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Wednesday, November 24, 2015. A different kind of peace seems to be encompassing my apartment’s living space than was here before all hell broke loose above and around me – and perhaps has left again. So strange. What an unwelcome ordeal. But perhaps existed in my life – as a kind of teacher.
Relief.
I spoke via telephone for a second time yesterday with the management of this apartment complex. This time I spoke to the ‘main man’ – and the horrendous all-hours stomping and romping, running and crashing, shaking of ceiling and walls – the great BOOMS above me – have stopped.
Relief.
Is this permanent?
Time will tell. I feel as though I just went through a great battle of a war that appeared in my life out of nowhere. There really is NOTHING my so-harmed-by-severe-early-abuse-and-trauma nervous system requires more than predictably stable peaceful calm.
I am STUNNED not only by what just happened here so recently but also by what happened to ME during these “attacks.” Scary stuff.
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I keep hearing one particular echo from that management-me conversation yesterday. As I described yet again what was happening here I also, by habit? By my inner design? Mentioned that “I am a good tenant….” Management responded, “It does not matter if you are a good tenant or a bad tenant. That kind of noise and behavior is simply not accepted in these apartments.”
Oh, within us the echoes of horrendous early years of violence, terror, abuse, trauma – they NEVER really leave us in our lifetime. I suspect it really is ONLY a matter of what kind of circumstances we find ourselves subject to that determine how those sometimes-latent trauma changes make themselves felt in our body, in our life.
That is OK. It has to be. That is our reality.
What happens next is what matters.
Are we in meaningful ways protected from further harm in every situation in some way?
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I kept thinking over these past days of horrible torment (in my universe) of something I experienced way back 41 years ago. I lived in Redwood City, CA in a 2nd floor apartment in one of those buildings that had a railed walkway on that level to reach all those apartments from the outside.
My daughter was 3 ½. I was still, at 22, oblivious about the horrific nature of the trauma I had endured during the entire first 18 years of my life. I knew NOTHING BUT endure and survive.
I had badly fighting neighbors on the right-wall side of my apartment. Horrible fighting erupted one night about 2:30 in the morning as the man screamed and shouted at his wife – I could tell with a gun in his hand – threatening to shoot her.
My response? The only response I was capable of at that time in my life?
Yes, with fear but quite calmly, I woke my little girl and carried her to my bathroom. I crooned to her quietly, soothingly as I dragged a comforter along with us to spread out on the bottom of the cast iron bathtub where I curled up with my daughter in the only place of safety I could imagine. We spent the rest of that very long night there waiting for bullets to come tearing through my apartment’s wall.
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I sure cannot garner any special nuggets of wisdom from this situation right now. I feel too worn down and worn out by life, actually, to put forth the kind of effort it would take of me to try to mine something out of this any more meaningful than to say – THANK YOU for this peace and quiet here now!
What about “It should NEVER have happened in the first place?”
Moot point.
Entirely.
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It is NOT silent up there with a family and at least one child as tenants. But it is CIVILIZED and reasonable and acceptable. It is now doable for me to adjust my needs for quiet and peaceful calm in response to and in relationship to the life of that family that has moved in above me.
In some ways I SENSE or feel or imagine – that this family NEEDED to be able to stop the madness within their own lives. That little child needs that peace, some kind of appropriate response by its caregiving adults. Letting a young child, perhaps age 4 ½, run like a maniac around until after 2 am is NOT appropriate.
Not in THIS portion of the universe, at least.
Not here. Not now.
But I am very aware of my own inner struggle to stand up for myself in this situation – even at age 64. It was NOT easy to do. But it was necessary. And I hope this peace – is lasting. I really, really DO!
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Story Without Words: How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?
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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame
Stop the Storm 