Healing from Trauma

I fell down the stairs at work yesterday. I had gone upstairs to collect the office mail from the mailbox, and as I descended back to the basement (euphemistically referred to as the “garden level”) suite where our office is located, my foot caught on the top step. I quickly realized, “oh fuck, I’m not going to be able to catch myself!” and found myself lying on my side at the midway landing of the staircase. The mail was strewn all over the place and I was in pain. I’d like to think I looked really graceful in my fall, given my dance background, but I probably didn’t and at that moment, it didn’t matter. I felt the pain radiating from my shoulder into my head. My jaw hurt. My head hurt. I wasn’t sure how severely I’d injured myself.

I lay there for several minutes, not sure whether I could get up or if I even could. Then I began to realize that I might well lie there some time before anyone would happen to encounter me. We’re a small organization and our staff is pretty much the only ones who use the stairwell to the “garden level.” I decided that I needed to pull myself up and make it into the office. My coworkers sprung quickly into action and within 30 minutes I was at the urgent care clinic. They really need to drop the urgent from their name though, since I was there 4 hours in order to have a few x-rays taken and be given a bottle of muscle relaxant pills. They should also drop the "care" from their title, since they managed to misgender me several times during the course of the afternoon. They can keep the word clinic though.

As I told a friend about this unfortunate experience today, she encouraged me to take the necessary steps to heal the trauma. I thought I had been doing a reasonable job of that, but she pointed out to me something I had not thought about: that this event included a level of emotional trauma that needed care as well. This might seem overstated. After all, I didn’t break anything. I’m quite stiff and sore today, but with proper care and attention, my aches and pains will heal. Why would I need to consider emotional trauma?

She reminded me that in talking about the event, I had mentioned that I had felt very alone and fearful in the minutes I was lying on the ground in the stairwell. I didn’t know if anyone would come for me. I didn’t know how long it would take until I was found if I couldn’t get up. This is a vulnerable, traumatic moment, though it may not seem like it on the surface. In fact, this touches one of my deeper fears as a single person, particularly as a single woman: What if something happens to me and I have no one to help me? I wrestled with a similar question going into my surgery earlier this year. What if no one is available to support me? When a couple close friends had their plans change and could no longer be there as they had offered, it felt deeply traumatic. When one friend delivered the news, I broke down sobbing. Feeling alone and without help is not a pleasant feeling. It’s traumatic.

Healing lies, for me, in remembering that I am not alone, that there are friends who are there for me. Yesterday, my friend and co-worker quickly volunteered to take me to urgent care, then stayed with me for the next three hours while we waited. When she had to leave, another friend rearranged her schedule to come be with me, then brought me home while her husband picked up my car from the office where it had been left. Their family made a complete adjustment of their evening plans to be there for me. Their expression of love provided a powerful response to the trauma of feeling alone in that stairwell. The many expressions of care and concern I received online last night and today also speak healing to that wound.

Trauma is not always visible. It’s also not always prompted by some massive incident that we would normally label “traumatic.” Trauma can happen in brief moments when something deep inside of us is triggered. It’s different for each person. The words of my friend helped me recognize this and affirm it in my own experience. I would not have thought to heal the emotional trauma of yesterday before she called attention to it, because I wouldn’t have thought about it. But it would still have been there, adding another wound to that deep fear inside me. Recognizing it, addressing it and bringing healing to it allows me to not add that fresh layer of internal pain. It’s not such a small thing after all.