trauma training

How are you? I hope things are well this week.

I am feeling moderately cheerful and refreshed this week, as something happened which will hopefully bring some sense of closure to the FH leaving debacle. I have been undergoing trauma training to deal with a major emergency as part of my work. This is because I am responsible for the district community centres which would be used as reception areas if there had to be a mass evacuation.

As the trainer was talking about the effects of ‘trauma’, I began to see some comparisons with what I have gone through. Obviously thousands of people get divorced so you tend to try and rationalise it as common place. However, that doesn’t reduce its significance to an individual. In fact you may have experienced many of the symptoms coping with suddenly finding you have/had a life threatening illness. They include numbness, a sense of your own mortality, a loss of belief in the ‘order’ of life and with it some sense of life’s meaning – physical and emotional symptoms that include loss of appetite, interrupted sleep patterns etc. what was significant for me was the number of video snippets he showed demonstrating this terrible anger people felt. What hit home for me was that this was FH. I have never been able to understand why, when he chose to leave, he was so angry and was angry for years not weeks or months – remember him killing the dog for example? I suddenly realised that this actually could be a manifestation of his grief, and if it was, it was for me some tribute to what he felt he had lost. I don’t mean just me, but the whole security and pattern of our life as a family before. I have always been saddened by the fact that he never expressed any regret or any ‘looking back’ as though what went before for 18 years was worthless. I have needed him to acknowledge some value in it. However, Relate and my current counsellor have all said he won’t say anything until years after the event when it won’t even matter anymore. It’s weird, but such a theory makes total sense to me and is a comfort. I’m not saying I won’t still get upset – I still have to see them together and see them marry for example, but the notion that he cared, in whatever way he chose to express it is a major comfort – I’ve felt a great peace about the whole thing since the idea occurred to me.

A* is currently in Madrid for a week with B and FH is already blaming him for her not wanting to go to university at the moment, but I know she felt this long before. Following the theory of trauma above, I think him leaving rattled both elder children’s sense of certainty in the world so doing ‘established’ things seems less meaningful or less of a ‘natural’ order of being.

I went to the doctors yesterday as I have been having a number of aches and pains. Also FH had mentioned to the children that I should get my blood pressure checked as his has gone sky high and he is now on beta blockers. My blood pressure is absolutely perfect, but I am having an internal scan. I’ve been having pains in my appendix area. He is going to check my ovaries, but he thinks I may have irritable bowel which is common when you experience stress and it does come on more when I feel under pressure.

No other news. J2 is off to Germany next week and A* to Barcelona on a band trip. I have had no bites at the car and must collect my new second hand one in less than 2 weeks so that’s a bit of a bummer. Work is OK. I am off to a lottery consultation in a mo and had a big rural summit on Monday which I was semi responsible for organising that went fine.

Big hug.