On 9/11 and PTSD

A major legacy of 9/11, for me in the past seven (!) years of living in New York City, is survivor stories. A resilient community, formed from a crucible of crisis.

Just like the legacy of my own little exilic hell at City College of New York, morbidly drawn to Holocaust Studies, to survivor lit.

Survivors.
Tell me your secrets, and you will tell me my story.
Tell me your sorrow, and I will tell you my hope.

Where did it come from, your will to live, that lunatic hope?

How did you make it, against all odds? 

And WHAT. is this joy, this foreign lightness,

that surprised you when it showed up to stay?

What treasure did your tragedy bestow?

Surely, if you can survive, you can learn to live. One can hope.

*** 

Anniversary grief of any kind is a curious thing. Hard.

to any suffering friends, i pray that in these days,

in the cycle of seasons, in the recurrence and repetition,

welcome or not:

in these days, may you return not only to your hurt,

but to your Help.

your ever-present Help.

oh my friend, you are not alone.

let not your pain crush your heart.

i know you want a map of the wilderness, the mutilated world,

but traveling friends and His guiding presence,

that's all we are given.

oh, and and perishable bread for today
(but enough for a Sabbath)
and promises...

friend, we can hold hands.

i don't know how, but i do know now,

it will be okay soon.

***

at first, the stories are about surviving trauma.

then,
then, they are about surviving Post-Trauma.

the latter is the more difficult task, I think.

the former, your body does for you, on total out-of-body auto-pilot.

***

and then, you have to get back into your skin, saggy and ill-fitting and scraped now.

when it comes to Post-Trauma, you are warring against your self, and against your seemingly self-annihilating mind. you are fighting for the present, and for your right to stay there.

Living in the day-to-day, after you have met the extremes––dull. Dull, dim, dark.

Dull like your pain. Dull unlike your flashbacks.

But, oh God, those flashbacks, they are searing. Blinding.
Shocking. stunning. Unlike real-time, which is dull like paralysis.
They demand that you attend to your pain.

They say, heal. Arise. Go. onward.
They say, you are forgiven. What? is that what I really need?



Survivor stories are travelogues of traveling friends. Witnesses who have gone before. Who have found themselves ejected from the life they once knew, in a blur, and then have wandered the wilderness. Some make it out.

Thank you friends, for sharing your stories. The moment you start telling your story, you have survived the prison of your secrecy. When you were unknowable and alone after being dehumanized, it was such extremely narrow confinement.

oh, it is NOT good for man to be alone.

Thank you for your will to live.

Where others had stayed in slavery
When others had perished in the wilderness...

 Each of us cries with thankful heart, "Lord why was I a guest?"

What is there to say, but Thank You.

***

At first it is terribly dark and cold and grey. They try to fumble their way back to a lost world. lost life. lost garden. Safety was back there. Simple was back there. Plans were back there.

But it is lost. Life can only be ahead. They float on through.

Sometimes they fight.
All the rhythms that were once parasympathetic, all that was for granted, now you must fight for it.

Now you must gasp for air.

Now you must fight for joy.

Now you must wrestle in worship.

Now you must fight to live.

Don't run from the tension.






And suddenly, light. The tears have filled all the secret silent spaces, and they are refracting all the debris of your life from the tunnel's end, into a kaleidoscope.

Life is bursting into full color.

The sun has risen.

A new day has dawned.

It is Easter.

Just like He promised. I will find you. I have never forsaken you.
I descended to the dead. On the third day, I ascended into heaven.
I am seated at the right hand of our Father, where I am your strong and perfect plea.
I came that you might have life––and have it abundantly.
If you are faithless, I will remain faithful.
I will bring you safely home.

We sing a new song:

Oh, if it had not been for the Lord, we would have been swallowed in the sea.
We were so near to death. If it had not been for the Lord, let Israel now say.
You have led us well. You have saved us and safekept us.

Do you know, you can do more than survive?

You can live again.

remembering maya angelou

for a midwest-bred and Harlem-rehomed woman who read and day-drank and hoped and prayed and wrote her way to freedom in a wide open world, who refused to speak for six years and declared about it "there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you":

i know
as you knew
how a clipped wing
could sing
a dirge for dead

dreams
let freedom ring.

sister bird
with bosom sore
you're caged no more
your struggle's done
but you'll sing on
that holy trill
hope's ghostly chill

the sky,

at last,

your home.

sister bird
Love has come
through wasted fears
in desert years

Love's come through

for us.


in grateful hotdiggety memory of Maya Angelou, whose wings surely fit her well.
with hope that she now sings to the Lord a new song.

---

there's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light . . . it flies by day and it flies by night and I'm frightened by those that don't see it there was a dream and one day I could see it like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it // The Avett Brothers

Orual

"... is not a symbol but an instance, a 'case' of human affection in its natural condition, true, tender, suffering, but in the long run tyrannically possessive and ready to turn to hatred when the beloved ceases to be its possession. What such love particularly cannot stand is to see the beloved passing into a sphere where it cannot follow."

// C.S. Lewis, on Till We Have Faces, in a 10 Feb 1957 letter to Clyde Kilby.

Not my envious love, but His redeeming love--a new song--shall be my refrain, till I see Him face to face, and ever after.

where before there was only guilty silence: a new song

without him i hide my lips in trembling shame;
in him i open my mouth in petition and praise.

// Valley of Vision

can't hide beneath my sheets.

ONE.

snowed here over the weekend. a joyous time of ignoring the impending frostbite in our soggy socks and our numb fingers. first snowfall, first snowfights, in costumes and all. mine was yoshi. great ironies. God laughs. the plumber and his princess are all over facebook today. you've blocked me and even ignore me when i ask you why. why, alyosha, do you feel the need to hide from me? to what end? if you are trying to spare me the details of how happy your life is without me, how can you possibly expect that to work when we share all these friends? it's not your happiness that harasses me, it's your exclusion. your silence keeps me ruminating. do you not care or do you just hate me? if you are punishing me, it hurts, it's working, please stop.

TWO.

it was 27 degrees saturday so i had to dig out all my winter gear. a scarf nearly windswept off the roof. raccoon hat and blue weatherproof gloves, fluffy fleece sweater and the black arm warmers i insisted you wear. and jacket pockets, still full of paper snowflakes for you, when you least expect it from a cirque so lame that the super salty buttered popcorn was the happiest part, aside from you of course. pen refills. guilt-stained flannel sheets and tearful down comforters. bright eyes and full hearts. these were the things i put away in march as your affections melted. i havent had to see them since then, but winter decided to crash our happy halloween here. and memories of you, how you visited me at my very worst, they came crashing through too...

THREE.

friend, what happened to you? you were never one to turn your back on someone in need, a blind eye to hurt and responsibility, or to resign to the "irreconcilable." am i to blame, did i injure you beyond recognition? you've pushed me out and brought her in, a replacement in your life. a replacement among our friends. you've made it impossible for me to belong. you who always welcomed me home before now prolong my exile. you can stay, i guess. i will go. you can keep them too.

FOUR.

or maybe, at the end of today, i guess i have stayed, and you have left. life moves on, you move on. everyone moves except the paralyzed.

o Lord, heal. say to me, arise, go, tell.

i'm singin the same lines all over again,

so renew Your song in me.

Tears in Heaven

Weep, but not as those who have no hope.
He'll let your tears into heaven, you know--
They're not just gonna disappear like they never mattered.
He'll let them in, so that He can wipe every one of them away.
And you'll see him clearly, with eyes unmarred by tears,
You'll sorrow no more.
Someday, someday soon.
Someday in a short while, He will.
Lord, come dab just a few today.