trauma does not exist part 7

this is a story of triumph

I burned bright in those forgetting years. all heat. everything I came into contact with, I consumed. I admit: I miss that version of myself.  

I was 19. I was studying abroad which is just a fancy way of saying I was young and drunk and uninhibited and living in some faraway place interchangeable with any other. we’d gone out. we’d danced. We’d laughed and flirted and let boys touch us on the dancefloor. now came the winding down.

we were walking home. Everything was hazy. Maybe that’s why clarity chose this moment.

I tripped on something that probably wasn’t there. I fell. the moment I touched the ground a sudden and violent possession took hold. Knowing had found me again. and this time it wasn’t meek and apologetic. it was angry and unforgiving. there were no shards of memory, nothing solid to hold on to. id gotten rid of those years ago. just a cold certainty that snaked through my intestines.

there are few things worse than Remembering when you’ve been drinking excessively. this is especially the case if you’re a girl. eyes puffy, face disfigured. tears and snot forming rivulets all down your face. you are the drunk party girl, you are a stereotype, you are really losing your shit.

friends carried me back to the room. she needed water, they probably thought, and she needed to pass the fuck out, if only to spare the rest of them. but instead I made matters worse. I opened my mouth and vomited it out. by then, the memories were all gone. but the story remained. it gripped me and I had no choice but to force it on them, too.

the crying, once begun, wouldn’t stop. I cried for three days straight. I cried on the way to the airport. I cried in the airport terminal. I cried on the airplane. I cried when we took off, when we were hurtling through the air, when we touched down again.   

but when it was done, it was over. a shadow of my former self? hardly. I had confessed. I had been witnessed. all was forgiven, all could be forgotten. well, sort of. I couldn’t return to forgetting, not exactly. I knew it was there but it had been brought out into the light and in that way reduced to insignificance. it was assimilated into my story, poor me and all that.

I went back to burning again. not bright. but violent. blue flame. rageful.