56: The source - Part 2

A mysterious effect

As I wrote in Part 1, five minutes of talking was all that was needed to relay a life-changing event that I had forgotten about — we might now say buried or repressed — for roughly a dozen years. It had just poof! disappeared into a part of my brain, and then randomly reappeared one night.

It is only within the last few years, more than two decades after the reappearance, that I view the event as one that had an undeniable impact on my emotional health and shaping who I’ve become. The source of some of my most problematic facets. It is only within the last few years that I might let you call it a moment of trauma. The car wreck will only live on as a harrowing adventure, while this moment seeped in and silently twisted my brain.

Part 1 introduced the event, so it is now my intention to begin to unpack those facets here with you. This is deeply personal and not uplifting content, so I know this won’t interest all readers. My paid content is primarily for privacy, a little added protection for the vulnerability. I hope all understand, however, that this newsletter is a vehicle for me to write. And I am most comfortable writing about what goes on in my brain, whether that’s about what I eat, what I observe, or what I remember.

Again, thank you for however you decide to engage with my content.

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There is one thing about my mental health history that I’ve never shared with anyone until now. Not with any of the five therapists I’ve seen over the course of my adulthood. Not with any of my close friends, past or present. Not with a partner. And certainly not with my parents. I think because I struggle to find the words to explain it. I always have. Even in moments when it was happening, I didn’t really know what was going on.