Working in conflict mediation I learned that time passes differently for different people. Someone who has perpetuated a trauma might think the trauma was way in the past, because it was a year ago, a decade ago, half a lifetime ago. Someone who has lived with the impact of that trauma may not see this as “past.” For them, the past might be now, and now, and now, and now. Unaddressed trauma is not packaged away, and is often occurring again and again.
~Pádraig Ó Tuama, from On Being's The Pause
Someone recently described these pandemic days as "an endless Tuesday". We were lamenting the sameness of our days. I see the same four family members every day. I see one friend who's my running partner. I see the occasional grocery store clerk. But a Saturday is pretty much like a Wednesday. Or an endless Tuesday. I have little sense of whether I sent that e-mail a week ago or a month ago. Or two months ago. Time is an untrusty elastic band.
It reminds me, a lot, of what it was like in the days following D-Day. Everything suddenly different. An expectation that I would just adjust. That I would pretend that nothing had changed while everything had.
And this weird sense of time. Had he told me a week ago? Or six weeks ago? How was that possible? What had I done in those intervening days? How could I not remember?
Personal or collective, it's much the same. A sense of foreboding. An endless now. No matter that, in the case of betrayal, that traumatic event, to him, is over. To us, it's now. It's happening now. And now. And now.
"When will you get over this?" he asks, genuinely aghast that we're still devastated a week, a month, a year later. We wish we knew. We don't understand it either. It happened...when exactly? Now. It's happening now.
Trauma is notoriously difficult to treat because the traumatic event has been filed in our brains differently than a non-traumatic memory. It has been filed in the eternal now. Hence the hyper-vigilance, the thudding heart, the shallow breath. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no....
Pádraig Ó Tuama calls it "in the waiting" and reminds us that in the waiting, we don't need to be alone. The incredible women of Betrayed Wives Club are here. Professional support is available (which I strongly recommend -- particularly EMDR, which specifically deals with trauma). Books and podcasts are available. In fact, I'm in the process of compiling a list of resources to include on this site so please chime in with whatever has helped you.
But right now, in this endless Tuesday of trauma, call it what it is. Betrayal is trauma. And trust that you can move past this with courage and support and enormous self-compassion.
As Pádraig Ó Tuama puts it, "A new future will only be built on courageous moments, and those are happening now, and now and now."
