It doesn’t take much to set that feeling off in me—racing heart, the inability to settle my hands if I try to type. I no longer experience a temptation to raise my voice as I once did, though sometimes—like today—when my body gets that jittery feeling that adrenalin or cortisol produces, I sometimes find myself wondering if screaming might lessen the pressure that seems to build inside of my body and leaves me feeling as though whatever is going on inside of me is just too intense to be contained within the confines of my skin. The sensation inside of my body when it happens is intense.
My hands—like the rest of me—never look shaky, and maybe the fact that I look calm is part of why it seems that every molecule of my body is bouncing around at high speeds, frenetic as if the energy can’t find a way out. Although the shake of my hands is imperceptible to the eye, the coursing of adrenaline through my body—now at nearly 64, at seemingly insignificant things that are arguably disproportionate to whatever has just happened—is unmistakable.
Today’s episode was rooted in something that happened last night during a strata (condominium) council Zoom meeting. The discussion was about a change to a building bylaw which, if passed, would allow building residents to have two small dogs instead of only 1 dog, large or small. Someone on the Zoom call had suggested that we remove small from the bylaw under consideration, and a general discussion about the potential impact of 2 large dogs vs. 2 small dogs ensued.
I waited my turn to speak. The person who had been advocating for allowing 2 large dogs had argued that we had bylaws to deal with problems such as off-leash dogs or dogs that make noise. I wanted to convey two things: that 2 large dogs were indeed a greater potential problem than 2 small dogs, and that relying on bylaw enforcement put the onus on those who experience problems, and that documenting problems often left those complaining vulnerable.
When it was my turn to speak, to back the points I wanted to make, I began telling a story about being charged and run into by 2 large off-leash dogs in the parking lot of the building one day, as I was getting out of my car. And about how when I tried to document it so I could make a bylaw complaint (which requires pictures), I had been subject to verbal abuse. Dogs were not ever supposed to be unleashed on the property, but of course, lots of residents often fail to leash their dogs. I had no idea whose dogs had charged me, and I didn’t actually care—my point was that 2 large dogs playing, or wrestling or whatever, when off-leash, could cause harm to someone nearby, and that when I tried to document when this had happened to me, I had been on the receiving end of significant verbal venom, which, along with the force of having been run into by the two large dogs, left me feeling vulnerable.
As I began relaying my story, without any warning, someone began screaming over me, full force. I tried calmly to point out that I was speaking, but my efforts to continue to tell my story were no match for the woman’s rage. I soon gave up and let her scream at me, full volume, over Zoom. No one, it seemed—including the meeting chair—was prepared to intervene.
During her fit of rage on Zoom, the screamer went on to describe how the 3 dogs running loose that day had “slipped off the dog walker’s leash” and how horrible I had been in my efforts to keep the dogs—who did run into me—from jumping on me. On some level, it was comical. Here was someone admitting that large dogs were off-leash and had run into me—precisely the point I was trying to make— and displaying the same kind of verbal abuse I was pointing out that those documenting complaints had to endure. But somehow, in the screamer’s universe, I had acted inappropriately in trying to keep the dogs off of me. As I was wondering how 3 dogs could have simultaneously slipped off a dog walker’s leash, the chair of the meeting finally stepped in.
The rest of the meeting, which up until then had been pleasant, took a turn for the worst. At one point the chair of the meeting said that the council had never received a single complaint about dogs. I indicated that I had captured photos and complained about the incident I had just described and pointed out that not all complaints seemed to be acted upon. I didn’t speak again after that.
The person who screamed at me apologized later in the meeting, and the meeting eventually ended. After the meeting, I got off the phone and sent the photos I’d previously sent as part of a complaint to the meeting chair so he would know that, contrary to the claim made that no one had ever complained about dogs, the complaint process had broken down. I copied the message to the strata (condo) management company, which was responsible for dealing with complaints.
I was fine after all that. No adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream, no jittery feelings. I was glad to get off the Zoom call and return to my evening at home with my family.
This morning, there in my inbox was a message from the person who had chaired the meeting. It was a simple message:
“Owner complaints are to be sent directly to our strata property management agency, not to this email address, as is regular protocol discussed at our AGM (or SGM).”
I—perhaps foolishly—replied:
“I sent the complaint to the strata management company. I cc:d this address as I have found in the past that not all bylaw complaints are addressed by WRM, and I also wanted you to see that I had been told by the on-site property manager that the complaint would be passed on, and I wanted to document that a complaint had been made.
I will, of course, be sending all bylaw complaints to our strata management company in the future.” -Ellen
As soon as I read the message and sent my reply, I got up to refill my coffee cup, and it was then that I realized the feeling had started. Adrenalin was coursing through my body, which was quietly reverberating from the noise of it. As I walked down the hallway and into the kitchen, I found myself thinking, why then? Why had the physiological response happened then, and not the night before?
