The noted Russian émigré novelist Vladimir Nabakov wrote an intriguing memoir of the first few decades of his life, talking about his childhood as well as his young adulthood until the period where he was accepted as a political refugee into the United States at the beginning of World War II. He called the memoir Speak, Memory [1], and a great deal of the book examines the untrustworthiness of memory itself [2] and the way that memory can play tricks, and yet ultimately it is all we possess as far as seeking to recover the truth of the past to learn from it and lay it to rest. Where possible, our memory can be supplemented by textual support or the memories of others, but unless we are obsessive in recording the details of our life or of keeping our own cookie crumb trail of activities via the burden of paperwork like receipts and plane tickets and the like, we are likely not going to be able to be very precise about our memories because mundane activities will be too dull to remember and traumatic memories less reliable precisely because of their traumatic content. Even so, our memory is often the best guide to what is going on inside of us, and how we are affected by the past, even if that record is imperfect.

Even before the conscious realization of my childhood experience of abuse gained somewhat belatedly as an adult in my mid-20’s, after the death of my father, it was very clear that something had been amiss, both from the stories I had heard from others as well as the intrusive experience of sleep paralysis, a lifetime of nightmares, and panic attacks induced by seemingly ordinary activities. Additionally, the realization that something was wrong was heightened by what is often termed as inappropriate response, and that would be the way that what is immensely shocking to others came off as entirely normal in my own reflection. Indeed, long before I was fully aware of the reality of child abuse in my past, the skewed sense of normal that was present within my own mind was perhaps the most obvious clue to those around me that something was indeed deeply wrong. It is to this skewed sense of normal that we will turn, as it furnishes the earliest accessible artifacts of my childhood through the medium of plays, before we turn to the inappropriate response of panic attacks and their damaging results to my relationships with others.

As a sixteen year old, I went to a church summer camp in Northern England, where I quickly earned a reputation as a troubadour of sorts, a young man with a fondness for writing evocative and passionate, albeit frequently misguided, love poetry. The experience of traveling overseas alone for the first time led me to ponder a situation where a young man about my age went off to be a foreign exchange student in the North of England, and where he happened to meet a friendly young woman his age, who happened to be the daughter of his host. For the main characters, at least, the play was a short one-act romance of fairly conventional and coincidental happiness. The other two characters in the play, though, had a role that fit the skewed view of normal that was even then present within my own mind. I pictured a businessman overly fond of alcohol and equally overly fond of underage female company and a young woman who was quite willing to pretend to be older than she was as being the secondary characters, the foils for the somewhat more conventional main characters. Even as a teenager, this seemed to be an entirely natural thing to do.

Nor was this the only play where this sort of dynamic took place. A very traumatic day where I was threatened with violence over something in Math Club ended up becoming a play titled “The Rape of Nicholas,” which took its title from the casual way one of my slightly younger classmates in Math Club would always refer to difficulties by referring to them as rapes, somewhat trivializing the seriousness of them. It was striking for me to see the trauma of threats turn into slightly fictionalized dialogue starting the very day of the incident while I waited at length for my mother to pick me up after school. Even in my youth, I was somewhat concerned at the way in which my life so readily served as the raw material for my writings, all the more concerned given the subject matter that continually came to mind over and over again, even when there were not obviously traumatic experiences of the threat of violence and even death from my classmates, which was at least an occasional circumstances given that intellectual maturation does not necessarily mean that someone is emotionally mature.

The subject matter that would intrude itself on my plays during my late teenage years and early adult years was frequently troubling even to me, and was extremely disturbing to others, dealing with subjects like rape, incest, and promiscuity, even though I have never been remotely promiscuous myself. The wide gap between the sort of torments that I would have nightmares about and the restrained and rather quiet nature of my day-to-day existence was a puzzling matter. The fact that a great many of these plays were tragic, or flirted with the boundaries of tragedy even when they ended happily was also something that I found deeply unsatisfying, even if I felt compelled to write honestly what I thought and felt, even with the knowledge that what I wrote would frequently be misunderstood and used against me, even though I would have greatly preferred to have written happily or conventionally, and to have had pleasant thoughts and reflections to convey. The fact that the most troubling writings of mine were all too true was of little comfort to those who read them aghast, because true or not, they were not matters to be spoken of or written of, even if someone had truly done those things.

