Bookends

This was a summer of crazy weather and personal journeys through hell and back. It was also a summer of lessons and growth, and it began and ended with concerts at the Charlottesville Pavilion.

The first show was The Arcade Fire in early June. The night was hot as hell at show time  — well past 90 degrees still. The band turned it on, though. The energy was great. I got texts from friends close to the stage and decided to hang back after aborted attempts to wade into the roiling, steamy crowd. it was a good show, though, and somewhere on my phone is a happy picture that belies the tensions that were already in the final stages of destroying our relationship.

The counterpoint to this show was seeing The Avett Brothers with the kid a couple weeks ago. Where the Arcade Fire show was tightly choreographed with a defined setlist. The Avetts show was the opposite. It felt loose from the moment they hit they stage, down to forgotten lyrics and missed cues. Still, it was a brilliant show. They were obviously happy to be on stage and engaged with the audience. And it felt more honest than the tighter, cleaner show at the beginning of the summer.

In the end, the bookends seem more stark than sandwiching a concert in on an "off" night in early June and taking the kid for a show I knew she'd enjoy in early September. (I wasn't the only dad who thought that, either, given the number of dads with daughters on the lawn that night.) The real kicker, though, is that I remember the tension at the first concert, and soon after, all hell broke loose. It wouldn't really calm down for another two months or so. In that time, life took some drastic turns; I discovered how powerful and insidious PTSD could be; and I spent a great deal of time gaining perspective, healing myself, and working on my relationship with the kid.

And that's where The Avett Brothers show really stands out in stark contrast. We barely made it to dinner at Mas Tapas and barely made it to the show, but I felt more relaxed than I'd felt in ages. Chalk the easing up to some positive turns in life in general and feeling like I'd finally been released from a strange, bad dream. Chalk it up to that, in part. But chalk it up also to watching the kid play with her glow sticks and smile as she curled up on the blanket next to me as the concert was winding down. And chalk it up to realizing — finally — that I was back in ways I hadn't been for years.

Collateral damage

Warning: Navel-gazing post ahead.

One thing I have come to realize recently is just how toxic I became over the past few years. I took everything that had been thrown at me over the years and hid it away behind the pain and trauma of the shooting. Then, I took the pain and trauma of the shooting and hid it away. Unfortunately, I did so without adequately confronting what had happened and what it had done to me. As a result, I became the trauma.

One of the consequences of this, I've realized, is that I became a weight to bear for those around me. This weight didn't make itself known so much in big, overt ways as it did in small-but-growing compromises that I forced those around me to make. And it meant that they began to bear my weight. The scary part is that I not only didn't realize what I was doing — and probably didn't listen when confronted with it — but that I don't remember whole swaths of time from the past few years.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the feeling is that of waking up from a long, boozy, bad dream. You're not quite sure what's real and not for a while. In fact there are whole periods of the past two years that I simply don't remember. I recently tried to remember when something happened at the kid's school. In my mind, it had happened this spring; in reality, it happened almost a year and a half ago. This wouldn't bother me if it was an isolated example, but I am regularly reminded of conversations I had completely lost, of things that happened that I had completely lost, of a rush of daily life that completely eluded me. This is not a fun feeling.

In fact, one of the most distressing parts of this process are the moments when I spiral backward. I don't necessarily beat myself up for things that happened or didn't happen; I realize I just wasn't there. In pieces and parts — when I most needed to — I'd break through the fog and show up for a few minutes, hours, days, or maybe even weeks. But by and large, life just carried me along with it while I fell farther and farther into myself.

In the end, a series of life circumstances and realizations started chipping away at the walls I'd built. And as the walls cracked, I started to lash out. When I had a brief glimmer of what I was doing, I shored up the walls. Until the shoring up started cracking too. All the toxicity that I'd been trapping behind those walls started dribbling out in comments and fights and anger.

Around the time this was coming to a head, my partner Kevin was injured by an exploding keg. I took him to the emergency room at MCV. It was the first time I'd been there since the shooting. Walking past the ambulance bays was difficult. And then two weeks later, the keg blew up at me — blew up at my heart. And the walls came down.

I started shaking that day, and haven't quite stopped yet. My life was in a shambles. My heart was in a shambles. My body was in a shambles. I had forgotten to bleed the pressure on the keg — and on my life. Collateral damage was all around, and I hadn't seen it for months, years.

Time to rebuild.

Culinary therapy, pt. 2

This past Sunday, I invited one of my business partners over for a grilling session. It is the first time I've really had anyone over since the meltdown in June, and it's appropriate that it was him.