*****
I’ve long known that I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. As I wandered back into my room with my cup of coffee, I realized that the physiology of the stress felt different now than it used to. I suspected I’d spent much of the first 15 or 16 years of my life in a constant state of heightened fight response, so much so that when I was younger, I seldom noticed it. Being in fight or flight mode was my every day as a child. I’d always opted for the fight, and as I reflected on things that morning, I realized I still was at some level—I had felt compelled to respond to what I perceived to be a “scolding” email. That was the bad news. The good part of it was that now—nearly 64—I’ve changed my life significantly enough that the once so common and familiar surging of adrenaline in my veins had become unusual enough that when it happens, I notice it. And when the kind of insanity that had happened in the Zoom meeting the night before occurred, I didn’t immediately think to myself, “What have I done wrong?” which for most of my life has been how I’ve responded to such discomfort and tension.
*****
As I tried to calm my body down after the unexpected adrenalin rush, I found myself thinking about yelling. I knew yelling wouldn’t ease the sensation of pressure on the insides of my body that the morning email had unleashed. I knew that because I had tried it. In my early twenties, I had lived in Toronto in a Co-op in the Christie Pitts neighborhood. There were train tracks on one side of the neighborhood, which were still in use. By then I’d left home, moved across the country, and then to another country in an effort to leave my past behind me. But none of that had worked. At twenty-three, although I had lived on my own for several years, away from my father who had beaten me daily (often in front of my siblings and mother who watched), the physical distance hadn’t dulled the pain or rage of my earlier life. At that point in my life, I had thought that expressing my rage—getting it out—might help. I saved glass bottles. I took them down to the tracks at night. In the dark, eclipsed by the sound of the trains, I’d scream as loud as I could as I threw the bottles towards the train. At one point I’d even invested in a metal baseball bat, thinking that pounding the ground with it might help—something I gave up because it turned out it hurt my hands and wrists. None of that had helped.
I realized that my trigger was that I was being blamed for complaining incorrectly, while the inappropriate behaviors—the off-leash dogs, the dog owner’s rage the night before on Zoom, and my prior complaint about the off-leash dogs going unaddressed—had all been glossed over. Despite my intellectual understanding of the situation, it took me back to my childhood, back to the wounds of being punished for my responses to injustice, while the injustices themselves were left unaddressed. Why, I wondered, hadn’t anyone stood up to my father as he beat me?
*****
When I was around 19, after I’d left home, I’d gone back to visit my family over the Christmas break. The dinner table was full that night, which meant that the extra leaf was in the table, and my siblings and I—who normally sat in the same places at the table (my brother and sister, both right-handed, on one side, and, as the only left-handed child, I sat alone on the other side)—had been shuffled to accommodate guests. My older sister was sitting next to me. In the best of times, my sister and I clashed—we always had. I’d often felt that she invaded my space—doing things like taking the clean clothes I’d taken out to wear and wearing them, leaving me scrambling in the morning. That night at dinner, sitting next to me with a full plate of food in front of her, she took her fork, reached over to my plate, and took some food off of my plate. I reacted, and looked to my father, on my left, to intervene. He did—he took his fork and stabbed my hand with it.
That was not the intervention that I either wanted or expected.
After another troubling incident that night over dinner—the last time my father hit me—I left the house and went to my friend’s house down the street, where I stayed until I left town a day or two later. I didn’t see anyone in my family for a few years and only consented to see my parents after making it clear that if my father ever laid a hand on me again, they would never see me again.
*****
For years, I’d gone to therapists. As a child, having been defined as the family problem (I was definitely the family scapegoat), I’d been sent to psychiatrists. If nothing else, it had given me a place to speak about my family, and I had learned the fine art of introspection from my early therapeutic encounters. As a young adult, I continued with counseling as money permitted. At one point when I was living in Vancouver in my late twenties, I’d been seeing a counselor who combined bodywork with talk therapy. She was an amazing woman, with a face that always left me thinking that hers was a life that had been well lived, as evidenced by the deep lines on her weathered face, which seemed always to come to rest in a smile.
At some point, whatever she was doing with me cracked a hardened edge, or maybe I just let her in. All these years later, I don’t remember the details, other than I’d get stuck in my feelings that her work with me would unlock, and neither she nor I could figure out how to get past it. I’d eventually pull out of it (though I couldn’t tell anyone what would get me back to more steady emotional ground), and she came to the conclusion that she wasn’t helping me. She might have been the first person who thought I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She eventually suggested I no longer see her, because she didn’t know how to help me. I appreciated her honesty.
