There is a certain beauty to someone's trauma and pain. We don't become who we are if not for our past. And that's what makes us who we are and what makes us beautiful. The trauma and pain we have experienced and struggle with yet overcame and survived is a beautiful thing. Everybody is beautiful, therefore, everybody's trauma is beautiful.
The song, Beautiful Trauma, by P!nk, resonates within my soul. This is my trauma and no one can take that away from me and it’s a beautiful thing.
A personal analysis of some of the lyrics in the song Beautiful Trauma by P!nk, as it relates to me.
“It's like we burned so bright we burned out”.
- I was burnt out on living for others and not myself. This in the end, burnt them out. It’s as if everyone had taken me apart, bit by bit and piece by piece and left me to the vultures where I was supposed to fend for myself without any knowledge of how to do so. And then when no one was able to receive what they needed from me because I was unable to give it to them, they themselves felt abandoned by me.
“‘Cause I've been on the run so long they can't find me”
- I have been hiding and running from who I truly am for so long that while others in my life couldn’t find me, I had lost myself in the process and didn't know who I was. I had lost the way and could not find myself either.
“And when the chemicals leave my body, Yeah, they're gonna find me in a hotel lobby 'cause”
- I have been off and on different pills since I was 18 years old. First, it was to treat depression. Second, it was because I wasn’t suffering from depression but rather because I had bipolar type 2. Then it was to treat the ADHD and the PTSD and the insomnia and anxiety. I'm sure you get the point. But every time I feel the natural chemicals of dopamine and serotonin leave my body or the pharmaceutical drugs leave my body, I'm lost again in my own mind and it's as if my mind has no home and the only place it finds peace in a metaphorical hotel lobby.
“Mmm tough times they keep coming,
All night laughing and fucking”
- So to keep from thinking and feeling and being let down over and over and over, it was easier to fill my life with laughing and sex and to pretend that everything was normal. So I did and at first it feels great and exciting. But then, the loneliness still find a way to creep in at the most inopportune times. It could be after you've had too much to drink and the high is over. It could be after a long night of amazing sex when you're lying quietly next to a person and still feel like the loneliest creature on earth. I I was trying to fill the empty void in my soul with laughter and sex.
“Some days like I’m barely breathing”
- My mind has never been able to shut off even as a kid. My Brother would constantly tell me that he would give me $10 if I could be quiet for one minute and because my brain couldn’t be quiet, apparently my vocal cords could not be quiet either for one minute. Even when I’m asleep my brain is going a mile a minute. Some ask me how I know this? All I can tell them is that sometimes I giggle in my sleep, sometimes I sit straight up in my sleep and then lie back down. I am constantly sleeping in circles, where I will start on my belly and rotate to the side and then my back and then my other side and the back to my belly. My legs get restless at night and I am constantly kicking. And some days when I’m having an intense amount of stress and I just watched something very stressful and riddled with anxiety, I tend to have vivid nightmares and will wake up screaming. Even certain medications have given me nightmares and made me wake up screaming.
“The pill I keep taking. The nightmare I'm waking”
- I have to take medication to function as a “normal” person does. I know there are many out there who are against pharmaceutical companies and I get that but if it weren’t for them I would probably be dead by now from self-inflicted injuries or drug overdose. Is not our place to judge what people need to survive this life. Some people need God and some people need prescription medication. But I have been on and off pills so much because of the way they make me feel. I don’t always feel physically alright or comfortable in my own skin when I am on medication. It can affect your weight and it can affect your libido to name just a few things that it does affect. So for a long time, I didn’t feel comfortable physically and would stop taking them, convincing myself I could control my mood disorder this time around. I never could and I never have. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I may never feel physically normal again. I would rather feel physically off than mentally off at this point in my life. What’s a little physical discomfort, when we’re talking about making life-changing high risk mistakes not only affecting you but your family as well. Sometimes though even when you are on a good medication or so it seems, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re constantly wondering when that drug will stop working or that dose isn’t strong enough or that negative side effect prevents you from taking one that works for you. It’s as if you’re walking through a nightmare constantly, the nightmare of letting someone you care about down well as letting yourself down.
I saved this line for last:
“‘Cause after we were high and the love dope died, it was you”
- Many relate this lyric back to a person, but I relate it back to “you” as the pain that is left after the trauma is over. The death of my dad was traumatizing and 18 years later, I am still dealing with the tragedy of it and the trauma and all I’ve been left with is the pain of picking up the pieces and trying to make sense of it all still. I still have trauma from the kids making fun of me in elementary because I was the only Asian in school at that time period and telling me to go back to my home country and trauma from when boys would not date me because I was too Asian and not white enough. I have trauma still relating to my adoption that I am unaware of consciously but could very well be affected subconsciously. I did live in an orphanage and a foster home for four months of my life as a baby in a foreign country. I had trauma from when I went to college and I wasn’t ready, so I spent two months of it never going because I was too depressed with myself because I was dealing with the death of my father. And there’s the trauma I experienced when all three college roommates ganged up on me and reported to the hall director that they were threatened and intimidated by me because I was Asian and because I didn’t follow their politics and religion. I experienced trauma when my brother-in-law killed himself when he was 19. Even the unexpected discovery of being pregnant with my child and then having to tell family six months later after denial could no longer work was traumatic and the birth itself was very traumatizing because I was a young mother who didn’t know what she was doing or getting herself into. I felt traumatized when I went through my divorce after my 13 year relationship could not be repaired. And then let’s not even talk about the trauma of a really bad guy for two years on and off and the trauma of a two year relationship with my fiancé of two years who was ten years younger than me and the trauma of my recent ex-boyfriend who was just too immature to handle things. I have experienced a lot of trauma and I could go on anon with all the other traumatizing events my life. But I will save that for another post.
But these traumatizations are what have made me today who I am. Yes, crazy as it sounds and as much as my family would hate me to hear this, I wouldn’t change any of it. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for those traumas.
So if you are going through a trauma right now, all I can tell you is to keep breathing and go one day at a time. And if you can’t go one day at a time, then go one hour at a time and if even one hour is too much, then one second or one moment at a time and to remember to breathe and that you’re not alone and that you will get through this and that this trauma will shape an inner beauty in you that no one can take away from you. Own that shit!