Trauma Stories

Still thinking about writing a memoir.  Lassiter: The Story of Watching Netflix in Your Pajamas.

It’s tough, though.  

Last week I said my stories bore me, but actually I think they scare me.  Maybe that’s where the desire to write a memoir comes from.  Wanting to write all the stuff out of my body.  Not so much so someone else can read it, but just to get it out of my system.  So I’d have energy for a life other than watching Netflix in my jammies and trying to keep all the stories from busting out and wreaking havoc.

Here’s what my stories feel like: Painful, abundant, lurking around every corner.  And that’s how I know they aren’t real stories.  They’re trauma.  Recognizable by how they turn the narrative into a pair of shit-colored glasses.  Also, they don’t change, they don’t evolve.  They just sit there like rocks in my belly.  That’s not a real story.  Real stories live and breath and dance and morph and keep the human race alive against all odds.  These heavy narratives I’m talking about….are not stories.  They are trauma.

If I write a memoir I’ll have to come up with an effective metaphor to carry you through the arc.  Something to help explain how trauma is trapped energy and how much of my story until now is about that quality of constriction.  It settles in your system and effects how you process everything.  And it takes a lot of work to free it.  But freedom is possible.  My stories will ride again! Does that mean my metaphor is a cowboy? Hmmm, no.

Anyway, maybe you can see.  Already, the story is starting to change, lighten up.  There is a happy ending in sight.  Or at least an uplifted plot twist.  

Once the story/energy/trauma is transformed, that energy is available for anything and everything.   Use it as fuel to keep warm, or run up a mountain-side, or build a magical business, or chase a 4-year-old around a blueberry bush.  And afterwards, all that remains is warmth and peace.  No memories to be avoided at all costs.  No lingering burden to carry forever.  That’s the difference between a healthy story and a trauma story.

Spend some time with your stories.  What is their quality?  Do they move easily?  If they evoke emotion, does it rise up and pass through you the way weather passes through the atmosphere?  If they stay with you, do they have the quality of a song or a smell?  Or are they heavy and cumbersome?  Do they rise up and get stuck somewhere in your body?  In your throat or your heart?  If you discover the latter, know that is not the true nature of stories and they can change.