First off, his girlfriend has recently returned to Boston for job reasons, and they are splitting their time between the cities. Not exactly fun, but sometimes you do what you have to. Regardless, I know a thing or two about feeling at loose ends and not necessarily wanting to eat — one of our most important social activities — alone. Since the kid was spending an extra night with her mom, I was feeling a bit at loose ends too. The thing is I didn't want to go out or order in — or eat another frozen pizza or other pre-prepared meal. No. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the kitchen. And, second, we have some bizarre Boston connections.

The day before I had picked up spicy lamb sausage from Tuckahoe Farms at the South of the James Market, as well as some beautiful heirloom tomatoes and peaches. Kevin added corn, greek feta and a few good beers. Except for the salad, we threw everything on a perfectly searing grill. The corn was prepped with olive oil and coarse ground sea salt and black pepper. The peaches were prepped with balsamic and some fleur de sel.

I need to get better about taking pictures, like some of my fellow bloggers, however, because every part of the meal came off perfectly. Throw a good conversation into the bargain, and you have the beginning of a return to civility and sanity.

Culinary therapy

The past few days and weeks, I've been trying to reconnect with the kid. Long-time readers may wonder why I say "reconnect," but the truth is that the effects of the PTSD as well as other life experiences lately have made me realize that I've been disconnected from life in general for a while now. In particular, I've been lost to some of my closest relationships.

One of those relationships, I now realize, was with the kid. To wit, I spent some time the other day trying to remember when something happened this spring. And then I realized it was last spring. Then I caught a picture of her earlier from her birthday two years ago. In it, she was showing off the new earrings I'd had made for her. In my mind, the gift had happened last year. Time has vanished in scary ways.

That said, I've been waking up lately and beginning to reconnect with her and others in my life. As part of this waking up, I took the kid and her best friend since they were three to Water Country USA yesterday. The past two years, we've had adult company on the trip — the first year another friend's mother and last year L. This year, I decided to go solo. Not only am I trying to reconnect with her and other people, but I'm trying to reconnect with myself. It was a brilliant trip — and as always full of horrible food. Afterward, though, we grabbed sushi at our favorite Richmond sushi place. It isn't the best, but it is good enough. And then the kid was treated to dessert at Secco with much of the restaurant singing "Happy Birthday" to her. It was a brilliant moment, thanks to some good friends.

The real therapy began in the morning, however. I finally started cooking again. And by that I mean something other than prepping the simplest pasta dishes. Nope. The girls had a sleepover, and in the morning, we capped things off with homemade buckwheat waffles from my grandmother's 1929 waffle maker. Then, this evening, I had crab from the farmer's market, corn, and beautiful heirloom tomatoes to use. And despite the impending storm outside, I was determined to do crab cakes and corn on the grill.

I winged it on the crab cakes. I took in pieces I'd used from Joy and from Alice Waters, and made my own take on the cakes. Mayo, grain mustard, smoked paprika, lemon, parsley, sauteed carmen peppers and garlic in butter (sauteed in one of my new pans), and panko. A touch of salt. Just enough flavor to round out the crab and let it shine at the same time. Follow this by slow-cooking on foil over a wood-fired grill, add grilled corn and a simple tomato salad. Brilliant summer meal, right?

And it was, except for one thing. I changed the recipe with a tired kid in the house. Half a crab cake in, and she said they didn't taste good. At least she ate the half. Next time, I don't change the recipe if she has tired eyes.

Serious Matters

After my mopey Friday Fun and a variety of leading Facebook and Twitter posts, I've had a lot of friends express concern for what is going on. It's nice to feel a community around, but it is strange at the same time. I am not typically a public person with my feelings and tend to be somewhat secretive about life in general. And yet, now I want to run out and scream at the world.

Last weekend, I was cleaning a keg during our usual Sunday brewing session. I had gotten out of the city the two nights before to clear my head after some pretty torrential life changes at home. I was still distracted, but I was following the mantra of keeping busy to keep my mind from exploding all over the place. The keg in question is an old style that is sealed with a wooden bung pounded in a hole in the side. To remove the bung, you screw a wood screw in and pop it out with a hammer.

After cleaning the keg and pushing sanitizer out through the tubing, I moved it into position to rack the beer from the fermenter. After pushing the liquid out, you need to release the CO2 pressure in the keg. I was distracted. I forgot to bleed the pressure. When I pulled the bung, it blew out at me with the force — and sound — of a gunshot. More than a week later, I can still feel the spot on my sternum where the bung hit. What's worse is my head.

