I went to a Thai restaurant with my BFF and his other BFF. Exiting the restaurant, we were faced with one of the busiest streets in the city, with four lanes of traffic whizzing by at 50+ mph, two lanes in each direction. The friend of my friend was driving and was trying to make a left turn across the two busy lanes on our side of the road. I advised turning right, then making a U-turn down the road, in the interest of time and ease. “Why, were you in a traumatic car crash?” he asked.
What?!
Well, yes, I was, but that had nothing to do with the prudent suggestion of flowing with the traffic instead of trying to fight it. “I just thought it would be easier to turn right,” I said. “When you spoke,” he replied, “it sounded like you must have been in a traumatic car crash and that you are afraid as a result. Were you?” he pressed.
Seriously? Who would not only ask about, but pressure someone to answer about, a traumatic life event in the course of a casual conversation. Trauma is the kind of thing you want to wait for someone else to bring up, if they so choose, on their own terms and in their own time. I remember when someone, not a friend, asked me point blank if I’d ever been raped. I typically refuse to answer these kinds of yes/no invasive questions, regardless of the answer, because they are just plain wrong to ask. They put someone on the spot, and they are a set-up. If you don’t say yes, but object to the question, people assume the answer is yes, regardless of the truth of the situation.
In this case, both because it was true and also to stop his invasive line of questioning about trauma, I replied to the second round of invasive questioning with a response about how I just don’t think it’s smart to turn left on a street where cars are whizzing by at 100 mph, that it’s easier to go with the traffic. Actually it was simpler than that – namely, there didn’t seem to be the opportunity to turn left, so I thought it would be smart to turn right — but I felt flustered. I was super pissed at him for putting me on the spot and being so insensitive and invasive.
Being that I did have a traumatic car crash, I also felt triggered. It took me many years to feel safe driving — many years of courageous facing off of my fears, such as the power trip I took on my 40th birthday, driving from LA to SF on Highway 5, which terrified me, then going back on Highway 101, to up the ante.
I find that people who have not undergone trauma, or at least not certain kinds of trauma, can look at others as damaged goods, can stir up matters that are irrelevant. For example, when people have or had chronic pain, those who have never experienced it will make all kinds of invasive comments and ask all kinds of invasive questions and see those with the pain experience as “poor you,” instead of just taking the reality at face value and working around it, ensuring that someone is able to function. As someone once said in a conversation with me, “There is no such thing as disability, just the lack of accessibility.” Word.
I’d like to take that concept one step further: When someone has a “special need” or issue, like sensitivity to noise, or pain walking, or whatever it may be, focus not on that person or that issue, but rather, focus on finding places and ways that said person can function comfortably.
We live in a society where medicine focuses on illness, where people focus on “what’s wrong with you” and “how can we fix you” instead of “how can we live fully and vibrantly, as-is; how can we move forward into and with the light?”
I recently went to a body worker – still in search of a massage therapist in the area, still unable to find someone of the caliber I am seeking – who charted my whole body from top to bottom, looking at me like a specimen under a microscope, telling me that my body was doing “interesting” things, like I was some freak of nature, and then proceeding to poke and press at me this way and that, in the interest of reworking my “interesting” bones and muscles to conform to her idea of how my body should function. That was last week. I’ve been in awful pain throughout my body, ever since. All I wanted was a fucking massage. As I stated in the intake form, I had no complaints (she had a couple of pages about what were your complaints, what hurt, what caused it, etc), but I just wanted an infusion of positive energy.
Whether in body work or in social interactions, let’s focus on that infusion of positive energy – on engaging, activating, and amplifying the life force – instead of focusing on what’s wrong/what happened/what caused it/where are you out of alignment, etc, etc, etc.
Back to the incident today: My idea of turning right instead of left came not from a fear place or a trauma place, but a sensible place. Regardless, it was none of his damn business. As it turned out, after BFF of BFF turned left and drove for a bit, he saw for himself where I had been coming from, as indicated by his next question, “Why do people drive so fast on this street?” “Hell if I know,” I replied.
