We all carry trauma…right?

I have a wonderful family. I had a good childhood. I am not complaining or blaming others for how my life turned out, but we all carry trauma. Those experiences that bring with it pain. One of my mentors defines trauma as, “any overwhelming emotion felt in isolation.” For me this is beautiful because it means, that just because I had a good home life and I wasn’t abused, I can still have experienced trauma and sometimes the memory of it can feel overwhelming. This is one of the stories that carries trauma for me.

I carry only one picture in my wallet. I have many pictures of my kids on my phone, but only one picture I carry in my wallet. It is my yearbook picture from 1990. On the back of it, is my name, the date and the word “ugly.”

The day this photo was taken, I was called in, unprepared, to have my picture taken because the photo place lost my first photo. I got to make it up on photo “make up day.” I doubt that my original photo would have been any better, but this one…well…it was traumatic.

I knew my place in the pecking order. I was near the bottom of the school popularity chain, I had be notified of that enough times to think any thing differently. And the moment I saw this picture I knew it was bad. Even my mom didn’t want to buy it. The copy I have is the proof, the only other version shows up in the school yearbook.

I hated this picture, I didn’t give out school pictures that year. Yet, I was completely unprepared for what was going to happen when it hit the school yearbook.

I remember walking into the gym where a few people I thought were friendly, if not really friends. And they were looking at the yearbook. One of the guys looked up and said, “Why are you here, don’t you belong with the other retards?”

While that hurt, I could write it off. The dude who said it was always kind of an asshole toward me. I was used to hearing what a dog I was from him. A guy I thought was one of the nice ones responded, “Hey. That’s not nice.”

For an instant I felt such pleasure, someone really did think I was okay, a brief moment where I thought I might, maybe, belong, but then the nice guy continued, “My cousin is one of those retards, you don’t need to insult her. She’s way better looking than Whitney.”

Heart…smashed. I don’t remember if I cried or not. I am not sure exactly when I learned that letting them see me cry only made it worse. But I do remember thinking that I didn’t know anyone I could tell that story to. I didn’t know anyone who I trusted to make me feel better.

That wasn’t the first time I was bullied, it wasn’t the last. I have heard a thousand versions of how unattractive I am, how much of a loser I am. Hell, it happened enough that those voices play a fairly significant role in my brain even today. They are a big contribution to my insecurity around my looks, my intelligence, my coordination, my…whatever.

I don’t look that much different today. I am a little lot older, but I still have the frizzy hair, the plastic glasses, the roundish face. I still don’t wear make up. And I still carry with me the trauma of that teenage girl. Sometimes, small things wake up all the pain she experienced and it is all I can do to hold it together.

See, I still don’t feel like I belong. I have built up walls, I have created tests, I have protected myself from allowing anyone to ever hurt me like that again. No one can hurt me as badly as I can hurt myself.

I have spent years in some form of therapy whether it is traditional psychoanalysis or spiritual direction. I have worked to the point where I am incredibly self aware, and extremely good at spinning the subject. I work very hard on myself, and yet there are areas that I will avoid and I will do my best to navigate others away from them as well.

I have come to terms with a lot of my past. But I haven’t really ever come to terms with being bullied. I haven’t wanted to. I didn’t want to deal with it…I don’t think I wanted to admit that I had been bullied. I think I didn’t want any of the people who were part of it to ever know or feel badly for it.

I don’t for a moment think I am innocent. I am sure that I have done unintentional damage to many people and for that I am truly sorry. I am sure I said horrible things to people a number of times. Hurt people, hurt people. And I was one of those hurt people. I also know that those kids that hurt me, the ones who picked on me, called me names, told me I was ugly, and some other not so pleasant things…they were hurting too.

Puberty sucks, and I have forgiven all of them, I don’t hold it against them. The people who were quite the little shits to me grew up into great people…most of them anyway :). But that forgiveness hasn’t changed the fact that those voices have and continue to significantly influence my thinking about myself today.

It is going to be hard, but it is time to let go of the bullies that live in my head and my heart. It is time to take that pubescent girl and let her see that I care about her, I love her, and I am big enough and tough enough to protect her, even if I am not convinced that I belong.

At this point you might ask why I carry that picture with me. It’s a good question…and one I intended to answer, though I did do my best to even convince me that I didn’t need to. I tell myself that I carry that picture so that I can see how far I have come. To remind myself that I am not that girl anymore. Perhaps there is a part of me that does carry it around for that reason. The real reason I carry it around (or one of them anyway) is because it keeps me back. As long as I carry that pain an that trauma, I have an excuse for keeping up the walls that prevent me from even really finding out if I could belong. It is the justification for why I don’t have to try.

“I have been deeply wounded,” is an excellent story to hold oneself back. I have been deeply wounded, but I have also survived and built a good life for myself. It is time to face my past, to really tell that young woman existing in that space between being a girl and being a woman, that she came through it, maybe not in the way she dreamed as a girl, but in a way that made her what she is today.

Next steps…creating a ritual to release that picture.