Every part of the explosion forced me to re-experience the shooting. I melted down, stumbling into the yard behind the brewing garage, sobbing. Thankfully, a friend was there who happens to be a counselor at the VA. He stood with me for a while, until I was calm enough to join my partners again.

Everybody was very quiet after that. Except for a friend of a friend who said I should just meditate and readjust my attitude about the trauma from the shooting. I don't remember his exact words, but that was the gist. I snapped at him that it wasn't that easy, and he didn't understand.

In truth, I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to scream, DON'T YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND? NO. BECAUSE NO ONE FUCKING UNDERSTANDS. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And I would have repeated it over and over until I couldn't scream any more.

That's when I realized I had never really faced down and dealt with the trauma from the shooting. I had covered it over with a therapist who never really tackled it head-on, and I had covered over it a year and a half ago when I decided I would just let it go. Except I hadn't. It was far from gone, and small things triggered my fight-or-flight responses — small things I never tied to the experience. All I knew was that I was just under pressure and stress and snapping at the people around me.

Thanks to the friend who stood with me that morning, I began to realize what I hadn't recognized for the past four years. I jump at small noises. Big noises are impossible. I snap far too easily when the kid does something she shouldn't. I get jittery if I'm cornered or trapped. Crowds make me very, very uncomfortable. Sharing a space too closely is very difficult for me. And more. Sometimes I would react to things; sometimes I would just swallow the feeling.

In the end, then, I became that keg. I never released the pressure. I might bleed a bit as I was talking to my therapist and others, but what was really happening was the pressure was building up and building up. When I did release it, I still didn't recognized what was going on, so the pressure just began to build up again.

And in the end, I'm left wanting to scream at a random acquaintance: NO ONE UNDERSTANDS.

I hate the fact that I am re-living this trauma — and will need to go back into a different kind of therapy to tackle it. I hate the fact that writing this has left me trembling. I hate the fact that I see that keg and that gun as the same thing. I hate the fact that a popping balloon nearly left me in a puddle yesterday. I hate the fact that I am even jumpier around people than I was before.

But I'm grateful for it, too. It's like waking up from a long, boozy, bad dream. I've been shown an important lesson. The hard part will be learning it, but maybe just maybe I'll remember it. And maybe I will be able to make other people understand better, because I will understand it myself.

382

That's how many days I've been in one sort of pain or another. Not that anybody's counting. And not that it's getting old or anything...

Don't get shot, okay?

oy

Make it stop, please.

Binsted, a sophomore sculpture major at VCU, was walking in the park with a friend when they were approached by two males, one armed with a gun. Binsted and his friend were robbed of their car keys, and he was shot in the back as they walked away.

It was less than half a mile from my old house.

Trauma, a year later

There will be a quick recounting of the New York trip later on.

One year ago, I was sitting in a room at MCV under the alias Trauma Case Plum. My wound dressing and IV were being changed while nurses and med students were brought through to see the patient who had been shot while interrupting a robbery, the hero. The news had already hit the newspaper and television news. My father had come to the hospital to see me, and I was wheeled alternately into X-Ray rooms where they took pictures of my esophagus and into CT rooms where they determined that the bullet was large but hadn't damaged anything vital. I had what the CT tech called "The MIllion Dollar Wound." I hadn't even begun to process what had happened yet.

A year later, I am still struggling to process what happened. I am still trying to put my head and body back together. Though the simple act that brought this about seems small and far away now, the scars and ache and muddle I often feel in my head are constant reminders of how much worse it all could have been. They are also reminders of my work over the past year to make my life a better, kinder, more responsible place—despite occasional recidivism.

At the time, I joked that it was Colonel Mustard in the alley with the revolver, and that I got lucky. A year later, I realize none of this is a joke.

/navel gazing

brief thoughts on PTSD

One of my physical therapists has concluded that some of the issues with my back and shoulder are related to my mental recovery. After this week in therapy, I'm convinced that she is right. With more pain and more rough work to break through some of the locked up parts of my back, my head has gone into a more precarious place. Certainly there is a lot going on generally in my life, but the muddle in my head seems to come along with more pain and release in my back. What really brought this home was thinking back to last August when the trauma and anxiety decidedly returned, and the realization that their return seemed to coincide with more physical activity—and more physical pain.

With the anniversary of the shooting approaching, I look forward to some sort of breakthrough in all of this. I hope.

I Want My Life To Make More Sense To Me, pt. 2

As part of my physical and psychological therapy, I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about what it means to deal with this trauma. A post by my friend Amy over at Incertus reminded me that there are other layers to the recovery, layers that go back to John Locke's murder at Arkansas in 2000 and follow the trajectory of the various ups and downs of my life since then. The conclusion I've come to as part of this whole reflection and growth process is that fully dealing with the trauma of the shooting almost a year ago also involves facing and confronting other unpleasant experiences.

