Sunday, January 16, 2022

Surviving trauma

This is a difficult subject - difficult to calibrate: as we all are survivors of trauma in this world. And if not, then still in trauma, with even more disastrous concequences to all people around. Still there are degrees to this survival, and so different degrees that they are barely connecting at all. But still, yes, we all share this experience, we all beat on, all damaged.

Though this said, there really are degrees. I know that I escaped relatively lightly - and my trauma was mostly, adding complications, directly caused by myself, by my special weaknesses. And that was nothing like the unspeakable nightmares that are still going on, at this very fucking moment, and which went on without reprieve in the past and which will go on in the future. 

To be able to function rationally in the world is to acknowlege the truth of this unending torment going on, all the time, still going on. For what would be the alternative, denial, escape? And of course we do try to contribute whatever there is to contribute for progress, reason and empathy. This bloody chaos of the world is a a challenge to any thinking and feeling person, which I think is the reason why so many abandon either thinking or feeling, or both.

But in any case, after all these observations and qualifications, yes, I am a survivor of trauma. And not a run of the mill trauma, the trauma we all automatically get from being born into all this imperfection and chaos and random cruelty. But a survivor of a more particular, more individual kind of misfortune. It felt rather strange to realize that this morning. How many things there still are to learn and understand about my story, about this particular experience of being in the world?

No comments: