Healing
A Super Hell story
Content warning: toxic relationships, depression
If I ever saw Andrew Garfield in person, I would ruin both our days by falling to my knees and weeping. He looks so much like someone I lost.
It took me four years to be able to watch Andrew Garfield in anything, which is a shame because the man’s a gifted actor. He just looks so much like the boy I wrote a book to get over that I physically can’t take it. If Andrew Garfield uses an American accent and has short hair, I have assumed the fetal position.
And that’s after four years of healing. I want to put the word in air quotes, because if I was actually healed even a little, then triggers shouldn’t bring me to my literal knees.
Recovery and processing can take years, can take a lifetime. And I am better now than I was in 2018. I just thought I’d be even better four years on.
In 2017 I began a relationship with an Air Force officer. When things were good they were very very good, and when they were bad they were wretched.
I’d never been so happy. I’d never experienced depression before. I didn’t know I was capable of feeling such a depth and range of emotions, let alone experiencing them all inside the same 24 hours.
These days, seeing an Air Force bumper sticker no longer feels like someone is trying to hammer a white-hot railroad spike in between my ribs. But on the days my officer wasn’t speaking to me, that’s exactly what it felt like.
For the majority of our yearlong situationship/relationship, the Air Force officer and I were long-distance. He lived in Florida and I lived near another Air Force base. Which meant that on a given day, my 5-minute commute to work contained anywhere from three to ten Air Force bumper stickers, a parade of pain on the way to my office.
My cubicle was all the way at the end of the building. To this day I don’t know how I kept myself together as I wove through a packed newsroom on the way to my desk.
On the days I had to edit or design stories with Air Force photos, I simply didn’t keep myself together. The point of a uniform is that all airmen look alike, and boy did they. The perk of working the newspaper night shift is that there are tons of empty conference rooms to go cry in.
There are much fewer Air Force bumper stickers in my new city, which was part of the allure. These days when I see that blue winged bumper sticker, I feel a twinge. My brain remembers there’s an emotion associated with that logo, but enough seconds pass between recognition and response that life moves on. The light turns green, someone needs to zipper merge (poorly). Four years later and I can finally see an Air Force sticker without doubling over in pain.
I still find myself triggered by certain books, movies, and songs. Perhaps I always will be. Wanting to be healed as if my trauma never happened is a damaging and unrealistic expectation. I am who I am because of that relationship and the ways it failed.
I wrote a book because of it. I’d take a hundred more railroad spikes to the ribcage to keep this version of myself and all that I’ve been able to accomplish.
Morbidly curious about what actually happened? I’ll tell you.