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Selected Writings of a Trauma Survivor: Prologue

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These chronicles are dedicated to all the “Lukas” of this world .* This selection of writings has been chosen to reflect the variety of experiences I have undergone in my life. Many of them, but not all, are hemmed by the suffering that (complex) trauma has visited on me and this will become apparent as the reader progresses through these chronicles. However, in only one of these chronicles do I recount the cause of the original trauma: in a short story named A Cold Elephant , which is about the night my mother took her own life. The cause of complex trauma was the ongoing violence and brutality I suffered at the hands of my stepmother from the age of six onward. Add to this, my father’s indifference to my stepmother’s cruelty and, at times, his encouragement of the use of force against me and my younger sister, then the complexity of the causes of trauma in my life becomes apparent. It was only when I reached the age of 24, after having graduated, that the symptoms of trauma became ...
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A HUNDRED THOUSAND WELCOMES? NO CHANCE!

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Just recently, I have had a couple of unpleasant experiences in the tourism industry, in Ireland as a tour manager and – to a much lesser degree - in Barcelona, as a tourist. While the two destinations are around 1500 km apart, the experiences have a strong commonality in that both indicate a less than welcoming attitude toward tourists. Here, I reflect on what happened.  The flow of energy around the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland is probably the most powerful I have ever experienced in the natural world. There is a drop of over 200 metres from the cliff tops into the ocean below. Gazing at it invites contemplation on the fragility of life and the inevitability of death before quickly stepping well back from the edge as the wind buffets, sunshine blinds, waves break while the cries of seabirds are sequestered and disappear out to sea. Even the ground collaborates in the overall experience by sucking each foot into the mud and resisting attempts to heave it free....
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Halloween Special: Friar's Bush graveyard

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"In ancient times as peasants tell   A friar came with book and bell   To chaunt his Mass each Sabbath morn   Beneath Stranmillis trysting thorn"* Summer, at least here in the northern hemisphere, is already a memory. In Ireland the nights are growing longer and the fading sun yields earlier each afternoon to the reign of the October moon. Darkness is ushering in the autumnal equinox, a time revered by the Celts because it was then they believed that the veil between this world and the next mysteriously lifted, allowing the souls of all those who had died during the year to pass beyond it. They called the festival Samhain (pronounced Sah ween); today we celebrate it as Halloween. As the date approaches, I find myself casting more than a passing glance at the headstones in Belfast City Cemetery and wondering... Its ancient pathways beckon, and momentarily I consider doing my own private midnight tour in honour of the mystery. But I don’t have the courage. It’s a dark...
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Total Meltdown

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E ven through I don’t fully understand what happened to me and why, I am still going to write about the silent meltdown which has changed the course of my life… definitively. Maybe writing will offer me some clarity.  Three years ago, I walked into my classroom on the university campus for the last time. My job, a job I’d been doing for 13 years, was to prepare international students, mostly Chinese, to tackle the challenges of a postgraduate course in a UK university. The main focus was on establishing and developing academic writing skills. On that day, the day the meltdown began, there was no warning. The lesson I had prepared was in line with the syllabus and it aimed to introduce students to the various reasons why referencing is required. It is an important lesson to learn for success in academic life, particularly so if students want to avoid being charged with plagiarism and subsequently expelled from their course. It was to be the last lesson I taught. Every aspect of the ...
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The Vortex

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On the mornings that Kathleen vowed to give me a “good hiding” when I got home from school later that day, I found it impossible to concentrate on my lessons. All day long, my body would buzz as if it were connected to an electric socket and waves of nausea ruined my appetite so much so that I was unable to eat. It was a sickening feeling that made me wish she’d given me the hiding in the morning, before school started. Kathleen found endless reasons to make such a threat and she always remembered to carry out the punishment. Annoying my father was one reason. On such days she would arrive home as usual at 8.20 in the morning, having finished her night shift on the geriatric ward. Firstly, she would talk to Dad in the bedroom; then my sister and I would be summoned to the living room, where we were informed of what would happen next. Annoying Dad, by giggling during a programme he was watching, or breaking a glass while doing the washing up, warranted punishment. Another reason for a...
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Predators

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  When I arrived in Marjon university as a first year undergraduate, I was filled with gratitude at finally having an opportunity to be a full-time student. On that day the sun shone all the way on the journey south, a journey away from the family home, the scene of great unhappiness in my life. Stepping on to the platform in the station, I stepped into a new life, 370 kilometres away from my family. They were my old life in Manchester and this was my new life in Plymouth; it was the furthest possible university I could find from my home. At last I was free from my parents and free to study full-time. But this new freedom came with a price tag: I was terrified that I might be an imposter, not as good as my fellow students and would be exposed as such, to my shame. In classes, I dreaded being chosen to answer a question and rarely contributed to the discussion in case I made a fool of myself. It didn’t matter to me that this had not happened yet; it was enough to know that it coul...
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A Necessary Evil

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Yayne , Mr Rochester intones softly and pulls the lady in question, Ms Eyre, close to him.  I groan inwardly. I must be mad watching this. It’s not that this most recent cinema version* of Charlotte Brontë’s classic work Jane Eyre is unworthy of my praise, because that’s not true, it’s just that yet another foreign language film at my local cinema has been dubbed. All my instincts scream sacrilege. Maybe Michael Fassbender, as the intriguing Mr. Rochester, fulfils all the requisites of the dark, tormented north country character that Brontë meant to him to be. But I just don’t know. Speaking a language entirely foreign to him, in a voice that is not his own, plus with a Madrileño accent, undermines the power of the actor’s performance. Last week I watched Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet become rage and hatred incarnate in Roman Polanski’s screen version of Yasmina Reza’s play, Carnage . Yet the words coming out of their mouths didn’t quite match the contortions of their faces. The...
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