Let’s take a little trip…
You might be asking yourself “But where are we going?”
and there’s simply no fun in telling you ahead of time, so buckle up buttercup, things about to get weird and deep.
I need you with an open mind here…let’s go.
I’ve been obsessed lately with healing trauma, or rather looking at ways that trauma affects one as a human being and since human experimentation is frowned upon, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a willing participant…me.
Since my rape in September 2017 I have been trying to piece my life and my self back together as best as I can. I’ve taken all the steps that survivors usually take and of course I’m speaking in wide-sweeping generalizations so as not to imply HOW anyone should heal…that’s a solo journey. But I’ve gone to therapy, group meetings and participated in writing groups dealing with sexual abuse. I’ve continued yoga and mediation and I’ve immersed myself in nature. I planned time with friends and family and of course made sure to set aside time to be by myself. I gave up alcohol for the most part, easier not to be tempted to fall down that rabbit hole. But the thing I always come back to is how utterly not me I feel. No matter what measures I take, I can’t seem to piece my self back together…my life, the external things, a home, a job, a car, those things can always be replaced but self...that’s a whole other ball game.
So it feels impossible to heal.
Think about it, if you cut your finger, the remaining surrounding tissues know on a cellular level that they have to fill in or fix what remains in order to heal, in order to effectively, efficiently run the whole unit, which is the unit of self. Your red blood cells rush to the area to fend off anything foreign from entering your body. You body goes to work to coagulate your blood to stop the bleeding, it’s amazing really. This machine that is you, recognized and sent a complex set of signals to all of the appropriate response teams and an organized response was employed before you even had time to register the injury. Now you may be left with a scar in that location, but the tissue used to make that scar are all you. In essence the loss you felt is replaced by the awareness that you were missing something but logic states that what was repaired is at least biologically the same. The memory remains. The memory of loss always remains. And that is on a physical level, so what happens on an emotional level when faced with trauma far greater than a paper cut?
You can’t put your fingers on emotion. You know emotions exist but you can’t poke an emotion, you can’t touch an emotion at least not in a physical way. Emotions don’t technically manifest themselves as things, although you can recognize emotion from a mile away on a grieving mother’s face. Which then lead me to question why grief in particular wears the same, it’s universal. It’s one of those rare times when as humans we see the same language, the language of loss. And why does the language of loss require global understanding?
I’m convinced it’s an evolutionary trait.
What does that say to the world of humans that it was necessary for our survival to understand the grief in one another across continents, across oceans, across language?
Ask yourself why we would need to understand global loss?
Are you still with me Alice? Let’s go deeper.
You are a miracle…
No really, you are. And so am I and so is the next person reading this…The odds of you becoming you were 1 in 10.2685000
Please read the linked article to understand the scope of that number, it’s a little overwhelming to comprehend and to be honest I can’t even pronounce that number…
You and your DNA are unique and all living things that we know of are made of DNA so by definition they are also unique and their probability for existence in whatever form they have come to inhabit could also be considered miraculous. Is it not just as miraculous to consider this on a smaller scale, our own human body? From one cosmic encounter of sperm and egg enough energy was created to start production on the most complex organism ever to be discovered, man. Our original cells, our stem cells begin creating what we know to be skin, bones, hair, fingernails, eyes, ears and so on. The job of ear is no less important than the job of heart because we are the blueprint. We already know how things should form together and how they should function in their most efficient state. So it is just as miraculous and improbable to become an ear as it is to become a heart. Because the construction is on the unit of self. The measurement for all things is self. We are the same type of improbability as our planet and I do not mean that on a literal scale, the scale is too large for me to comprehend. I am sure there are plenty of physicists out there who could give you the actual number but it wouldn’t matter, our brains can’t even envision a number so large. So now apply the same principles on a larger scale, the solar system. The probability of Earth becoming Earth and not Saturn or the moon are even more miraculous and improbable than becoming human. So if we exist somewhere between our own stem cells which allow for the creation of anything and a planet whose existence is also proof of the creation of anything on a scale that we can’t even process mathematically then what would be the only thing we would have to fear collectively except the loss of self?
