So you know that old head game, don’t think about a white bear?
No? Well, don’t think about a white bear...
...now, what are you thinking about?
I’m trying not to think of the poor little poochy, but damned if that image isn’t locked and loaded into my head. It. Just. Won’t. Go. Away.
It’s not like I’ve never seen roadkill before. And it’s not like I’ve never seen an animal die before—Tom and I have had to euthanize four pets over the years and we wouldn’t dream of not being right there with them. I was even with my friend Russell when they turned off the respirator. I saw my brother in his coffin (he looked handsome and just like himself) and my mother (not good).
Nothing has haunted me like this little pup.
It was partly the violence of the moment. I won’t say more about what exactly haunts me because I find the thoughts so painful …
But I've been thinking now about soldiers. How do they ever recover from the experience of war? I guess they don’t, not really or completely. They must carry the images forever, if they don’t manage to repress them. (Yes, it's possible.)
This interesting article from Stanford discusses how women’s memories of disturbing, emotional images is stronger than men’s—that women tend to store the emotion of a memory in the same place in the brain as the memory whereas in men, the emotion and the memory activate different parts of the brain.
So I guess that might mean women wouldn’t make good killing machines, eh? Is that a good thing or bad? Discuss.
I am distracting myself as much as possible from the memory of that miserable moment Tuesday night. Lunch with my client yesterday was a lot of fun and productive. I held it together just fine. It’s only at quiet times that the image pops back up. I started crying during the final relaxation in yoga class this morning.(In unrelated good news, my tree pose was fine today so I seem to have recovered some balance.) However, it was good mental exercise to tear my mind away from the bad thought and bring it back to the moment—the music, my own breath. By wrestling my mind back to the here and now instead from the there and then, I felt immediately better.
Maybe little pup’s last moment has a little lesson for me. One I’d really rather have skipped. And so would he, I’m sure. If he’d had a chance to think about it.
5 comments:
In emergency services, we are often witnesses to traumas, sadness and things we really would rather not think about. The things we witness, much like the trauma some suffer, become a very real part of us.
Sometimes the trigger that brings these memories to the surface seems innocent. Sometimes the memory is more pronounced because of something else already in our psyche. (You mentioned the resemblance to Zsa-Zsa...)
Eventually these memories become tiny little scars in our consciousness - often healed but still disfiguring when looked at directly. Eventually some of them might even tend to fade a little.
I'm sorry the vision is so haunting for you.
Oh, I forgot you do that, Chelle. Thank you for your insight. "Tiny little scars in our consciousness." Wonderfully put.
It reminds me, too, of something I meant to say in this blog--about how all these little moments, the terrible ones as much as the joyful ones, give us the texture of who we are. Sometimes I look at strangers' faces and wonder what images live behind their eyes.
And may I say--I now feel like SUCH a weenie, remembering what you do!
No reason to feel like a "weenie" - we are ALL affected by the things around us and no experience is more or less important.
I recently read an article that said we need ten-times MORE happy experiences to equal the emotional reaction for one bad experience. It seems that ugly sights and pain make more of an impression. Interesting study.
Ooh, sounds like a fascinating article, Chelle. Hope you'll blog it if you can find it again. I'd love to see it. My friends and I talk often about how one negative comment from an editor hits much harder than a million positive comments.
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