It’s never just the one thing. The one thing, you can minimize, that you can resolve, that you can turn into a lesson or find the silver lining from.
With trauma, whether collective trauma from a long history of injustice, or personal trauma from individual struggles, or likely some kind of compound of the both…
When the emotions come, when they are intense, when there is despair, and frustration, and anger…boiling it all down to the most present immediate thing…
It makes me feel crazy.
A friend I’ve now de-friended, said once, “C’mon are you really going to commit suicide over a job rejection?”
It’s cumulative — and the people around you they aren’t witness to it, and no citation of a few illustrative examples can ever paint anything close to a complete picture.
All the pain, we’ve withstood and tried not to even let it register as to keep our spirits up, that we’ve tried to forgot, but is contained in our brains and bodies regardless.
It’s cumulative, and when those don’t understand, to sit down and try to defend myself, to write down all the trauma, to establish the repeated patterns, to recall it, so I can formulate my explanation, my argument… it just re-traumatizes me….
Why do I care so much if anyone believes me or not?
Is injustice seen and believed enough to bring about change? Fighting for social justice for a long time, supporting community organizing and empowerment, I’m proud of the activism out on the streets.
But will the reforms be band-aids? Will they reflect the cumulative nature of the injustices?
It’s not this one thing. It’s never just the one thing.
Inside My Madness 