Tag Archives: trauma

Back to Boston

By Posted in Family, friendship, Life, Running Tagged , , , , , , , 17 Comments

Running a marathon is an undertaking of but a single dimension. At least that is how it appears to the non-marathoner: the runner places one foot in front of another and repeats that act 42,184 times. Inexplicable to many, perverse in fact. And in the course of the event the runner herself might feel the same: there is but one dimension which is distance. In physics we call this Space and it implies a further dimension which is Time. But we runners can quite forget time, becoming oblivious, entering a kind of fugue state. The corresponding sole dimension in the body is fatigue, a fatigue singularly profound in the lives of the modern first-worlder. And the moral or spiritual correlate is courage or the pursuit of courage.

 

In the course of the career of the continuing marathoner that analysis undergoes change. The change occurs by evolution or by revolution.

For some that revolution, that turning over, occurred at Boston in 2013. I ran Boston that day. I was among the thirty thousand on the course whose lives changed. We were outnumbered by the three million, the people of Boston who take us into their homes, who take us to their hearts, whose day of days is the third Monday in April, Patriots’ Day. Those people, acted like a polity wounded. The wound was psychic and social, a wound that was the denial of the hospitable self of Boston. On Patriots’ Day one million of the citizens of that small big city come out and stay out to watch their home event. They come out early and they stay late, cheering on not only the swift Kenyan but the aged Melbourne schlepper. To all they offer oranges, bananas, jelly snakes, beer, sausages, and Vaseline as groin balm.

The bombs went off and Boston exploded in grief and contrition. The world had come to celebrate the folly and the freedom of running too far; the world was their guest and abruptly the ceremony of innocence came to an end.

Too slow, too tardy, I missed the Finish Line explosions. Turned away by police at the top of Boylston Street I walked away through stunned and grieving Boston. Evening came on, the chill came down and Boston offered me the use of its i-phone, the gift of a jacket, the shelter of warm shops, the gentle pat on the shoulder. Bostonians wanted to drive me wherever I needed to go, then walked miles out of their way to conduct me to my family meeting place.

 

I flew home the next day.

 

Ever since Boston has sent me reports on its healing and rehabilitation. Most telling have been testimonies of the injured. One wrote of her amputation, her new prosthesis, her learning to walk and her completing the marathon the following year.

 

The research community of Boston has wasted no time in applying its collective brain to research into trauma and recovery. You can read some testimonies by clicking on this link.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/us/100000002820641.mobile.html

 

 

In October last year Boston wrote and invited me to run as a guest in the 2015 marathon. Having just recovered from injuries (self-inflicted!) I leapt into training. And I decided to support the Stepping Strong Team that raises money for research into trauma such as Boston experienced. My wife and my daughter are psychologists, both practising in the field of trauma. Between them they have nearly fifty years’ experience in a field that is as endless as human cruelty. I see the work they do and the need. I wrote on the subject in yesterday’s Age:

http://m.theage.com.au/national/when-a-helper-needs-help-20150328-1m646f.html

 

 

I want to raise $1000.00 for the Boston research. I’ve kicked it off with $180.00 of my own. Please read and consider: if you want to make a contribution you can do so at https://www.crowdrise.com/brighamwomensboston2015/fundraiser/pheidipidesgoldenber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rape

By Posted in Life, Medical, Opinion Tagged , , , , , , 4 Comments

One night when I was about thirteen the local police called my father to examine a body that had been found in the park. The woman (the girl?) was eighteen. She had been raped and strangled. Dad returned, a great sadness in his face. His voice was drained. He said, ‘Her only crime was being a woman.’
I did not understand.

I met a young woman recently who has been treated over twenty years for depression and anxiety. She’d been given medications as well as psychological therapies and psychiatric help. She still sleeps poorly and takes sleeping tablets as well as Valium when she’s anxious. She tells me she spent years drinking a bottle or two a night, ‘closed away’, later using cocaine, ecstasy and ice. She hears the ticking of her fertility clock, she wants children but she feels unready.

Diffidently I asked about abuse. She trusted me enough to confide, ‘I was raped when I was thirteen.’
‘Was it a relative?’
‘No, a school friend one year older than me… I looked for him recently on Facebook and I wrote him a message. I’ll email you what I wrote if you’re interested.’
I was interested.

Hey XXXX,

I’m not sure if you remember me but just wanted to touch base after so many years and confront something which happened when we were at school together.

Remember the night we went to one of your female friends place and another one of your mates came along (apologies but their names don’t spring to mind).

Anyways, the events of that might have haunted me since and, well, finally I’ve managed to build up the courage to message you and speak up.

It saddens me that what happened has affected me so much and for so long.

I honestly thought that you were a friend back then and you and your friend took something away from me and I have never forgotten and it has affected me all this time.

My dignity was taken away and diminished.

I still have vivid images in my mind of being extremely intoxicated even to the embarrassing point prior to what happened that I had been sick on your jacket which I wore as it was cold.  After this I was too ill and had to go to the spare room to sleep it off and at that point both you and your friend had taken advantage of the situation of me being passed out drunk and you both fucked me.

I will never forget also to this day that your mum, and I understand her being your mother defending you and your friend in saying that neither of you would ever do such a thing.

Saddens me that I was the one apparently untrue to the situation in yours/your families eyes.

The next morning my mother and brother had picked me up and they saw that something was not right. I had blood on me and looked a mess and was taken to the doctors but I was too shocked and embarrassed to admit to anything.

XXXX this was probably not the best way to do this via FB and just understand I’m not wanting anything from you nor an apology or anything but just feel that this is something that I’ve had to stand up to and to give me peace of mind after so many years.


