it needed should start somewhere in my digestive system. I barely made it to the bathroom before everything started to come out. Literally everything. Tears, puke, snot, pee, the other stuff. If there was a hole to come out of, it was being used. I spent the next 3 hours in a puddle of my own bodily fluids shaking, and crying, only to wipe myself off and walk through the casino as close like nothing happened as possible. I even had the energy to tell the security guard who asked if I needed a wheelchair that he was being “a bit dramatic” about it.
Tense.
The art of disassociation is something I’ve perfected over the years. An ex once told me that I speak about being r*ped like people talk about tacos. I guess over time, my way of dealing has been to split myself in two – the Nyani who exists as a powerful, bubbly, provocative hun and the one who trauma has happened to. We share a body, but not much else. I think it’s easier than trying to unpack my feelings around how I land myself in situations. The issue is, by avoiding unpacking I end up lugging around enough baggage for a rugby team without learning from my mistakes and ending with me back in the same place.
Because at some point I need to take accountability for who I am that pulls the same kind of people and situations to me over and over, right?
The thing about survivors guilt is that on top of feeling guilty about the situation, I feel guilty about the fact that somehow I keep getting out of them.
