But the force of emotion threw me out of tact and I lost track of reality.
I always said I could talk openly about my trauma. I thought I accepted it. To my surprising disappointment, I discovered that I contained hidden emotions that I could not control and those emotions were increasingly overshadowed by everyday worries.
Although I always felt a mixture of sadness and joy as I discussed and shared my experience with others, I was never overwhelmed by emotions. But when I think about it better, I’ve never dug deep enough into those memories. And I just needed a couple of right questions to peek into that dark corner.
Draw the river of life. What would that look like? An interesting idea. I started drawing that river. Rocks, fish, trees, greenery, nature, river meanders, waterfalls, large, small, waterfalls where the water reaches far below the earth… All the way to hell.
And it slowly rises along the rocks that stretch in those deep layers. Other rivers flow into mine and stimulate my flow of life as well, so that the river finds a source from which she can look at the world again. During the drawing, an interesting feeling sprang up that provided a lump in my throat, but I didn’t pay much attention to it.
The second task was to draw a backpack and put in it a couple of the most important things I had during the treatment. What were those things?
I had a blanket. That blanket was a gift from my elementary school peers. That blanket covered me day and night, when I was cold and when I wanted to feel a touch of support.
But was I still missing something? What else did I get?
I run the movie over and over again.
Empathy?
I’m looking for hidden scenes.
The support disappears.
I am reviewing unpublished moments.
Understanding?
I enter a secret password.
Where are they?
And I unlock the Pandora’s box.
A white room suddenly formed around me. I can smell alcohol for disinfection, which I quickly get used to. The screams and cries of children are heard more and more, doctors and nurses are shouting for no reason, people with masked faces without noses and mouths are concerned. Suddenly I am tied up with a pointless apparatus that serves to regulate the dripping of the poison I am receiving and I cannot move.
The priest shows up and says, “You cannot be confirmed.” Peers are created and say, “It’s not right that they give in to you.” I then imagine myself at the funeral of a friend who was being treated. I’m afraid. I feel all the weight of the life’s injustice on my shoulders. I lose ground under my feet and I can do absolutely nothing. The wave of those emotions is so strong that it paralyzes me. The instinctive embarrassment of showing those emotions makes me ask for a break during the workshop.
After a while I decide to talk to psychiatrist. At one point unknown emotions and thoughts come to light and I realize that I have finally begun to become aware of my unconscious part and my perspective on myself has become uncertain. Still, I decided to accept all the suffering and injustice. I decided to accept responsibility. After that conversation the situation calmed down and I regained control of myself.
I paid the price of rejecting that dark corner. I paid the price of rejecting loneliness that I avoided. I paid the price for not gradually illuminating those dark parts and seeing how much more I didn’t know about myself.
But it was also the first step in getting to know myself. I realized that those dark opportunities gave me a chance to be stronger.
And then I ask myself: How much do we actually know about ourselves? Why is it necessary to know yourself at all? If these situations happen again can we stand on our own two feet and be supportive to others?
I believe we know the answers to those questions. We just don’t hear them. We need to get away from the noise and commotion. Peek inside the quiet solitude and become an observer of your thoughts and emotions. These answers have been sought by humans since ancient times, so the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote:
There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind