A Train of Thought

For the past few months, I’ve been struggling with the topics in my writing which my brain has been leading me to (if that made any sense at all). I feel I write too much about specific aspects of my life that, at this point, I’d rather put to rest.

Evidently, this is where my mind and I disagree. Because even when I try to write about other topics, I can’t help but return to the older topics, and I feel as though I am writing the same story from different angels: kid leads shitty life because of x, y, and z, grow up to be a messed up adult dealing with a, b, and c… It’s actually kind of annoying.

The idea of seeing things with one eye that we do not see with the second resonated with me. No, I doubt the writer was referring to anything PTSD/trauma related… but I liked the idea anyway, and am hijacking it for the sake of this post.

I’ve worked with both foster kids and adult-aged drug addicts via internships, and something I’ve noticed in both groups is they each have dealt with trauma through their lives. The kids (aging anywhere between infants to ~21) generally don’t register their own trauma. They may talk about it, but it’s like they’re just stringing words together that they’ve heard without understanding. This is how trauma is seen in the eyes of children. The adults have a greater understanding of whatever trauma they faced as adults. Even if they can’t put words to what happened, you can tell that they–through their older eyes–have a clearer picture of what happened.

And this is where writing about trauma get difficult. Trying to write from both eyes, the younger and the older. Viewing the image from the younger, but analyzing with the older.

I have no idea where I’m going with this. There’s my train of thought.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.