Tonight I needed to look through my camera photo files from 2020, and specifically, the months I was in Delaware temporarily–between my leaving Alabama and finally coming to Pennsylvania.
I am trying to pull out a number of photos I took of art collage work during that time, for use in a YouTube Video in connection with some art I want to promote and sell.
I pause to make a brief expression, for whatever it is worth.
Sometimes, we need to get further away from a traumatic event to further recognize the level of trauma/distress that we were actually undergoing. It’s called the PTSD…the post-trauma…where we think to ourselves, “I can’t believe I went through that. I can’t believe I survived that. It doesn’t feel real to me, but I see myself in the pictures. So, it must have happened.”
The pandemic and its shutdowns, fears, and all manner of disruptiveness and especially, isolation, caused everyone many types of trauma. And for some, this included death of loved ones, illness, and so many other forms of trauma and loss. Before I write more, I just want to acknowledge that. I don’t want to sound like I think my pandemic-related-enhanced trauma was anything unique.
But, since this is my place to express, I will speak of my own experience during that time.
Apart from the pandemic, life itself presents crises and traumas. Anyone who was going through divorce, marital issues, cancer and illness, aging parents and anything else that is normally stressful, found their particular crisis engulfed in “covid” and especially, many forms of “isolation.”
As I look through the various photos and videos I made, when essentially I felt trapped, alone and very uncertain about so much, in the immediate time following my highly traumatic divorce, I can see the trauma so much more clearly. I see it on my face, literally.
My heart is racing a bit after look through those photo files, and I feel very depressed and afraid in a non-rational way, perhaps. I study the photos…my face, the cats, the boxes, the small place…so much…the isolation of it all. Many pictures taken of my food, cooked on a hot plate. My face puffy from being on prednisone at that time for some type of possible autoimmune issue that began in 2018 and was probably in part, stress induced.
I took photos of my TV in the middle of the night, watching the Beverly Hillbillies.
I took photos of cats looking out windows.
I took photos of trying to do minimal art/business stuff with most of my equipment in storage. It was one big room essentially with many stacked boxes, four cats, a TV and a chair or two, my computer. And another smaller room with my bed, and wall-to-wall boxes.
I can’t fully express this.
But I was in the immediate aftermath of the most traumatic event of my lifetime and I was cut off from other people and without the comfort of familiar living conditions, and with much fear about my outcome and where I would go or end up, and the process that involved.
I had thought I’d only be in the small, makeshift living area above a friend’s business for 2-3 months at the most. It was OK that I had no stove and just a small frig. There was a place for my bed, and a bathroom and an extremely tiny kitchen that was a break room, essentially, with a small sink and counter. This was in no way ever intended to be a long-term living situation for me, or for anyone. I was in the top floor over a business. A business that was also completely shut down, like many others during that time. I went there initially, prior to the pandemic, because I could do it month to month. They were friends, and I was desperate when I literally fled Alabama…thought it was very hard, it was the best place for me, I believe.
I both needed to be alone, and was further traumatized by the isolation.
I arrived by U-Hall in Delaware the end of January. I was actually very sick for days before and wonder if I had covid, before we were told about covid. I had been up to PA mid-January and was around someone with a high fever and respiratory illness. I drove back to AL and became very ill three days later. I had a high fever and was couch-bound while making arrangements for the U-Haul. I had a deep cough that lasted a couple weeks and had lost my voice by the time my son and I unloaded many things into various storage in heavy rain, in January cold, in Delaware.
I could go on about other specifics that complicated the situation, but the very worst was when everything shut down.
I tried to make the most of it–like we all did. I am so very grateful to one woman friend in particular, who along with several others, were my lifelines of friendship and care, by phone, during that difficult time.
Looking tonight again at those photos, I essentially see more clearly the landscape of trauma it actually was. Some picture folders we avoid, and I certainly have many. We know if we start looking, it will trigger us.
I feel it.
Divorce is traumatic. All divorce is traumatic.
But the isolation for me during that time. I just need to name it. The isolation in-and-of-itself compounded my trauma and anxiety. Nothing can change that, I know. It is what it is, and again, we all carry with us the various impacts that covid brought. I do know that children’s mental health was particularly affected.
I was in pretty bad shape emotionally (post-divorce-trauma-wise). And looking at these pictures over three years later brings more 20/20 perspective not only on 2020, but the trauma of it all. And it makes me wonder, in three more years, how will I look back on this time right now. The trauma aspect of all of this is not over. Yes, it changes and morphs and slowly, maybe imperceptibly moves forward…yet…I am still experiencing significant challenges on every front in the continued “post” of it all.
And I am grateful, that though healing may be slow and hard to discern, God did not let me go. He brought me back in so many ways; back to where I belong. And I don’t speak simply of geography, I speak of faith matters.
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