Survivors of trauma aren’t afraid of dying, they’re afraid of going through their entire existence mourning the loss of self, the grief of mourning the living. The grief of constantly searching for ways to feel whole and coming up short. So I came up with a theory during meditation and I began seeking to confirm if it was even possible.
It is my belief that during periods of extreme trauma the frequency and I am talking about the measurement of sound waves, radio waves and light waves of trauma is experienced on an atomic level. I believe that the vibration of traumatic energy is great enough in some cases to disrupt the cellular structure of DNA itself. I believe these fragments of energy travel far enough away that they are absorbed by the polarized energy around them and that reuniting these energies is a statistical improbability. Leaving survivors of trauma structurally compromised.
I started thinking about my own trauma and how it felt to not feel like myself anymore. I wanted to find a way to put it into words and I started to describe it like this…
Imagine yourself as your own individual strand of DNA. Visualize what you would look like on a cellular level, using a DNA strand as your guide. I see my DNA like very colorful strands of yarn which upon close examination you would be able to see the current of energy exchanging (think a very colorful matrix) and the fibers that make up the yarn are even finer and more vibrant when separated containing the energy for individual tasks, like lifting or bending or thought, but work most efficiently when they are smoothed out, working as one strand of DNA, undulating like a wave through space and on the individual fibers there are elements of yourself acting independently of one another…your sense of humor, your interests, your intellect, the decisions you make, in other words things that are shaped by your environment. This allows for the duality of wave and particle behavior to coexist.
Now this organism of self is operating efficiently in it’s current environment, of course some organisms work more efficiently than others, some organisms take great care in their maintenance and some don’t but for the most part this organism of self is highly functioning. And by functioning I mean, you’re reading this right? But you’re also breathing, pumping blood from your heart to your vital organs, processing thoughts, feeling the air around you, it is hot? cold? You’re doing all of this simultaneously without awareness. That’s pretty damn effective if you ask me.
But let’s apply trauma and see what happens to this highly functioning organism…
I imagine trauma this way, an image I hope you can visualize with me. My beautiful DNA strand traveling through space and time, much like yours. This double helix structure, smooth and on course, everything functioning together in harmony and without warning this structure is violently thrown off course and struggles to correct itself and make sense of the overload of signals flooding the brain’s receptors. Some things become crystal clear and others are barley identifiable. And this structure is being squeezed, it’s integrity twisting and bending, contorting and bouncing back. It’s employing all of it’s survival instincts at once and there is so much energy being expended at record speeds that the structure finally weakens and valuable pieces of this structure and it’s energy shake loose. Some pieces travel far enough from it’s own gravity that they break free and attach themselves “out there” in time and space to a temporary counterpoint. It is no longer whole. It is no longer capable of functioning with the same level of efficacy. And because this change occurred at an atomic level it is impossible to quantify. And without quantification it is impossible to immediately determine the level of damage the organism has sustained. The organism of self, that human, that being is atomically, irrevocably compromised.
Now imagine this structure, this structure of self is part of a larger organism which is the human race and that organism is part of a greater organism which makes up the planet in totality. And our planet is a part of a larger organism which is the organism of our solar system in it’s totality and from there the solar system is part of a larger organism which is what we know to be space..and so on. We can not be so naive to believe the the organism stops with us. And by this we are able to theorize that when we become traumatized that our planet is trying to correct/fix/fill in/heal itself in order for the greater organism to maintain it’s efficacy.
I know that I am irrevocably changed and that I could search the universe over and never find the missing pieces of myself. And what is that worth? What is my loss of self worth? What should the punishment be for permanently destroying another human being on a cellular level?
But what do I know?
It’s just a theory.
Christie Page 