An anniversary of trauma + an aquarium

 

I’m sure it is no accident that in this one year anniversary week of the most traumatic event thus far in my life I ended up being given an aquarium via my local buy nothing group. A pathway back to something from my childhood, my dad’s love of aquariums, his caretaking and teaching about the fish I watched endlessly in our living room. We didn’t have a TV at that time and the aquarium and the stereo with my parents’ vinyl albums were both exciting and soothing. 

In my life I’ve experienced trauma: the loss of beloved animals, losing a friend to suicide, rape, so many moments during my work in child and family services, including being singly responsible for yelling loudly enough and long enough to make sure children at risk of violence were moved to safety. I’ve sat with children and teens still wearing blood from suicide attempts, gone to homes and been met at the door by gang members pointing guns at me, I have worked on cases so disturbing I would go home at the end of the day and just sit, exhausted, letting the awfulness leave my body before sleep. I’m leaving a few things out here that are deeply personal. 

And yet none of these things are the most traumatic. Last year on this day and the three weeks that followed became the worst experience I’ve lived through. I won’t go into it here because it involves people I love dearly. What I want to say is that I feel it in my body. Thankfully it’s manageable because of my understanding of trauma and anniversary events. And because I resumed therapy to do EMDR and other somatic work to address this experience. 

We hold things that happen to us in our muscles and our brain and our sensory awareness. There’s a sensation that I can still feel as I type this that came out of what I lived through last year. It’s hard to describe but it’s grainy and there’s a smell and an internal, visceral sensation that I can remember distinctly. As I type this I also hear the bubbling of the aquarium filter and that too carries muscle memory: safety, peace, loving parents, joy. 

That the aquarium, with two tetras and colors that I might have chosen myself came to me last week is pure serendipity and synchronicity. It’s also both of those things that when I pulled my daily Woodland Wardens card, it was this:

Keil Bay is still with me. So is my dad. It won’t surprise me at all when my mom shows up in her comforting way. 

May we all find our healing with things that hurt us.