These past several weeks have been pure hell for me. In fact, despite some of my “up” posts, these past 18 months have been hell. I have found it nearly impossible to move beyond my experience and the trauma and degradation, the deliberateness with which they were visited upon me by people who should have not only known better but should have…

Wait, I have determined not to go there, not to revisit that dark place in my mind any longer, or not for now, after I can handle it better than I can at the moment. It serves no purpose, one, and two, it only feeds the fever of despair and revenge-seeking, an emotion that can eat you alive if you let it.

It was the notion, the actual feeling of wanting revenge and Dr Angela’s dismay when I said so this morning that brought me up hard against my own deficit of forgiveness, my own inability to accept that which I cannot change. I suddenly understood not only the horrendous feeling that parents must have when a child is murdered, how they must want to see the murderer killed, and how they must want the death penalty for the killer…I felt that much anger for my torturers. And at the very same time, I suddenly saw how useless it was, that nothing could be done, that in fact they would and had “gotten away with it” but that my only recourse was not revenge but to accept it and move on, because not to was to get mired in fury and bitterness and the morass of despair that was weighing on me and driving me nearly to madness every day. I had to stop, I had to stop and find a different way to deal with it, or I would die. Simple as that.

So I considered that family of the murdered child, and I understood that if that killer were executed to serve their revenge fantasies, would it actually bring closure and peace to them? Time after time, that has been promised, and time after time, people have not found peace in the killing of another human being because it never works. Violence to revenge violence cannot relieve the trauma of loss, or make anyone feel less awful. It would be far better for that family, and for me, too, to learn better ways to cope, to breathe through the despair I suppose, or even to work so that others do not go through what they or I have experienced, as long as doing would not reignite the trauma for us.

I am not sure I am ready to do that sort of thing just yet. I do not want to get angry on behalf of anyone else at the moment, for fear that I will only get angry, and anger by itself for its own sake will not help me. But already I speak out about these things, say what happened to me but in my speeches I try to end with words that segue into messages that bring hope to my audience. I could never speak about those traumas without something that would bring it full circle to recovery from trauma or I would leave them in despair and myself as well. As in a poem, you start with darkness but leave with at least the assumption that light is on or just below the horizon, headed in the right direction.

So there I was in Dr Angela’s office, and even though I was sobbing about this trauma that I could not surmount, that was eating me alive, the picture of that angry but grieving family appeared in my mind’s eye, and I realized that I had to find a way to help them, to heal them…and how would I do that? I would, I would, I would…First I would help them stop ruminating about the killing, since rumination is itself a way of making the injury or trauma worse, like continually picking at a scab. I would have them open up to the world and see what is around them, see what remains alive, what has not died. For me, I would look and see what in myself was not violated, what I can do in spite of what they did to me, understand that I still write and draw and paint, that in fact they did not take those things from me.

They hurt me, but they did not kill me. They only degraded my feelings, they only humiliated my feelings, they only frightened me. They made me feel as if they might hurt me when they attacked me and pushed me to the floor. I felt scared but they did not do anything that permanently injured my body or caused irremediable damage to my brain. I am still alive and in fact can still do what I used to do. I only feel hurt, feel traumatized. Feelings are feelings, and while they are not nothing, you can change your feelings. I might not be able to change an injury that led to an amputation or brain damage and I certainly could not if they had killed me.

I need to think about this differently in order to change how I feel. I need to think about what I can do, both constructively and creatively. What I can do about it and what I can do instead of thinking about it day and night. Well, tonight what I can do is prepare my speech for the Farmington Library tomorrow, and pick out the poems I am going to read. And tomorrow I will be cleaning my apartment and then meeting my ride and going to the library early. I won’t have time to brood or ruminate. I will bring my sketchpad and pencils, so I will have something to do while I wait.

One thing I won’t do is leave myself time to think, no, that will not be an option I am going to allow myself. If the Commissioner of Mental Health contacts me after reading the letter and documents I sent her, so be it, I will leave the issue in her hands. But otherwise, the case is closed, at least for now. I have a life to live, and I need to get on with it. If one of those people who deliberately hurt me, just one of them, went home that night with a bad conscience, ashamed of herself, ashamed of herself as a nurse, I am glad. But it may not have happened and in any event I will never know. But i will not brood over it, and I am not going to think about any of it tonight.

One day at a time, just take it one day at a time.