***

I understand violence born of anger or fear. What is it in a male that allows him to hurt a woman or a child by calculation? I know this violence, I see it and I treat its fruits; but I don’t understand it. That people live and re-live and suffer and endure I do know. Some suffer beyond endurance and slash or die. I know some few who manage to create an enlightened response. This young woman said, ‘I changed cities to change my life.’ Soberly she added, ‘I think I am making progress.’
She found work in the justice system. And she found a sort of spiritual greatness that shows in these closing lines to her old school friend:

I would however like to ask you to always watch over your daughter, nieces if you have any and younger family members so this never happens to them.

She Died with a Smart Phone in Her Hand

By Posted in Childhood, Family, Life Tagged , , , , , , 3 Comments

She approaches the kerb, this young woman, walking diagonally across the footpath towards the verge. As she walks her regard is upon the screen of the phone in her palm. Nimble fingers dance across the small keyboard as she composes her message.

The face is intent, neither unhappy nor animated, as she drifts in her fugue onto the roadway. Dancing fingers pause, poised above the screen while she searches for the word that eludes her. Her feet walk slowly. She has no regard to the now quickening flow of feet before her.

The message, the letter, these occupy her.

The red light tells her nothing.

My car moves forward with the greening of the lights, as others do on either side of me and from the opposite direction.

What does she write? To whom does she compose these thoughtful words?

Is there a beloved for whom she writes? Inching closer I imagine her words: ”Dear one,

Last night was so…”

The last dashers against the red light have made shore. But the drifting lover faces her palm. Her fingers busy again, she writes her closing words…

***

When one tonne of plastic-clad metal encounters sixty kilograms of human flesh at 50 kilometres an hour the tender flesh gives way. The body leaves the surface, rising briefly above the roadway before landing in an attitude determined not by volition but by physics. A gust of sound as air is forced from the chest. The head makes forcible contact, soft brain and delicate vessels slam against the hard vault of bone. Slender cervical vertebrae are wrenched violently, internal viscera suffer shearing forces.

I have seen these changes, seen them all, attended them at post-mortems and at roadside.

***

And then there was Barry, my younger brother. Barry was five when the phone call came. I was home sick, genuinely sick – we couldn’t put anything over my doctor father – and I watched Mum take the call. Barry had gone off to school that morning, unescorted by a bigger brother.

Mum stood with the phone in her hand, her face urgently attentive. “Yes, I am Barry’s mother.”

Frowning, silent, burning with inquiry, Mum finally cut in: ”Sir, I can’t understand you. Please compose yourself.”

Then, “Oh hello Mr Zizzis, yes, yes I do know you… from the milk bar. Please tell me…”

Mum listened for a moment or two.

“I’ll come now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As she headed for the back door Mum said, “Barry’s been hit by a car…crossing Warrigal Road. Mr Zizzis says he’s alright. No, you stay here. You’re sick, remember.”

When Mum returned Barry was alright. He had an egg on his forehead and a guilty, relieved look on his beautiful face. Perhaps he was just pale, but his tight dark curls never looked so black.

Mum explained: “Barry ran in front of a car. The driver couldn’t stop in time. He was an old man, he said he’d never had an accident in all his life of driving… I couldn’t understand him on the phone, he was crying so much. Mr Zizzis saw it all through his window. He said the fender caught Barry and threw him up into the air. Barry just floated up from the roadway, floated and Mr Zizzis saw him going up, then landing on the bonnet. The driver wasn’t going fast. He just brought his car to a stop.

And Mr Zizzis knew Barry. He brought them in and gave the old man his phone. Poor man. Poor, poor old man.”

***

The daydreaming letter writer is safely beyond the eastbound lanes. Will she claim sanctuary on the double lines? The nearest westbound fender catches her. Her body rises, floats – I will her to follow Barry’s gentle parabola – she is young, too young to die. I am old, too old and too young – to bear witness again to the sudden extinction of breath, of life.

I, the Echidna

By Posted in friendship, Life Tagged , , , , , 1 Comment

One of Australia’s treasures, a relic from an earlier age, plods with measured tread across the country road ahead. One forefoot drags its opposite hindfoot, the second forefoot draws the hindermost, ungainly-stately steps from antiquity into the path of the rushing beast of noise and metal and plastic that is the motor car.
The echidna is a pachyderm*, related to olden things and oldest times. We do not meet as equals on the metalled road. The echidna waddles his slow way, oblivious, helpless, a mute witness to slow time.
The echidna survives. By the grace of remote places and broad emptiness the echidna reaches the other side.
So far I have never hit one.

On my pushbike I am the echidna. Ponderous, of another time, I travel with my unheeding back to the traffic. I too am a relic, not replaceable. My bike – heavy and old and unfashionable – carries two someones’ brother, three children’s father, the grandfather of seven tenderlings, the lover of one wife. My bike carries its freight of olden time awkwardly, a slow forewheel dragging a lagging, swaying rearwheel.

Last week an old friend called and asked – have you ever seen a road fatality close up?
Yes.
Does it stay with you? How do you handle it?
It never goes away.
My friend saw a cyclist hit by one vehicle, fall into the path of a following truck. He saw the head removed from the trunk then pass beneath a rear wheel.
My friend does not sleep well. He cannot ride there, where he was wont to ride. He will not drive his own car in that road.
My friend lived the moment of witness when a vigorous human became extinct flesh.

I ride on, a human echidna.

*Is it a pachyderm? I’d like to think so, but I fear I am confusing the spiny anteater with the elephant and the woolly haired mammoth. An easy mistake to make.