WHAT DO YOU WANT?
I was trying to figure a way to help my client realize that he didn’t deserve the trauma that happened to him. As I said to myself, “It wasn’t his fault,” tears welled in my eyes. I realized I needed to internalize this fact myself. I work as a Certified Recovery Mentor, mainly with prisoners living with serious and persistent mental illness. I am earning a degree in psychology and I am a few months away from becoming a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and so I have studied how trauma affects us.
Most of my childhood memories fill me with adrenaline or shame. I remember being thrown across the kitchen, landing in the dog food bowl. I remember cowering in the corner as an adult hit and kicked me in his drunken stupor. I remember waking in the middle of the night, only to find a man trying to rape my mother. I was powerless. My brain protects me from vague recollections of even worse abuse. As I grew, I did all I could to avoid that powerless feeling.
I first got drunk at eight. I loved the feeling. Fast-forward to the age of thirteen, I was doing ecstasy and cocaine on the weekends, and smoking pot and drinking every day. As a teenager, I used drugs with my mother and other adults and we committed an array of crimes. Two weeks after my seventeenth birthday, I tried heroin.
About a year later, I started going to a methadone clinic to get clean. One day, I got into it with the manager and started to walk out. She told me that if I left, I couldn’t come back. I was so upset — filled with emotion I didn’t know how to express. Overwhelmed, I burst into tears. I couldn’t talk. I just cried. She was taken aback and asked, “What do you want?”
I had never been asked that question. I’d gone through my life roaming from one need, one fear to the next. I knew I didn’t want to hurt. I didn’t want to feel. Going through the whole ordeal was too much for me. Soon after that day, I started using again. And a few months later I was in prison for a string of robberies with a sentence that rivaled the amount of time I had been alive. To anyone who has studied trauma, my story seems as sure as 1 + 1 = 2. I grew up in a dysfunctional environment where drug use, abuse, and violence were everywhere. Trauma wires the brain differently as it seeks escape as a form of protection, and it normalizes things like violence.
After I came to prison, my harming others didn’t stop. At nineteen years old, I sought a family and joined a prison gang. Although you may hear a lot about people joining gangs for protection, really gangs are a family for people who never had the sense of security that families should provide. I exchanged drugs for crime and violence. One day a series of events put me in the middle of a fistfight on the recreation yard of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. In the middle of that fight a correctional officer shot and killed my best friend, Jayson Withers. With an officer sitting on my back, I was handcuffed as I watched Jayson struggle on all fours, gasping for breath. All I could do was watch — powerless.
Over the next few days, I went insane. I couldn’t stand being in my own skin. I couldn’t lie down without reliving every moment. I couldn’t stand still without seeing the look in his eyes as he gasped for breath. I couldn’t move without adrenaline overwhelming me. I asked to speak to a mental health counselor and she came to me with an annoyed attitude and said, “What’s going on?” I don’t remember what I said. I just know I was in crisis, and must have looked like it. I was breaking. I was at the limit of what my brain could handle. Her irritation rose as I couldn’t articulate myself, and she threw up her hands and said, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to forget. I didn’t want to be me. I wanted to escape from this life that was too much for me to handle. I broke down in tears and said, “Just leave me alone.” I was looking for a lifeline back to sanity, and she wasn’t going to give it to me.
Over the next year in solitary confinement, I slowly came out of it. The guy housed next to me and I talked a lot about philosophy, politics, and a program he had been involved in called Restorative Justice. I was interested in everything he had to say, and I really liked and respected him. Nonetheless, when I got out of solitary confinement, I held onto the gang politic just as tightly. As long as I did, part of me felt like Jayson’s death meant something.
I attended Restorative Justice groups where I was exposed to new ideas and people. I began to feel a sense of community. I met two of the people I call mentors today: a feminist woman professor and a mixed-race revolutionary dedicated to nonviolent practices. They were the very antithesis of the “family” I joined when I came to prison. Every time I walked into a group with them, I felt like I belonged. They showed me a level of understanding I had never experienced. They treated me as a friend, showing me a love and care through my transformation that cannot be understated.
When I found myself in solitary confinement (once again for another fight), I was given the opportunity to participate in a new program to get out of solitary early through group work. I had already been questioning where my life had taken me, and I continued this process. Then the facilitator gave me my final task before graduation. She handed me an index card written with the words: “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
I didn’t want to hurt. I didn’t want to be who I was. I didn’t want to live in the past. The only difference was that I was finally at a place where I was willing to work. I began the endlessly long journey of self-work. I shed countless tears, I went through the pains of self-control, and I discovered some of my triggers.
But this day, thinking about my client’s trauma when I sat down to write about the process of dealing with it, my mind went blank. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to rely on research and scholars’ words to talk about how to build resiliency. Another mentor of mine strongly discouraged me from doing so — and so I was forced to sit with it.
There are a million paths to experience trauma and a million paths to dealing with it — there is no clear space where one can say: “There, that is done.” Which led me to my next realization: I am still dealing with the trauma. I may have found a way to accept it for today, and tomorrow it may come back as strongly as ever. Everyone who has ever dealt with trauma would agree, we are works in process. It was easy for me to tell others it was not their fault, and it was quite another thing for me to internalize the message. I was still working on it.
As I struggled with Jayson’s death, nothing would make me crumble to tears faster than someone saying, “It’s not your fault.” People used to make jokes to me about the movie Good Will Hunting, how the Matt Damon character does therapy and cries when the therapist, Robin Williams, tells him, “It’s not your fault.” I really do love the movie though, because it touches on a very real concept. Many of us who have experienced trauma have a part of us that believes it was our fault. Somehow we deserved it, because if we would have done something differently we could have avoided it. We have internalized this fact and projected it onto others. If I deserved it, if it was my fault, if I could have avoided it — they can too. They brought it on themselves. One falsehood turns into another. We transfer our own trauma onto others — the victim becomes the victimizer. Hurt people hurt people.
In order to become the people we want to be, we have to deal with our pain. In order to fly, we have to deal with the things dragging us down. My work today is one of service. I understand trauma untransformed is transferred. While I stopped being criminally active and made a pledge of nonviolence, I remain in a world where both are the norm. Many people who desist from the criminal lifestyle burn all the bridges as they go. This ensures they will not return; however, it also limits who will be able to follow them. With the path obscured, everyone has to find their own way to transformation.
I have remained connected, showing the path and encouraging all to follow. I work to heal myself, my peers, and those impacted by crime and violence. I now find my sense of power in taking control of my life, being an agent of change and a credible messenger. Today, I often ask myself, “What do I want?” and I have an answer. I want to heal. I want to be a better person, so I help others. I want to bring out the best in people, and so I lead with love. WHAT DO YOU WANT? | CH
