It has been one hell of a week here. You might have noticed that for most of the week my PunkyMood was "withdrawn." I think it's time for me to delve into why and share.

A little bit of backstory .... Last year at this time, I was, to be brutally honest, completely lost. I was trying to find a way to deal with events which had happened to me which are nearly beyond anyone's capacity to cope and survive ... and certainly difficult for a child. You see, the earlier trauma occurs, the more difficult it becomes to be able to deal with it without a very vivid imagination. And once the person is grown and tries to finally deal with the trauma "for real" ... in a more visceral and less "imaginative" way ... all of the metaphor and fantasy and "stuff" that the child has had to add to make it all and all the world make sense, just makes a huge knot for the adult to unravel in order to move on.

Scientists have now begun unlocking how the brain deals with traumatic events - particularly since the Viet Nam war really introduced post-traumatic stress syndrome to the general population. What they've discovered is that when you experience an event so traumatic that you cannot really deal with it at the moment - it's just too large or too surprising (or both) - your brain fragments the event into:
1) the "story" or chronology of events
2) the pictures
3) the emotions
4) sounds
5) smells
6) physical feelings
The more traumatic the event, the more likely that all of the connections between those six pieces are severed. Thus, a certain smell might conjure fear in that person ... but they can't explain why. The person might be able to tell some of the story of what happened, but feel no emotion about it. The connection between story and emotion has been severed. A certain sound or smell might cause that emotion to pop up ... but since the connection to the story is severed, the person may not be able to tell why they are feeling that emotion.

Think about this for a minute. It's an amazing system to keep us from being completely overwhelmed at the time of an overwhelming event. It lets us keep a clear enough mind to get through what we need to get through.

But, it also means there is a huge delay in actually coping with the event itself. And, like the police and law officials know, the longer you move from the time of the event to trying to re-tell it to someone else - or trying to cope with it yourself - the more the details get a bit muddled.

So, we have a coping mechanism which protects us ... and by the time we're ready to cope with the event and all of its impact, things are so fragmented and so much time has passed that learning "the truth" (which I define as a "video tape" of the event) may not be possible without corroboration from other sources.

Now, think about that for a minute. Put yourself in that position. A certain sound causes you to freak out, but you don't really know why. You finally figure out there was a traumatic event ... and you may suspect what it was, but all of the connections between the story, the pictures, the emotions, the sounds, the physical feelings, the smells ... these are all unconnected. You've got to play detective to figure out how to re-wire your brain so that it all makes sense ... and without a schematic to let you know if you're doing it right or not.

For all you know, you're putting the pieces together wrong ... and even if you don't tell another soul the story, you are still accusing someone of a horrible act, even if the accusation goes no farther than your own interpretation of the pieces you have. How do you find the truth? How do ask other people if this person really did this horrible thing?

You learn, eventually, to trust that small voice inside you which has, in some small way, kept the connections alive somehow. It's not an easy place to access. It's not an easy place to trust. But that spot has kept at least the generalities of the event intact for you. It doesn't really help you with that "the truth" videotape, but it's better than nothing.

Of course, I am talking about the extremes of this coping mechanism. There are in-between stages which do not fragment and obscure everything quite this much.

But for those who do have to deal with the extreme coping mechanism, it's enough to make you feel completely insane. Why should the smell of sandlewood make you want to scream and cry? Why should the sound of a police siren make you want to go hide under the bed? Normal people don't have those reactions, why should you act that way?

The coping mechanism has caused people to give up and "go nuts" at times. Too confused by the plethora of unconnected reactions, it can be easier to simply succumb to the fear. Which reality is real? The one in which sandlewood means something bad is about to happen? Or the one where sandlewood means nothing? How can you discern the difference, particularly when your brain starts flooding fight or flight chemicals in an effort to "deal" with the whole confusing mess.

Enough of the psych lesson. The "real" backstory now ...

From the time I was about 7, I knew I did not trust my parents. My father was not safe and my mother was not all present. My sister was 4 years younger and to be protected. By the time I was 15, I had put several pieces together ... things that had happened when I was much younger. I was even more suspicious of my father's current behaviours ... but because I'd been abused from such a young age and for so long, I was only able to access tiny bits and pieces of "tame" things. The more current events were fragmented overnight and whisked away into their little hidey-holes in the cavern that was my brain.

As a test, I once told my mother a small-ish thing that Dad had done. I'd been left home with him. I was 4 or 5 and who knows what I'd done. At that age, it could have been almost anything ... or knowing Dad, it could have been nothing at all. Regardless, he was furious with me, and I remember him reaching for his belt and fumbling to unbuckle it.

I took off through the house like a bat outta hell. My solution was to find a damn good hiding place and wait out the storm. Dad took off after me and I was simply not able to get enough distance between us for me to find my best hiding place. I fled to their room, threw open the closet door and was heading to hide behind his suits in the back (suits covered everything, and the shoes in a line on the floor camouflaged my own feet). The door flew open and the light came on with it ... all I saw was a dark silhouette of a figure, hand raised above the head, belt dangling down.

Then everything goes black. I have no idea what happened. I wasn't bloody or very bruised or Mom would have taken me to the doctor. Some bruising was normal for me ... I was a climber and very coordinated, but climbing at 4 or 5 still involves some falls and some pressure bruises as well.

Mom insisted, when I screwed up my courage at 15 to tell her about this past event, that I had obviously dreamed this scenario. She came back a few days later and said she had asked Dad about it - my vision went white and I could barely hear her say that he laughed it off and said I was making it up.

I knew I couldn't tell her about anything else. Locked into this marriage in which he did not treat her well either, she couldn't hear this without having to question her own version of much of her married life. And she simply wasn't strong enough to face that yet.

I dug around in the photo albums, looking for anything to spark a recognition ... to begin connecting the dots for myself.

This is long enough ... I'll tell you the rest later if you can bear with me. :)