Shattered and Scattered: A Story about Trauma and Mental Illness
Content note: This personal essay discusses sexual harassment, rape, incest, panic attacks, PTSD, depression and threatening language.
“You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged on it.”
“I know 15 men who would rape you,” he whispers in my ear.
I am in shock. I can’t breathe. I want to fall to my knees and cry, but I am frozen. Utter fear takes over. No fight. No flight. Just sheer freeze. I hear a crack; it starts from my feet and works its way upward. I am shattered. I crumble and fall into pieces on the ground. I am broken.
This threat of sexual harassment happened three years ago at work by a patient. After writing those words, the feelings are still present. Fear. Brokenness. Shock.
I am in my kitchen, coffee cup in my right hand, and for no reason, I lose my grip; the ceramic mug shatters and scatters into pieces all over the floor. Later, I will find some pieces, some fragments, but many will be so small that I can’t see them. Scattered and shattered all over the floor, I pick up the bigger pieces and cut my finger. I panic. I rise too quickly, and my mind begins to spin. I clutch the countertop with both hands and start to hyperventilate. I can’t stop. I’m gasping for air; my chest constricts. I am reeling from a whiplash of thoughts. I am out to sea, flailing and gasping for air. I am going to drown, I keep thinking. Terrified to the core, my heart pounds in my chest, into my throat. I am having a panic attack. Alone.
A week later, at my doctor’s office, I am diagnosed with a slew of ailments: PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), agoraphobia and paranoia, along with my existing condition of chronic major depression and anxiety. I am shaking inconsolably. I am crying so hard that my head hurts. I am stunned at how my body is reacting. By the end of the session, my doctor prescribes me a small blue pill, an antidepressant, adding to my cocktail of another antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. Then she writes me a note: three months off work. That’s the best she can do for me.
“This is out of my wheelhouse,” she says. “I suggest you see a therapist.”
I am left bereft. I exit her office soundless, with only a piece of paper shaking in my hand.
I drive home on autopilot.
“How did I manage to get home safely?” I think to myself.
I enter the house, drop my keys on the floor and head straight to bed in my clothes. I do not emerge for a week. I am stuck; a ton of concrete lies on top of me. I can’t move. I just breathe, and barely at that; it’s shallow and staccato.
When I filed my report at work, the director of occupational health and safety gave me the number to reach our employee assistance program.
“Talk to someone,” he offers.
It takes three weeks before I seek out my iPhone. There is a message waiting, and it’s an occupational health nurse from work calling to check up on me. I call her back, tell her I’m fine and then fall back asleep.
I wake up in a panic, sweat oozing from every pore of my body. A nightmare that feels so real. Men at my door break into the house, find me and begin to rape me. I wake up after they are done with me. I feel cold, stiff, pinned to the bed.
I take a pause from writing. It’s difficult to contain the feelings that are emerging. Waves crash over me, and I am submerged.
It’s not easy to write about trauma and mental illness; I want to convey through imagery how it feels for me to experience a panic attack or what depression looks like in my life. For two years, I lived on my couch, doing very little, sleeping a lot and lacking motivation. This incident changed me. I was an adventurer. I had purpose and meaning in my life, and in one moment, with just a few words, my world came crashing down. Those words he whispered in my ear might have rubbed someone else in a different way, but my history, the accumulation of past abuse, took me down a path I no longer want to be on. I want my life back. I miss my curiosity and sense of purpose, but utter hopelessness and fear of physical harm outweigh everything.
Let me take a step back and share a few experiences that shaped the outcome of those whispered words passing through my ear.
For me, past trauma builds upon new trauma. I am an incest and rape survivor. It’s difficult for me to write those words down; I no longer want them to identify me. On the other hand, these terrible experiences, like building blocks, make up parts of who I am. I write survivor not to convey that I’ve overcome these traumatic experiences but that I still struggle with them over-defining me. And so, when someone spews a violent statement at me, another block builds upon the previous one, and I become the sum of these experiences. Therein lies the crux of the problem. I allowed his whisper to become a roar and shake me to the core. It’s not just what he said that shakes me; it’s who he is and who he knows that frightens me.
He sits in his wheelchair smoking a cigarette and focuses on a scratch ticket. He spends most of his days on the terrace of the hospital where he’s lived now for thirteen years. It’s a complex care hospital filled with what are called “lifers,” those who are so complex they will most likely pass their days as full-time residents and not short-term patients.