The paradox of dealing with the trauma(s) is that you have to move on from something that will always haunt you. By this, I mean that you need to recognize and let go of triggers that set off anxiety attacks or flashbacks; at the same time, you can't push the feelings under the metaphorical rug. Holding on to the feelings ensures that you will never move on. Ignoring the impact of the trauma ensures that it will come back to haunt you later—in spades. Finding the proper balance here does not guarantee that you won't be haunted by random flashbacks and other traumatic pentimentos. Nevertheless, finding the balance gives the possibility of retaking your life.

What I have discovered lately is that there are basic steps that I have to take to get through the pain and anxiety. Taking on some personal design projects has helped. Making sure my kitchen is clean every night when I go to bed has helped. Making sure that my coffee table is empty has helped. Getting back into routines has been essential. Though small, each of these things has been part of the overall task of controlling my life, rather than letting random circumstance be the rule of the day—because random circumstance can be a cruel mistress.

PTSD updates

The odd thing about the psychological after-effects of the shooting is that they seem to have very little to do with actual physical discomfort. They also rarely come with the shocking realization that I was shot or that I was one inch from death. Now, the impact is subtler.

It comes at moments as happened this weekend when I realized that I was taking my first real hike with Reilly since just before the shooting. Or over the past couple of weeks when I realized that the last creative project I did went to press the week before the shooting. What comes from these parallel realizations is the recognition of how stuck I have been in the past ten months.

And it's not even in big ways such as these. No. It's in small moments when I stall out, when I don't know what I'm supposed to do next or why. This is beyond flashbacks. It's deeper, subtler, and in some ways scarier.

There are also the moments--and these are often lately--that I find myself touching the entry and/or exit scars. The action is absent-minded, but it is a reflection of the fact that I never--for a single minute of any day--forget that I was shot. It never goes away, dammit.

Pain, the next step

A couple weeks ago, I had an appointment with the pain specialists. The initial diagnosis for the ongoing pain was that the bullet might have damaged the brachial plexus. To test this hypothesis, they prescribed an electromyograph exam(EMG) with a neurologist. Today, I had that exam.

In short, the EMG entails pain to diagnose the source of pain. The first part of the exam is to shock the nerves and record the responses. This means that the arm jumps when the electrodes are touched. Fun stuff. But not as fun as the needles. The second part of the exam involves putting needles into the muscles to test the biofeedback. This is not like having a needle in a vein; in this case, you can feel the needle going into the vein.

This test was conducted at various points along my arm, my hand, and my shoulder. The result, despite less sensitivity to pain along my right arm, was normal. While this is good--no apparent damage to a major thruway of nerves, it also means I don't have an answer yet about the pain I am experiencing.

And that pain isn't going away, even with medication.

notes on ptsd

I wrote this in a note to a friend, and thought it was worth posting out here, as well, for anyone who wants to read what it feels like:

...Unfortunately, I seem to be experiencing something far closer to what war vets experience [ed. or so I've read/heard]. Certainly, there are moments when [ed. seeing] young black men cause[s] a heart-pounding reaction, especially when I hear loud voices [too - ed. that's what really gets me, the memory of the voices.]. But I can't hear a balloon pop or a whip crack [or a truck backfire] without my head going into a really messy place. My heart skips. I want to drop to the ground. Beyond that, in daily functioning I pause and lose my concentration randomly. I see the gun again. I simply remember that I was shot. I think about the fact that an inch could have a made a difference between life and death. I hear the doctors saying, "This could easily have been fatal." It's not fear so much as a constantly paralyzing sense of [still] living in that moment.

My therapist and I did have a bit of a breakthrough about it last week; unfortunately, we concluded that it's also tied in with all the emotions from the roller coaster of the last few years. The unfortunate part is that this means I still have a much bigger ball of wax to deal with. Oy...

navel-gazing ends now

trauma, pt. 600

The physical pain comes and goes. Apparently, though I avoided any severe physical damage (euphemisms, ahoy!), I have suffered some nerve damage. The extent of it will be tested next week. In the meantime, I am on nerve meds again. They are helping, but they exacerbate the effects of alcohol, I've discovered.

More than that...

As much as the physical pain continues, the psychological pain seems to get worse. I go through random moments when I lose focus on where I am. There are the occasional flashbacks which come more regularly than they did a few months ago. There is a distinct lack of motivation, and it's more than just burnout from work. The issues have gotten to the point that I even randomly lose my focus in the midst of a conversation. Worst, I can't seem to let go of how close I was to dying.

