Trauma

I just listened to this very short snippet from an interview with David Nutt on BBC Radio 4's "The Life Scientific", and suddenly I couldn't stop crying.

It just seemed to come from nowhere, as it often does whenever anyone mentions the word "trauma".

I've never actually been allowed to talk about what happened to Mr Man in hospital and how it made me feel. Even my counsellor didn't want me to focus on that, but to talk about my mundane everyday problems, such as paying bills and getting enough "me time". Maybe that's why it is still effecting me 10 years later. No one wants to hear it. "That was all in the past", "It's time to move on!", "It doesn't help you to keep focusing on that". But what if you can't help it? What do you do when only one word brings everything back?

You know, she did say one thing that could actually be true though, although I didn't want to accept it at the time. She said that she thought my problems stemmed from my childhood. Why do I now believe that could be true? Because I watched my Dad nearly die while he was having a convulsion when I was too young to understand what was going on, and I wasn't allowed to talk about that either. No one asked me how it made me feel. It was like it never happened. I can't tell you how frightened I was as I knelt by his side, sobbing, and no one explained to me what was happening.

I felt as helpless in 2002 as I did back then. I was so scared. Like a little girl again. I thought the person I loved most in the whole world was going to die. And people behave like it never happened.

At least with my Dad I remember nurses and people running in and out and doing everything they could to save him. But with Mr Man they didn't care. It was like kneeling by his side, sobbing, while he convulsed on the floor, vomiting and turning blue, and no one doing anything to help him.

I wish you could see me sobbing right now, because there are no words to explain the pain, the fear, the desperation. There are no words at all. Only tears.