When we experience various events in life, we view them through the framework and background we have available to us. For example, when an adult is in a car accident, the driver uses their knowledge of driving and injuries to assess the wreck. Then when talking with others later, they have a way to explain their experience such as "oh it was just a fender bender" or "the accident was very serious and I am so grateful to have walked away from it." The person involved can understand what happened and talk about what happened because they have a prior framework of knowledge to build off of.
So what happens when a person experiences events but has no framework of prior knowledge to build off of? To put it simply, the person has no words to put to their experiences, and it is terrifying to be in that position.
When I was just 13, I was young and oh so naive. I had no framework to build upon when events began to happen with my coach. Everything felt wrong, but I had no way to express why. With the ever present threat of bodily harm or even death looming over me and no words to use to explain why I thought this shouldn't be happening, I tried to find ways around it all in my head. I shut down in every sense of the word.
When it was all over and I finally told someone years later, I still had no words to put to those experiences. I tried to put the experiences in the frameworks I did have and thought I was confessing my own sin. I had no other way to think of what happened. I didn't have words for what happened. I did not even have the word "trauma." My "confession" was not believed and was dismissed all while I was threatened with getting kicked out of church (my first disclosure took place in the context of church) because of PTSD symptoms. Of course, I didn't have words for the experience of those symptoms either until a decade later. As it turns out, all the experiences of coping that I couldn't explain without sounding like I had lost my mind have words too...flashbacks, dissociation, body memories. It was genuinely healing to even get those words and know there was a reasonable explanation for those experience in light of the trauma that preceded them.
So for years, I just called my experiences "it" since I had no words. "God, please make it go away," I would pray. I could describe "it" in gut wrenching detail (though I didn't). Describing the details of what happened were the only words I had, but I could not label or categorize my experiences. "It" was the only word I had, and "it" was a terrible word. You see, the word "it" is a pronoun. Every pronoun is used in place of a noun, but I had no noun for my "it." Having memories that terrorized me and haunted me without having a way to give them voice was like being in a prison. Words were the key, but I did not have them.
I want to share two poems that I wrote that were my attempts at describing experiences I had no words for. The first one I could not even bring myself to write about the experience as being my own.
Nightmare
Her world is empty
Nobody is there
Protecting his secrets
She lives a nightmare
She keeps to herself
She hides in the crowd
Invisibly breaking
With no way out
Then her fingers dance across the keys
The music singing what she cannot speak
A soft melody cries the tears that she hides
A lonely harmony pleads for a hope she can't find
But she's all alone there's no one to hear
No one to listen as she plays all her fears
The music goes quiet her brief respite gone
Now back to real life where she's somebody's pawn
She hangs her head low
To keep hiding her eyes
Afraid someone will see
That she's dead inside
She's just a child
But she's already broken
While the world sleeps in peace
Her nightmare won't end
Vague and haunting and lacking definition, yet these general ideas were all I had. Later, I was able to write the experiences without words in reference to me though in order to try and describe experiences for which I had no framework, she still had to be part of it. I could let the experiences closer, but I still had no way of giving the experiences any kind of defining word. So, I wrote this.
Perceptions
The world disappears until it is just me and him
Rage burning in his eyes I hesitantly enter in
My inside and outside disconnect as I lose hold of time
Then comes the invasion of the body that is no longer mine
Without thought he steals her while lifelessly she lays there
And even though she is breathing she cannot find air
Again and again he takes what she would not give
Now I bear the weight of deep shame that should be his
Ruthlessly violating in her what was treasured and pure
He shamefully strips me of all dignity and worth
Fearing his threats I must leave her desecrated there
In order to keep up perceptions as the world reappears
For a long time, that poem, "Perceptions," was the best way I could describe what happened, but it doesn't fully make sense unless someone shares the experience for which I am attempting to describe. There were words missing and having those memories trapped in my head with no words I could use to call them by nearly cost me my life during my absolute darkest days.
