Haunted and Healed

mk saye

September 9, 2009. I was at a birthday party and something felt off in a way I’d never experienced before. My body ached and my muscles felt loose. I tried to swim with my friends and told my mom to save me pizza for later. I found myself curled up on a couch, not knowing how I got there. Wizards of Waverly Place was on. In what felt like one sweeping movement, I had gotten sick, ran to the bathroom, and thought how I could possibly compensate my hostess for what I’d done to her carpet. 

That was the start of the longest night I can remember. At the beginning of every hour, like clockwork, my body rejected anything I had until there was nothing left; and then it still kept going. In the early hours of the morning my body had finally made peace and my poor mother caught some sleep. I had a stomach virus, which is common especially in children. But with its suddenness and intensity I felt somehow betrayed by a body I thought would never let me get that sick. I decided I had become too trusting of the world around me and started to create walls to protect a heart and head that both wanted to believe that bad things like getting sick didn’t happen to people always on their guard. I refused food from restaurants because it hadn’t been cooked in front of me. I washed my hands so aggressively that when the weather got colder, they cracked and bled from being so dry. Many nights I woke up in a cold sweat not knowing why it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d sit and repeat “it’s okay” to try and convince my physical body that I was safe—even though I didn’t really believe that. I lost a great deal of weight in a short time but couldn’t recognize that in trying so hard to protect myself from being sick, I had become my biggest threat.

October 1st 2009. I walked into my third grade classroom to find that my teacher, Mrs. Hall, had decorated an outrageous amount for Halloween. A five foot witch stood in the corner cackling, and there were cobwebs everywhere. We cut out pumpkins and wrote haikus on them and filled the room with pumpkins we’d painted. Mrs. Hall gave out candy from a big bowl to every student who answered a question correctly; I raised my hand often but refused candy when it was given because it was just another thing I couldn’t trust. Mrs. Hall lost her patience one day and said rather loudly, “This will not hurt you!” I took the piece quietly. 

That Halloween, I trick-or-treated with my godparents’ children in the neighborhoods that every kid dreams about: big houses with over the top decorations that give out full size candy bars. FULL SIZE. The mixture of happiness and peacefulness that washed over me that evening felt foreign. I remember catching myself smiling, and then reluctantly retreating into myself because surely I wasn’t meant to enjoy an evening of costumes and candy for too long. The surplus of candy in my jack-o-lantern bucket was impossible for any child to resist, and I finally indulged in another thing that made me secretly smile. 

Every October—present. Slowly I healed from my debilitating fear of being sick. I ate in healthy ways again when I convinced myself that food wasn’t an entity out to harm me. As silly as this example may seem, I believe we all assign the label of “bad” to something, perhaps small, so that we can feel protected or in control if something goes wrong. For many years, I didn’t throw up or even get close to being that sick. But eventually I did. I was scared I would lapse back to my terrified nine year old self and again live in fear of each day. Throwing up is unique because it's a part of being sick you just can’t control, and it is by far the most uncomfortable feeling I certainly have ever experienced. I thought that I could protect myself by washing my hands enough or by eating all the right foods. But even when you do everything right, things can still go wrong. I still got sick. And I was still uncomfortable. But unlike when I was nine, I am better able to see that there is beauty in allowing the body to be human and in knowing that being sick is a function of that humanity. When I built walls around my head and heart, I felt protected but also alone, scared, and numb. Brené Brown says that “we can’t selectively numb.” When we choose to numb pain or sadness we also rob ourselves of feeling joy. 

Even though I will always experience sickness, sometimes more or less intensely, I now have things that make my head and heart feel at peace. I have celebrated each Halloween after with joy, and, my parents might say, borderline obsession. On the surface it may seem that I am just one of those people who loves a specific holiday and celebrates it generously. While I indeed identify with this, I also believe that in the wake of my trauma, I found something to hang on to that brought me joy when I didn’t think anything would. That first Halloween after my sickness showed me that it’s safe to feel happiness even when I don’t know what comes next. I surround myself with decorations, candles, and candy each year partly because it is indeed fun, but also because these things help me honor a moment in my life when I was able to find peace amidst trauma and fear. As I walk into this autumn season once again, I gently ask to be joined in acknowledging moments of fear, and at the same time honoring the things that make us believe that goodness exists here too.