*****
Life went on. I finished school, got a job, moved across the country to Newfoundland for 6 years, got another job back in Vancouver, and moved back. Grew up. Went back to the counselor who had gotten stuck with me all those years earlier after moving back to Vancouver—somehow, in the intervening years, I’d figured out how to navigate past stuck. I’m not sure when that happened, but it might have been around the time I’d started going out with my partner, shortly after I’d turned thirty-three. I’d just gone through some hard stuff at work, and I was a mess. I was so much of a mess that when it became clear that my partner was interested in having a relationship with me, I told her it was ill-advised because I was such a mess. She’d never experienced my version of mess and didn’t know any better. To this day she figures that if I’d been in better shape I’d never have given in and let her in—and she is probably right. A happy accident I’d never have predicted.
I eventually made peace with my family, and Wendy and I built our family, all of whom eventually moved to Vancouver. I stopped being in a constant state of rage. I cried a lot. Then I stopped crying a lot. I mellowed and softened with age. I continue to find it really challenging when I experience injustices and certain kinds of dysfunction. I’d always thought that my struggles with injustices were a manifestation of having been born Jewish and sent to Quaker school: both groups believed in social justice, and Quakers, in particular, stressed acting on your conscience and speaking truth to power. I guess I took that part too literally, as standing up to my father’s injustices had fueled his irk, and preceded many beatings.
*****
By the time the call came to come home, I’d already made a plane reservation for later that day. At that point, none of us knew if my father would make it out of the hospital or not, and in the meantime, at the very least, transitions were on the horizon. Mom—with advanced dementia—couldn’t be left alone, so we needed to get 24/7 care. By the time Dad was hospitalized, he was already blind and deaf, and now, it seemed, could not walk. He was by then just shy of his ninety-fifth birthday, so this was a surprise to no one, except perhaps my father.
I took a red-eye flight and took a taxi directly from the airport, arriving about half an hour too early for visiting hours. Awash in emotion, I went to the cafeteria for some food and coffee as I waited for visiting hours to begin.
*****
In the hospital bed, my father looked frail and small, though he’d been a large man. His once thin six-foot frame I’d only seen until recently in photos of my father before I was born, had borne the weight of excess most of my life. In recent years, with each visit, he’s seemed thinner and frailer. Now, in his hospital bed, he seemed frail, as well as thin. He must have noticed this too, because as I walked in he said “El, you seem much larger than you did the last time I saw you.”
“Do you mean fat?” I asked. “I think it is just the baggy clothes I wore on the plane. I’m wearing the same size clothes I was the last time I saw you. I suppose I might have gained 5 pounds or something when I broke my shoulder and couldn’t be active, but other than that I’m now bigger.” Knowing what was coming, he must have felt vulnerable.
After a short exchange “how was your flight?… thanks for coming…” Dad was having difficulty speaking. “I haven’t been allowed to eat much…. can you get me that thing to suck on?… It’s hard for me to speak… can you help me put the bed up?” the apology began.
“El, you must have had a terrible childhood. I’m sorry, I just didn’t know what to do with you…”
As he spoke, occasionally asking me questions, the tears came. I thought he couldn’t see me, but he asked if I was trying to get something off my face. I’d always tried not to show him my vulnerability, and caught in old patterns, that day I didn’t admit to crying.
*****
I’d made peace with my father by then. I wouldn’t have been able to visit my parents over the years if I hadn’t, and I doubt I’d have been able to function very well without finding a way to move on. As much as I had moved on, the legacy of my relationship with my father lives on in my body, as well as some of my behaviors. Although I’ve learned for the most part not to replicate those situations that trigger the stress and catapult me into a post-traumatic response, sometimes—as was the case with the Zoom meeting—I end up in situations that aren’t good to be in. As soon as the person began yelling at me during the Zoom meeting, I recognized it as inappropriate rage, and I knew immediately it was a lot like how my father had interacted with me when I was young. As unpleasant as the yelling had been—no doubt for the others attending the Zoom meeting as well—that was not what had wreaked havoc on my physiology. There was no doubt in my mind that being yelled at on Zoom had contributed to it, as had the assertion that no complaints had been received about dogs. But none of those things had triggered it. The trigger had been the hint of blame in the email—the bit about how I should not send complaints to the strata council, and that I’d been told that I should not do that. It seemed unfair to me, as though I was being blamed for doing something wrong when the real wrongs weren’t getting righted. I don’t know if anyone else reading the email would even see a hint of blame in it, but I did. Describing it makes it sound so small, and intellectually, I know that really, it was. But my body didn’t—and doesn’t—know that. Bodies have long memories.
They tell you that you can never go back home again, but they don’t tell you that you can never leave.
