2: Dark Matter

When I get to the point in any relationship with someone when I share something about my childhood trauma (and there have not been many of those points in my life), they ask a simple question: what happened? While it’s true that there was a seminal event, a first time, that event is not the beginning, and not because I cannot tell you what it was.  It is not the beginning because that is simply not how I became aware of my trauma. My awareness grew slowly, like eyes adjusting to the dark. But simply providing illumination to a dark place is not enough to shed light on the unknown. Below what we can visibly see are the sub-atomic particles that make up the universe, and at that level, edges and boundaries tend to blur. But even past the quarks and the nanites are the things in the dark.

Dark matter is the material in the universe that we cannot see because it does not emit light like all other objects; its presence is inferred by the motions of the objects around it that are being propelled by its force. Some cosmologists believe that dark matter is what is left of stars (white and brown dwarfs, or black holes) after they die. While cosmologists aren’t making the leap to psychology, it’s easy enough to do: stuff sticks around a long, long, long time in the universe.

The true power of dark matter as a metaphor for my PTSD is that it exerts a powerful gravitational pull: just as cosmologists knew that “something was there” about twenty or so years ago when they started defining dark matter, I’ve always known “something happened to me” because of the the behavior of the people around me growing up, and all of the things in my mind and in my own behavior that did not fit. I wasn’t a puzzle with missing pieces. I was in pieces of hundreds of missing puzzles. Things would happen, memories would arise, but for years those memories and events would carom off each other like pinballs in a machine whose obstacles could not be seen. Imagine making your way through a maze where the walls were invisible until you slammed up against them. Imagine not trusting your own mind sometimes, when your mind was the one thing that was your celebrated strength. Imagine being the smart one, and feeling bamboozled by your own brain. For most of your life.

Welcome to my dark matter.