If traumatised by events in your life, trying to slip back into the world you used to inhabit is difficult. I found it difficult. Scarred and bruised, but somewhat patched up, I returned to work only to encounter an environment where there was little room for acknowledgement of events I had been through.
I became burdened by my own recent history. Like a little Greek Island donkey laden with baggage and plodding to somewhere with a stubborn donkey brain determined to make it to the destination; my own stubborn head was looking for normal.
In trying to get back to normal, I didn’t necessarily want to talk about what had happened, Mottsu’s suicide, and yet it was important to be able to tell chapters of my own story, have scraps of it witnessed. The traumatic needed to be integrated with the everyday. Normal couldn’t be attained by papering over or ignoring what had happened.
Returning to the office was distressing. Pleasantries exchanged while ignoring my recent history became unpleasant. When I knew that they knew and said nothing, it was a struggle to maintain a polite composure. I wasn’t always composed, it wasn’t possible. The steeliness of others in not acknowledging any of what I had been though was unendurable at times.
The workplace can be tough, tougher than it is supposed to be, or is typically regarded as being…
At the same time I loved my colleagues how didn’t know what to say, those who were taken beyond the “edge” of what is possible to perceive and respond to, and then said “I don’t what to say…”
Those words were a great gift, gratefully received.
I’m not sure I knew what to say. I do remember sitting at my desk and quietly weeping when words were both too much and not enough.