Reverberations

Please read: if you have any triggers or sensitivity or just no interest in reading about violence or abuse then this is not the post for you. There are still a few lighter posts kicking around if you’re looking for reading material!

It was a warm and sunny afternoon in October 2023.

It was a hot and sunny afternoon in July 2010.

I was sitting in Ohlone Park.

I was sitting in a toolshed beside my house.

I was reading a book about Madagascar.

I was taking a final exam for an online course on Sub-Saharan Africa.

I wanted to understand the field research I’m about to start.

I wanted to prepare myself for a dream I’d had for years, for research I couldn’t even conceptualize.

There were already so many echoes.

I was sitting half on a towel and half in the mud because if there’s a way to get dirty, Matt McGee will find it. My water bottle and my phone were beside me. My headphones were around my neck. Dogs were barking. Cars were driving by. The wind was stirring the leaves. Someone was yelling angrily far away.

I had walked in my house, halfway through the final, wanting to know what was for dinner. My mom was cleaning and told me to talk my dad. He was watching TV. He was made of rage and hatred, full of death threats I knew he was too much of a coward to follow through on. Part of me wanted him to try. I suggested something I knew he wouldn’t like then turned and walked away.

I was too distracted by the beautiful day to look down at my book. I was too content with the noises of the park to listen to music. Because of that I had 2 or 3 seconds to react when he came for me. It was enough time for me to defuse the situation, some instinct from childhood kicking in before I even knew what was going on. I still don’t know what really happened.

I was focused too much on my final to look back. I was too caught up in antagonizing my dad to pay attention. Because of that I had no time to react. I never even saw it coming. I still don’t know what really happened, how I managed to get away.

I sat numb on my towel for another hour, looking at my phone.

I locked myself in the toolshed and finished my final.

The past reverberates in weird ways. The language between them. The *speed*. But where the reverberations end also matters.

Things were worse back then. I remember sitting outside the toolshed hours later. My mom was standing in front of me crying and asking me what I was going to do. I knew it was over then, that my family would stand by him. For a short while that afternoon I thought maybe things would finally change. It was the second time that day I was wrong. It’s a remarkable thing, the moment when the tether snaps, when you start to fall and no one tries to catch you. The world never looks the same after that. So I ran, and I could never stop running. It took me two years to tell someone.

It’s not a secret anymore. I can talk openly about it without much trouble but I can never figure out when or where to bring it up. Kind of hard to find a good segue into triggering developmental trauma sometimes, ya know? At some point I stopped telling people, and it started to feel like a secret again. My shoulders started to sag with the weight of it.

But it’s never too late to start talking again. Talking too much has never really been a challenge for me anyway, am I right folks??? Things are so much different now. This time it only took me three days to tell someone. This time I stopped the spiral right as it was beginning. This time I don’t feel alone or untethered or like I need to run. This time I feel like I can get back to a real sense of normality. This time I knew how I needed to process this—by writing about it, and sharing it with people. And those are the things that will reverberate into the future.

Also shout out to Big Z, who has talked me through both of these events. A truly amazing friendship brought together by the power of herps!