Is my trauma traumatic enough?

Is my trauma traumatic enough?

In a commitment to do trauma-informed work I have been reading a book.

This book has been talking about DID. (Dissociative Identity Disorder)

I forget (have banished from my brain along with all the other diagnoses) that I got this diagnosis back in the day.

I could never reconcile being “functioning” with any of my diagnoses.

I could make sense of the trauma. It made sense that I would be the way I was.

I could never make sense of what seems like a disproprationate response to the trauma.

I could never make sense of how disproportionate is defined.

So here we are at 31. Running up close to 32.

Both in awe of where we are and confused about where we are.

Still pondering if my trauma is enough.

Still angry that those with ‘less’ trauma than me are making money and being famous off it.

Still confused that there are those with ‘more’ trauma who have just gotten on with life. Built lives they are proud of.

And then unsure of what to do with those who can’t seem to break the cycle at all.

Finding myself working in a space where the central work is to support those with lived experience of mental health and wanting to say “I am that too. I am one of you. Please don’t judge me and think I am not like you. But we are those who are replicating these places of power imbalance”. AND also fearful of saying to those who we work for and with that “I am one of them.”

But also not really because I denounced this identity.

I didn’t want it.

I threw it away.

I wanted to be something else. Not broken.

Not looked at with sympathy.

I wanted to be who I was before the trauma.

I wanted to be me.

The irony being that doing that kept me so far away from me.

Until I own my story - all of it - I am not able to be me.