The Toon Trauma Triggers

It’s the happiest place in the world. Disneyland. I am afraid.

Trembling, I slip deep down into the plastic seat molded into a massive seashell on wheels. The darkness of the man-made cavern is interrupted by a video on the ceiling that makes it feel like I am under the sea and looking up at the opening of a tidal pool. Ariel, from the film inspiration for the ride, “The Little Mermaid,” swims above. To my left is a plastic Sebastian, the crab character.

It’s the saddest place in the world. The intensive care unit. I am singing.

I crackly cooed from a dry throat, eyes closed, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” over and over and over and over, like a broken record: “Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?”

I did this for four days.

Silly, huh?

I was trapped in my hallucinating brain, tormented and screaming for eternity as I fell backward into an oil-slicked tidal pool, over and over and over and over, like someone was yanking me out of the water by my chest and then letting me fall back again every few seconds.

You know when you have a falling dream and your heart hammers like crazy? That’s how it was, nonstop. But I didn’t wake up for days. The body of Sebastian the crab, but with Maggie Smith’s face for God knows what reason, floated next to me as I plummeted into the abyss. She shrieked at me that I was dying, that it was my fault, that I deserved pain and death.

For four days.

It’s the happiest place in the world. I am having flashbacks.

I’m on the “Alice in Wonderland” ride. On the wall is a video of Alice falling, falling, falling down the rabbit hole. She looks helpless. Reality collapses and I’m smacked back into my hellish flashback, my old “wonderland,” one just as imaginary yet believable as Alice’s. My ride car enters a psychedelic room filled with neon plants and Chester the Cat smiling his mocking smile and knowing eyes.

It’s the saddest place in the world. People are laughing.

I was strapped to my bed like an insane person after trying to pull out my IVs and punch people. I was insane, much more than the Mad Hatter. When not singing Queen, I muttered this is a bad trip, these are bad drugs, this is a bad trip, these are bad drugs, over and over and over and over. Hospital staff laughed.

Silly, huh?

Yet, people didn’t laugh much when I spat that I loathed them. Or when I begged them to end my life, end my misery as mercy. I felt like Alice on her Victorian acid trip, falling into the cosmos, helpless and panicking that she’d never return home.

For four days.

While silly to others, my ICU delirium was, and is, horrifying.

When septic shock struck me in June 2016, carbon dioxide gassed my brain. My organs shut down and to cope my mind decided it wanted nothing to do with reality anymore. In that time I reckon any afterlife, heaven or hell or whatever’s between, would have been preferable. But machines kept me alive involuntarily. My mind decided the next best thing was to jet me off to the nightmare wonderland. I went berserk, a blind and pulsing rage layered over my hallucinations.

I was completely deaf and unable to taste, thanks to antibiotics, and my sinuses have been blocked for years. Between all that and the visions overwhelming my eyes, my only real sense was touch. And the only “touch” was torment — people jamming needles into my flesh, pushing me into my bed while I gasped that I was suffocating, cramming breathing tubes between aching jaws. I drowned, gurgling puddy-like mucus.

Still silly?

The trauma still hasn’t left me, and it might never.

You either deeply understand trauma or not at all.

Others who have never endured trauma judge us. We’re cowards who can’t get a grip on our minds. To them, I’m not brave if I cry after delirium, a transplant, and deafness.

When I published a post about trauma, commenters mocked my “weakness.” Silly.

Our souls cry out uncontrollably and people make “triggered” jokes. All of a sudden, they don’t remember our battles; only our flawed recoveries. Recoveries take bravery, too. They do. The mightiest battles, which take the most bravery, won’t be won in one fell swoop. We will stumble and tire and fear.

People see the “silly” triggers but they don’t see what is triggered. Those who laugh don’t understand. I hope they never fully do.

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