Releasing the Trauma

I'm writing about this to release it.  This is difficult for me to write but I have to do it  It's about something that happened in my childhood.  I was not physically abused, I was not molested, but another event happened that has scarred me deeply and I didn't even realize it until last week, when the flashbacks started..

Because I have PTSD, I have flashbacks of multiple events fairly often, and I just try to gently remind myself that I am safe and I am in the present moment.  But when flashbacks of this particular event happened, though I remembered it, I saw it as if for the first time.  I knew it happened but would push it out of my head and not let it back in, but last week, I was forced to say, "Okay.  That happened.  That was real.That happened to me, and it hurt a lot.  And it still hurts."

I was eight years old.  I was in the third grade.  I had big gawky glasses, and I was shy.  My mother had become increasingly depressed and erratic, drinking a lot and avoiding me in lieu of my new stepfather.  She didn't neglect me exactly, but she didn't want to deal with me. She didn't tell me that, and I didn't understand it then, but I understand it now.  She was just an emotionally abused kid that wanted to be loved. So was I, but my childhood traumas are likely nothing compared to my mother's childhood traumas.

Anyway, back to the Happening.

I went to an awesome school in Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade.  It was called Leaves of Grass.  It was now what would be considered a Charter school.  Small, for gifted students, experience to learn, etc.  However, I was part of the first class, and so by the time I got to Third Grade, there was only one other student there.  So, they decided they were only going to go up to the Second Grade.

It was decided by my mother and my great-aunts that I would go to a Lutheran school in a church with other children local to me.

I had friends at Leaves of Grass.  I even remember their names.  Lydia, Dawn, Jamie, Christopher.  And lots of others.  I wasn't outgoing, I was self-conscious ever since the beginning of Second Grade when I need glasses and I got big gawky glasses.  There weren't many choices for very nearsighted seven-year-olds at that time.  Even though my friends liked me, I became shy even with them, because I just felt so awkward.

This awkwardness was not helped by a new school wherein my class was confident and loud nine-year-olds who had grown up together.

I was a nerd, so they laughed at me.  I tried to be involved in class but again, the self-consciousness.  The teacher, Ms. Right, I suppose, took pity on me (you will see later why I said "I suppose.").  She tried to involve me and encouraged me for a time with reading (I was three years ahead of everybody else in reading).  I do remember writing and keeping a journal that we had to give to her, but I don't remember what I wrote in it.  As you can see, I am not good at keeping my feelings secret when it comes to writing.  Perhaps she read something in there that made her feel like she should do something.

So two things happened next.  One by one, the kids start making an effort with me.  I thought that was really nice, but I wasn't able to appreciate or enjoy this because I was becoming so anxious at home that I could not eat.  I ate very rarely.  I think I drank milk at night.

If I ate, I threw up.  It wasn't bulimia, I just couldn't keep anything down.  So one day, Ms. Right noticed I wasn't eating, and encouragec me to eat.  I tried to eat something that particular day because I'm a people pleaser and I didn't want anyone to be disappointed in me.  So I ate a banana that my mother had packed with my lunch.

What happened next is what will haunt me forever. Or maybe not, after I say it:

We went back to class, and I was uneasy because the banana was the most I ate in weeks.  I had to go to the bathroom because it felt like I was going to throw up.  I raised my hand.  Ms, Right ignored me and kept talking about something inane.

Then I began to feel like I was going to throw up,and I thought I better run out of the room, even if it meant daring to do so without permission.

But I didn't make it.  I threw up right there at my desk.

And Ms. Right had a meltdown as the teacher's assistant ran to clean it up.  No one attended to me, other than to, of course, talk about how gross I was.

I knew I should go clean myself up but I was frozen as Ms. Right continued to scream  at me:

"That's it!  I give up!  What is wrong with you?  Forget it.  You know what? You're not worth it.  You are a lost cause, Erica.  A lost cause."  That stung and that was bad enough, but then she said,  "Everybody, forget what I said before."

And this one girl named Chrissy, who I thought was my friend said, excitedly, "You mean, we don't have to be nice to her anymore?"

"No.  Don't bother."

"Yes!" Chrissy shouted excitedly, relieved of the burden of being nice to me.

I honestly don't remember what happened after that. I think I went to the nurse's office. I am not even sure how much I told my mother.  I think I was absent for most of the rest of the year, because I couldn't handle being there and I begged my mother to let me stay home.  I started Fourth Grade at a different school, wherein I was still shy but not made to feel like a hideous, unlovable, unknowable outcast.

It still hurts.  But I'm glad it's out now.