WHO HEALS THE HEALERS? Notes On Trauma & Child Sex Abuse

* * * * Trigger Alert: This post deals with physical and sexual abuse of children. It's mostly non-specific and doesn't go into graphic details, mostly chronicling the emotional response of this first-responder to the event. * * * *

Last week, for the first time in I don't know how long, the job made me feel cracked open and emptied out. I know why. Much as it hurt, I tip my hat to the somber reminder of my own humanity and keep it moving, wiser and stronger for it.

I've written on this blog and at The Rejectionist about how the action of healing, even when the patient doesn't make it, is a built-in instant form of self-care. We don't carry around the ghosts of all the horrible shit we see because we don't just see it, we work with it, throw our bodies and minds full throttle into the thick of it and become, however momentarily, part of the story. There's a cleansing that comes with taking action, even action that ultimately fails. It's as true in the larger community/world aspect as it is in the day to day grind of this job.

Anyway, that's exactly what didn't happen last Tuesday and that's exactly why I struggled with it so much after that fact. My mind was already heavy with the Penn State rape tragedy. Think it was a day or two after the JoePa riots and the news was all awash with creepy justifications, including that ghastly interview with Sandusky himself, and that shit was weighing on me. They sent us to a "BURNMAJOR" job. PD had been called in on a child abuse alert and found burn marks, old ones, on the kids arm.

I'm not gonna do details right now. It's all horrific, triggering type stuff and not necessary to the story. I'll just say that without anything being acutely wrong with the kid - who was running around and laughing, giving everyone high-fives - it was still the worst, most horrific job I've ever been on, for the unravelling of each nauseating detail of abuse as the detectives and my partner and I tried to understand what had been going on.

And then we drove them to the hospital, dropped them off and that was that. No IV, no oxygen needed, just some highfives and smiles and a gentle ride without lights or sirens. It was the end the tour and there was paperwork to be done and supplies to be restocked and radios to be handed off to the oncoming crew. And I felt...empty. Angry and horrified and full of sorrow and wrath and disbelief and heavy with the confused imaginings of wanting to deck the bastard who did it and knowing how useless and stupid an action that was and wanting to be still and hurl curses at the sky and run and call up everyone I knew and be all alone, all at the same  time. And still; horribly empty.

It was raining when I walked out of the hospital and down Gun Hill Road towards the train.  The Brooklyn-bound 4 was empty but thoughts of the past hour crowded in on me; the dull throbbing sorrow of nothing-you-can-do and the clenched up frustration of a hundred impossible thoughts. I let them come, mostly because I knew there was nothing I could do to stop them. And when the only action that's left to us is processing, that's what it has to be.
I'm blessed to have those sacred type of people close to me that know how to be there just enough in times of need without overwhelming; people that can be light with my heaviness and prod me to go deeper when I try to fake blow it off. Over the course of the night, through sad, hilarious, challenging conversations with
myself and my loved ones, I resurfaced, found my feet again, stopped feeling so empty and so began another day, full and ready for life.