Marina Joyce Music

November 16 2022

I woke up early and felt panicked. I’m at home in my bed… What’s the panic? It’s so dark and quiet that I can’t breathe. I feel anxious and look for Alex. He’s there. Right there beside me. I look for some light but I only find the clock. 5:55. I try to calm myself down but I can’t shut my brain off. My breath is heavy and quick.

If I close my eyes, I’m back there again. I’m in court. I’m in shackles and I’m looking at the judge and watching her face twist with disbelief as she reviews the witness statement that put me here. I am sitting on that bench and I can feel nerves, anxiety, and anger all over again from my bed. The same I felt in that court room just as if I was still there. I tell this to Alex. How I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. He reminds me I’m home. I’m home safe with him and this is my brain and body responding to a traumatic experience. He’s right, and I hate being aware of this. I hate that I can’t stop thinking about it. That someone as strong as me has been affected in a way that makes me so weak.

I try to calm myself and go back to sleep. I close my eyes, but I’m gone again.

Now I’m in the day room. I’m watching the girls on the phone and listening to their conversations with whoever answers their calls on the other end of the line.  I can feel the hardness of the chair underneath me. I can feel my leg shaking almost violently. I can feel anger rise up into my throat. I open my eyes because I don’t want to be in that room anymore. Alex says write it down. 

This lasts consistently for a month. Every time I close my eyes. Every time the room is dark. And every time I am alone. I am thrown back into that place. After that month, it still happens, but less and less with different memories that invoke different feelings. And later on, in the months following I go through the motions outwardly. But inside, I spiral in an agonizing rage. Later I learn that my memory of the months following this chapter would be filled with big holes. I retained nothing. I felt only anger and it would take about a year for me to even really realize how far away from myself I really was.

Trauma doesn’t necessarily mean fear. For a situation to be traumatic it can involve a whole host of stress related insult. I didn’t know that until I was faced with my own Traumatic Experience. And even then, it wasn’t until it was over and more than one person close to me said “if anyone could handle that, it’s you”. Right. True. I handled it. And no, I was not scared or frightened really. Not in the general sense of the words anyway. Fear of the unknown; yes maybe a little, but even then, fear is not the right word for me in that situation. Right. But also wrong. I handled it and got through it, for a price. And it was the price I paid that shone a light on what it really means to me to be traumatized. A deeply distressing or disturbing experience. Thats trauma. And my experience was both disturbing and deeply distressing.

Episodes like the one I mentioned happened even more often than I even shared with Alex. I probably wanted to look better or tough or whatever. But it’s pretty hard to look that way when you’re literally a shell of yourself in a puddle of emotional shit. And nobody could relate. Or at least it felt that way. It seemed most people around me just expected me to pull up my big girl panties and get over it. To just move on with life. But they didn’t know what it felt like to be in the dark. Sure, they sympathized. They were mad for me and with me, they were sad for me and with me. But they could change the subject while my subconscious could not. They could go on and talk about “life” and its on goings-whatever they may be- and I was stuck in jail.

The other crazy thing that I learned through this is that a Traumatic Experience doesn’t need to exist in your presence long to change you. Seconds. Hours. Months. Years. Although I’m sure a longer exposure to a traumatic situation has worse affects on a person than a shorter amount of time would, I can say from my core that all it took me was 3 days. But the reality in those 3 days forever changed me. I think for the better. But admittedly, at first it was absolutely for the worse.

It took some time to become fully aware of myself again. To learn how to revisit this experience without reliving it. It took over a year to feel like me again and it was not without effort. Effort that I would not have made if it weren’t for those closest to me not giving up on me. For lending me their strength when I had none and for taking the hits when I threw out the punches. Some people did give up on me though. Who I became was too much for some of my people at that time. These are the scenarios where you really truly learn not only who you are, but who loves you for who you are, entirely. All in. Good, bad, and everything in between.

I hear others differently now because I can listen differently. I can speak to others differently now because I understand how much compassion can be needed sometimes. And I have fun differently now because tomorrow is unknown. The system failed me and I know it has failed so many others too. The police failed me when discretion came second to a rookie officer in a makeshift training exercise. But they aren’t all bad and I am so grateful that I was fortunate enough to be sat, shaking with anger and nerves, in front of a justice who really got it. Who looked at me and really saw me. And who could not believe “the blatant abuse of the conditions of this order” and the bullshit reason that proved I was wrongfully there in the first place.

I truly believe these things will come back around. I believe that the universe will see to it that real justice find its own way. Maybe not en route through the legal system, but in some way I know that what was taken from me will be given back. Here’s to the future.