trauma

I hated Ozzy. It wasn’t his fault. The blame belongs to the man who tried to kill me. Like all mistakes, my entanglement with that man had a before and after. Before him, I was a fan of Ozzy. Ozzy rocked. He was danger and rebellion. For a kid growing up in the 80s, that was more than enough.1989 was a tough year. I played “You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” from Diary of a Madman repeatedly. I mostly listened to cassettes back then, so every time the song reached the end, I had to rewind and find the right spot in the tape at the beginning of the track. After a while, your fingers learn exactly when to push rewind and play. Do that enough and the tape gets warped enough so that Ozzy sounds like he’s warbling from the bottom of a lake. I had a serious problem with authority figures and that song became another anthem in...

Trauma is an unpredictable and sneaky thing. Most of us have those experiences in our personal backstories that have left us softer in some places, harder in others. Maybe we get a little twitchy when a particular name or song evokes a painful memory. In the current parlance, we get triggered.That kind of trauma, though, that wound you can take a good long look at and assess just how much damage it's done to you, that's one thing. It's something you can reckon with, maybe show it to someone else who can sit you down and help you staunch the bleeding. Dress that wound. Get you back up on your feet again. You're wobbly, stumbling around, and you fall on your face now and then, but you're moving forward again.But what about the damage you don't see? What do you do with a splinter that's lodged in your psyche, causing you to do all kinds of uncharacteristic shit when you...

Tag: trauma

The Road to Nowhere

Sometimes Healing Means Turning Your Life Upside-Down