I am an Arts and Wellness Specialist at the hospital. My job is to engage patients and residents to participate in activities that foster connection and community. My latest project is to paint the pillars that hold up the terrace.
I see this resident every day. I am curious. He sits alone, content, it seems, with his cigarettes and scratch cards. He mumbles often for others to shut up. He likes the terrace to be quiet, even though it’s a social space that carries voices based on how the space is constructed. Lots of concrete and low ceilings. Small noises sound larger as they bounce off the hard surfaces.
I am warned by colleagues not to engage with him. He is rude, foul-mouthed and likes his solitude. But I am drawn to him because of those reasons. How did he become rude? Does he truly enjoy his solitude, or is he thought of by staff as a lost cause? Naively, one day I approach him. I say hi, and he tells me to fuck off. A challenge, I surmise. I like challenges, feel akin to those who resist. I sit next to him, introduce myself and share the painting project I have in mind. He does not look at me once. He continues to scratch away at his ticket and mumbles something.
“What was that?” I ask.
“What do you want from me?” he says.
“I thought you might be interested in painting with me and some other patients to make this space that you use more enjoyable, beautiful and less gray and concrete.”
“I don’t care about you or your project!” He now looks up at me. “Fuck off and leave me alone.”
I take his cue and get up to leave, but not before I say, “I hope to see you around.”
I later reflect on the encounter and feel empathy for this resident. There’s a reason why he was rough with me. Living here for thirteen years can’t be fun. Leads one to hardness, perhaps.
On a Thursday afternoon, I enter the terrace with my painting apron wrapped around my waist and with a supply of paints ready to prime these pillars.
He zooms onto the terrace at full speed in his wheelchair and greets me with “Hi, painter.”
He doesn’t remember my name, and that is okay, but at least he acknowledges me. That’s progress for me. We made a connection.
As the weeks pass, colleagues visit the terrace and witness my interactions with the patient. They heed a warning: he’s bad news, stay away.
I don’t let his past experiences define him. I want to give him a chance like I do with other “problem” patients. I can reach him, I tell myself, even though I do feel a bit of fear when I see him. I push through the fear and try to see the humanity in him. Until the day he whispers those words in my ear.
How did that happen? We had a disagreement one day, and he lashed out with those frightening words. They entered my body so sharply because I was open to him. I let myself be vulnerable towards him, and he knew this and latched on to it. Took advantage of my kindness and stuck a blade into me. My wound bled and speckled the concrete floor with droplets of blood, mingling with the shattered and scattered pieces of my body, all over the floor.
I share this story, these words with you, the reader, to give insight into my state of mind. Context matters when understanding my story. And that’s what it is now, a story in my head that plays on repeat. I want to move beyond this story and get my life back. It’s been three years now, and I’m not back at work. I’ve been in therapy for most of this time, and I’m slowly swimming my way back to shore. The undercurrents want to pull me under, and sometimes I am submerged, but other times I remember how to swim and move one arm after another, one leg, then the other. The therapy I do, CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and CPT (cognitive processing therapy), specifically for my PTSD, helps to teach me to reframe the narrative in my mind that keeps me underwater too often. When I feel submerged, it is because I feel helpless, and I blame myself for engaging with this resident. Why didn’t I listen to my colleagues and stay away from him? Unfortunately, or fortunately, I am drawn to the forgotten, to the misunderstood, and I reach out because I have felt forgotten and misunderstood so often. I know what it feels like to be brushed aside by others for past actions, and I know what it’s like to be overlooked, forgotten. So, I opened myself to him. I allowed myself to be vulnerable. The etymological meaning of vulnerability is vulnerare, or “wound.” I was wounded by his solitude, his anger, and wanted to give him a chance. But in doing so, my already existing wound couldn’t take his threat. It was made deeper by his words. My view of the world changed that day; it felt unsafe, and everyone felt unsafe. I was locked in my own small bubble.
But that bubble is starting to expand. My bubble is my boundary, my threshold for what I want to enter and not enter me. The world still feels unsafe, but I now trust myself to manage or juggle what comes in and what does not. I have the tools now to assess risk and to be okay if I falter because I know that my swimming stroke is stronger and can endure. This is my new story. I must believe this; my mental health depends upon it.
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