Had these unpleasant matters merely intruded upon writings, it would have been easier to handle, because the writings were written largely in the obscure privacy that meets most of my writings even now, only occasionally interrupted by more widespread renown or notoriety. Unfortunately, the intrusiveness of my mental and emotional life found its way into my interactions with others as a young adult, and even to the man approaching middle age that I am now. Beyond the discomfort of freezing in panic itself, which is uncomfortable and unpleasant enough, I have also been deeply concerned about the way that others may have felt somewhat guilty for what was meant in innocence, and only had a negative result because they had done these things to me, and not to someone who behaved or took things in a normal fashion. And it is for the harm caused to others acting in innocence that I regret these occasions the most.

Let us by no means assume that these intrusive panic attacks can be banished purely to the distant past. If only it were so. One Saturday night in February 2013, for example, I went to the home of one of the members of the local congregation who was singing in a barbershop performance that night [3]. After having had an enjoyable dinner chatting with my local pastor at the time and some of the other adults there, we went to the local high school where the barbershop performance took place. While trying to walk to my seat, one of the teens in our party ran into me suddenly from behind, which caused me to freeze in panic. Now, I do not believe this young woman to have had any malicious intent or desire to make me feel uncomfortable, any more than I have ever desired to make her feel uncomfortable. I think that both of us are pure with regards to intent, at least. Yet what would have been to most people an innocuous or even a pleasant surprise was to me panic-inducing, not because anything was wrong with her, or with what she did, but because my instinctive take on people coming into contact with me from behind is deeply horrifying, and it takes a great deal of time and effort to calm down from such feelings of sheer panic and terror. I can only hope the experience was not upsetting for her to have run into me, although that may be hoping too much.

Some years earlier in July 2000, before knowing this troubling personal proclivity, I was serving as a computer instructor at a service project in Ghana. Not only did I teach some elders and some of the young adults there how to use various Microsoft Office software, but when there were no classes I was frequently given the task of keeping the daughters, aged 9 and 7, of the pastor in charge of the service project from being too bored. During one long car trip to the other side of Ghana, near the border with Togo, their fussing about being bored interrupted me from my reading and rather than be irritated, since children do tend to need more attention to keep themselves occupied than bookish adults do, I taught them how to use hand puppets, which they seemed to enjoy. One afternoon, though, the nine year old, apparently in a fit of some kind of play, decided to suddenly jump on top of me, which led me to freeze in panic as stiff as a board. Ever since them I have deeply regretted having had this response, as I am concerned that I did great harm to her own conception and image of herself, for I knew that were I the sort of person who found it easier to be playful and innocent, then no harm would have followed, and I would certainly not have been given such a terrible fright from a friendly child. And yet what was meant in innocence was not taken in innocence, and it was not the fault of the child. She simply chose the wrong person to pounce on—that is not such a large mistake, after all, and not the sort of mistake that people tend to be able to avoid making when they have no way of knowing the results of their playfulness.

Nor has it been only unexpected contact that has brought upon such horrifying panic upon me. Indeed, on at least two occasions pleasant kissing and making out with past girlfriends resulted in panic attacks when they did something unexpected that they thought should be quite pleasant, but which ended up causing me to freak out. It is a terrifying thing, especially when one has deep romantic longings and dislikes causing a scene, to have pleasant time with one’s girlfriend be disturbed because one has a panic attack. Perhaps nowadays it would not be so troubling because I know why intimacy is such a personal minefield for me, but at the time I was not consciously aware of what had caused the response, as it was not any hostility to or lack of attraction to the girl I was with, just the fact that I am a person of extreme sensitivity and somewhat extreme response. No girl can be blamed for that, and it has deeply troubled me that any sort of intimacy carries with it such risk, along with the understandable lack of interest many people would have in having to overcome such occurrences, as rare as intimacy has been at all. It is a great shame that there have not been nearly enough good memories of romantic love to begin to overcome the deep effects of trauma. Perhaps there is time enough for that to come in the future.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/book-review-speak-memory/

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/i-woke-up-in-between-a-memory-and-a-dream/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/memory-almost-full/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/a-trip-down-memory-lane/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/memory-of-the-fallen/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/history-and-memory/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/there-is-love-wherever-there-is-song/