When the Dust Finally Settles

Writer’s note: This blog post contains mentions of sexual assault and abuse. Proceed with caution, if you choose to proceed.

I spent the past week moving constantly. To some extent, I was glad I was working the World Baseball Classic if only because it meant that I wouldn’t be thinking about the massive trauma marker coming up. I didn’t have to think about the flashbacks that would start invading my nervous system. I got to focus on baseball and doing something I’m good at — being a damn good reporter.

It’s a lot easier to function when you’re mostly just thinking of the best way to phrase a question about taste testing the Team Italy dugout espresso.

You get these moments where you can function. Where you feel like you’re a human being who can maybe be capable of feeling whole, even if the cracks from when you shattered still show after you’ve been glued back together. You remember what it’s like to live again.

But when you stop moving, everything can hit you all at once.

That happened to me when I finally sat down for the first time in a week and had nothing really to do but sit and wait for my plane to board. I got through the week fine. I was exhausted, but I was fine. Until I wasn’t. That’s usually how it goes.

The first time I was raped was 12 years ago this weekend. There are years where I can go without thinking about it; then there are years where it’s the only thing consuming my mind. I thought the 10 year mark was going to weigh heavily on me, but it wasn’t. I struggled through the 11 year mark.

I’m somewhere in the middle for the 12 year mark. It’s on my mind, but I’m also exhausted. Running around South Florida for six days for baseball does wipe you out as a person with chronic illness. But it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Even if I’m not thinking about it, I can feel it in how tense my body is. I can remember all the physical and emotional abuse I endured in those months. I can still hear his voice in my head if I haven’t spoken to him in 12 years.

I couldn’t bring myself to read the story of the allegations against Cesar Chavez. I believe Dolores Huerta. I believe all the women who came out against him and those who haven’t yet or never will¹. I don’t need to read the details to know how bad it was. I believe it.

I know there are times when my own capacity is short, but I can manage through. But this was one place I knew I would be despondent if I read it. Still, it lingered in my head knowing my trauma marker was coming up. I didn’t necessarily have a plan in place to take care of myself once I got home from Miami; I just knew I had cats and I had snacks from the Philippines my tita insisted I bring home with me (for which I am grateful for).

It’s hard when you know how to compartmentalize everything in order to function, but everything always starts to hit when you stop moving. I sat at the Miami airport thinking about it, thinking about how people are just cruel and want to hurt you. Thinking about how I was manipulated still makes my skin crawl.

I wanted to think about the amazing baseball I had just seen the past week. Anything but how much I had been hurt and abused by someone I now consider an irredeemable sociopath². I wanted to think about how much I am thriving in spite of how much I’d been hurt and how much of the hurt still lingers. It will always be there, which is the way C-PTSD goes.

I’ve spent so many years in therapy for this. I quit drinking because downing a bottle of Fireball or whatever bourbon I had wasn’t a great way to deal with the flashbacks and I’m 6.5 years sober next week. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m conscious about trauma responses I have and how I manage it. I’m quicker to figure out why I’m reacting a specific way and why because I’ve grown more self-aware in the decade plus since. I take medicinal THC as a prevention method for flashbacks, but also learning I have to be very cautious about how I use it — and constantly talking to my psychologist and psychiatrist about it — so I don’t ever fall into using it the way I used alcohol.

I still can’t listen to the music I listened to at the time. There are times where I think I can, if I’m really going through it, but that could’ve been self-destructing in the moment. Some of my trauma has started to show up in ways I didn’t think it would before — like listening to The National is now a no go because it reminds me of a moment where my abuser decided to be demeaning and cruel to me about going to see them live³. I’ve never returned to the city where it happened, but have been back to the province in the past year, in a way to start to reclaim it for myself.

I remind myself constantly now how I’m surrounded by better people — better friends who actually care about my wellbeing and know how to respond. A complicated friend from my past returned to my life recently, shockingly in a way that’s only been positive so far. The people I keep in my life now are the ones who’ve shown me empathy when I need it, knowing I’ll extend it to them, too.

It’s what I wish 21 and 22 year old me had. I still wish I didn’t know what the fear of upsetting an abuser is like. I got so good at continuing to move so I didn’t have to think, something I’ve now learned is an avoidance tactic. It was easier for me to avoid than to face everything, but now understanding that the only way I can start to make sense of things is to process, as much as it fucking hurts and causes me to want to listen to The Killers’ Pressure Machine, no skips, while lying down on the floor.

I have to remind myself it’s okay to stop moving.