Apparently, I healed so quickly on the outside that I forgot healing internally would take a lot longer.

flashbacks

In the last few days, I've started having recurrent flashbacks to the shooting. I see the scene again, and it is bad. Worse, however, is the fact that I've started envisioning what might have happened if the bullet had been a few inches up, over, or down. That's the chilling, unsettling vision, and I have very little control over it.

All I need to do is see the scar on my shoulder, or think very briefly about the fact that I was shot. (This happens more recently because the spot where they took the bullet out has been hurting a great deal.) Soon after, I envision the bullet hitting me in the head or the chest or the neck. And I shake. I lose my train of thought. I also lose motivation for the things I want or need to do. Not having Banana around exacerbates the feeling of directionlessness. This happened several times yesterday morning, until I simply decided to meet friends at the Carytown Watermelon Festival (more on that circle of hell later) and began what turned out to be an afternoon and evening of drinking and socialization. Read: avoidance.

I've begun to wonder if this is the beginning of PTSD.

the shooting, an update

I am healing well. The pain meds are gone altogether, except for the occasional ibuprofen. Tonight, however, is a little more uncomfortable. Maybe I shouldn't have given Banana the piggyback ride all the way to Plan 9. I guess I fool myself about how much better I'm feeling.

***************

Here's the rest of the story, such as it is right now...

Tyrone Singleton is still in custody, though they have not brought him to trial yet. According to the Commonwealth's Attorney, this is because they still do not have anything tying him directly to the crime. What is particularly galling about this is that the detectives seem to regard it as a done-deal.

In their pursuit of the case, the detectives do not seem to have worked to find the car that was witnessed leaving the scene. I guess this because none of the other prosecutors or other police officers I have spoken to realize that I and my neighbors said we could also identify the car. They also waited six weeks to talk to Phil, who was on the porch with me that night. Granted, he wasn't sure he got a good enough look in the first place, but by the time they actually called him, his recollection was too crowded.

On the subject of ID-ing the suspect, my neighbor and I identified the same suspect. the picture was not, however, the suspect the police really expected. Nonetheless, one of the lessons here is that real life is not like Law & Order. Not at all. If it were, we would have identified Singleton--or whomever--in a real-life line-up, rather than a photographic line-up. And what amazes me about the process at this point is that we haven't even been given this option. I can see the scene clearly in my mind still, and I think I could be confident in my testimony and identification if I were actually able to see the shooter's eyes.

The police from the local precinct worry about the case going cold. I do, too, but I also think it will go cold--if it does--because of lax attention. None of this, of course, helps with my psychological recovery.

My shoulder hurts

This isn't too surprising, I know. There's a bullet in there, and a hole that's still healing up. Even so, it's rainy here this morning and I feel like I should be saying something like, "Eh, there's rain in the air. I can feel it in me bullet." Ah well... The pain and discomfort change as time goes by. The medication the doctor gave me--Neurontin--has helped with some of the worst discomfort. That doesn't change the fact that it's downright weird to feel that the lump on my back has gotten more pronounced as the bullet works its way out.

All together now: "Ewwwwwww."

The other shooting I witnessed

Brian wrote about it here. He really gets it here:

Mine involved only one professor and a seriously disturbed student, but I can't stop thinking about it right now. So maybe writing this post is therapy for me or something--I can't be certain--but it's something I feel I need to write today.

It was the first day of the fall term, 2000. I was in my second year as an MFA student at the University of Arkansas, and I was about to teach my first class of the semester. I was in my office on the 2nd floor of Kimpel Hall, with my friend Paul, shooting the breeze, when we heard two loud slaps, like a metal shelf hitting a tile floor. A voice called "help" twice, then another slap. A voice down the hall yelled something about a gun.

I recall that moment. It was Pat Slattery, our mentor in teaching composition, who was in the hallway, yelling at students to get out, amidst the stench of burnt gunpowder. We waited at different ends of the hallway until the campus bicycle police showed up.

The sense memories of that morning--it was early--were fresh after I was shot four weeks ago. The gunpowder smelled the same. The shots sounded the same, though the ones aimed at me were a bigger caliber. I do remember every moment of that morning, though I cannot recall the second shot that went into the kitchen wall rather than me.

I have cried a lot in the last month. Many things brought the tears the night I was in the hospital, just as every memory of that warm morning in September 2000 crowded back during the growing news of the Tech shootings last week. And I slumped into my chair and cried again.