From ‘laid off’ to ’survival mode’ to ‘grad school student’ in 4 months. Welcome to my summer of 2009.

Less than a week after I received my acceptance letter from Mars Hill Graduate School I was laid off from my job. This was the beginning of the downward spiral into survival mode until it was time to move across the country. I had previously worked at Starbucks before my foray into Human Resources and quickly fell back into the routine of early morning shifts making custom coffee and tea beverages for the great people of Houston, Texas. I also took on a second job at a gourmet grocery store in their espresso/gelato bar during the evenings and weekends. Survival was the key, not necessarily living, and I survived. I was so excited to put my two weeks notice in at my second job and begin my transfer to a Starbucks store in Seattle that I didn’t even cry when I drove away from my family in the rented Kia mini-van that would take me to my new home.

Christmas break was the first time I was able to be in that same environment with family and friends without having to be in survival mode. I was able to be present, in the moment, and that was something that I was incapable of since being laid off in April. There was a moment with my mom where I said that it all felt like a dream, that it was almost impossible to believe that it was my reality for 3 months.

On the plane ride home from Houston I was reading Trauma & Recovery, a text by Judith Herman assigned for a class this semester, and in describing people who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder the author states that these people say that the trauma they incurred was viewed as more like a dream than a reality that was lived.

I do not wish to discredit those to have lived through wars, physical attacks, sexual abuse, etc. but to realize that those months in my life really were traumatic makes me wonder if trauma is not something that can be measured on a scale of 1-10, or cannot be measured at all. According to Herman, trauma is defined as ‘a deeply distressing or disturbing experience,’ which also implies that traumatic experiences can be different moments for different people. It’s easy to look back on those months and just simply be glad they are over, but to see the pain on my roommate’s face when I share that story with her makes me realize how far I have disassociated myself from this experience, which then makes me wonder how truly traumatic it actually was.

Maybe I will never know. The new question is: will I be okay with not knowing?