Selected Writings of a Trauma Survivor

  Medication, especially new medication for depression that I’m being introduced to, has terrified me ever since I started taking antidepressants over thirty years ago. The induction process and the ongoing side effects can be hell, but without the pills, my mental health issues would be unbearable, so much so that if I didn’t have medication I surely would have taken my own life to end the suffering. On several occasions depression has paralysed my life quite literally, to the extent that I have crawled across my living room floor and hidden behind armchairs in the dark, fearful of being discovered in the grip of a full-blown depression. So, even though I have to endure unpleasant side effects with antidepressants, if the pills alleviate the depression, then I will, of course, take them because they keep me alive. My first experience with antidepressants was horrific. I started taking them at a time when my mental health had imploded, bringing my life to a standstill. I had sunk...

  A pearlised white 4 wheel drive pulls over to the corner shop in front of me. With the engine still running, the driver sounds the horn once. Almost immediately a lean nut-brown man steps across the threshold of the shop and hastens over to the vehicle. After a few words, accompanied by several leisurely gestures of the hand, the driver withdraws his head into the interior of the vehicle where he adjusts the folds of his keffiyh. The shopkeeper has nodded his assent, swivelled, and vanished into the gloom of his premises. Barely a couple of minutes later he reappears with a small bundle of provisions and is ready to hand it over when the driver gestures with his thumb for the purchases to be loaded into the boot. Task completed, the same hand emerges once more into the sunlight, proffering notes held between thumb and digit finger, which are accepted. Whatever the shopkeeper is saying in response for payment is interrupted by a single gesture from the hand, unmistakeably comm...

  In the early-90s an acquaintance of mine who taught at the University of the Basque Country rang to ask if I would be interested in doing a joint presentation with him in Norway, comparing the current political situations in his country and mine, Ireland. I was in my study aka the attic of my house- and because it was an unusually hot summer in Belfast the room was sweltering, so I blame the heat for my inability to think clearly that afternoon. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d given him an enthusiastic answer, something along the lines of “yeah, that sounds like fun.” Anyway, it was only early June and the conference was scheduled for mid-September… plenty of time to prepare the paper. The first step, according to my Basque friend, was to convince the conference organisers to include us on the list of invitees. That would be my job since I spoke English and Fito did not. Needless to say, neither of us spoke any Norwegian. That afternoon, I called the university hosting th...

  The stiller the mind, the more palpable the dazzling torrent of life becomes *   It’s 6.45 on a Sunday morning, the last Sunday of December 2012, and the forces of Mara** are besieging me. This is the third day of the siege and despite deploying and redeploying my powers against them I have to admit that Mara remains unvanquished. I’ve been at this juncture before – it’s something akin to a war of attrition – and I know from previous experience that determination and dogged persistence on my part will see me through this. “This” is a week-long silent retreat at a Buddhist Centre in the southwest of England.   I’m one of around 80 participants on an Insight Meditation Retreat at Gaia House in South Devon. This is my opportunity to eschew the alienation that tends to beset me in the run up to New Year festivities and to use this time more fruitfully. I’ve come here to develop a closer acquaintance with the workings of my own mind and the thoughts that so easily hijack...

How many times have we seen a film in which the protagonist wakes in the middle of the night gasping and in a terrified sweat? All they need is a drink or a few pills, or both, to calm their nerves and then, if they are very lucky, they may drift back to sleep. Countless times I’ve watched this scene played out in war films, but in other films too, where the heroine depends on laudanum to get her through the night. In the former circumstances it was called “shell shock” and in the latter, “hysteria” until science knew better. Nowadays, it has a different name: posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and it’s a term that most of us are familiar with. My own form of madness wakes me in the early hours, compelling me to seek relief in the medicine cabinet, taking more of the prescribed pills than is safe. I don’t want to die by an accidental overdose, but neither could I go on living with my nightly terror. My torment was not diagnosed as PTSD until I reached a point where I could no lon...

When I lived in Havana I spent four years renting a flat in the coastal suburb of Jaimanitas. My home was located on the seafront in this former fishing village; it was so close to the sea that I could drop vegetable peelings from my kitchen window right into the water below. From the balcony I often watched the sunset behind the Hemingway marina with its hotel named after one of the author’s most famous books, The Old Man and the Sea . The setting was spectacular and every day that I lived there I was grateful for my good fortune. Elsewhere in the world, a spot like this, on the Gulf of Mexico, would be so expensive to rent that only the very wealthy would have the means to live there. But there were drawbacks. Jaimanitas was a distance of around 8 kilometres from Old Havana and this meant I had to travel to get into the city. I didn’t own a car, so public transport was my only option. Journeys were often challenging because of the relentless heat and overcrowded buses and taxis t...

Christmas eve arrives, and the sunglasses are still on in Tarragona. Throngs of shoppers sporting Gucci and D & G eyewear strut the main street, the Rambla Nova, on the hunt for festive paraphernalia. Eyeing them from the tables at nearby pavement cafés are the owners of designer label sheepskins and chic leather boots. The December sun bounces off the polished paving stones on the central walkway of the Rambla, temporarily blinding me. I tut at my forgetfulness in going Christmas shopping without what is necessarily de rigueur winter gear in Tarragona. I glance up at the temperature being flashed from a sign outside a chemist to my right: 17º C. If this were Belfast, the locals would be out in shorts and tee-shirts. Plump juicy fruit hangs from the branches of trees lining the Rambla Nova. Last time I looked the oranges were wan and uninviting. The mid-winter sun has fattened and ripened them. But nobody, except me, seems interested in the fruit; they are all engaged in choos...

  When I was eight years old, I was caught wheeling a shopping trolley, laden with brightly coloured pens and colour-in books, out of a supermarket. None of the contents had been paid for. I’d just walked into Supermac , helped myself to what I wanted and breezed out, as I had done on several previous occasions. My younger sister was with me. She didn’t have a clue about what was going on… and when it came down to it, neither did I. The store detective, a portly middle aged man, guided us and the trolley back into the supermarket and into his office behind the row of tills. While he was asking me serious question after serious question, I noticed the Pirelli calendar hanging on the wall behind him. Today was 16 May and, as I looked at the date, I knew I would remember today for the rest of my life because this was the day I’d been caught doing a very bad thing. There would be trouble for this at home, big trouble, probably enough to warrant the use of my stepmother’s new weapon...

Deisy has just gone into a trance. A half-filled glass of water is sitting on the table in front of her and she’s staring at it intently. After a brief silence she jerks her head up and locks her gaze on to me with no hint of recognition; suddenly I’m a stranger to her. She surveys the others gathered around the table through narrowed eyes. There’s an energy sharpening her features that wasn’t there when she sat down a couple of minutes earlier. Then she begins, “The spirit tells me …” In some countries it’s called witchcraft, but usually only by those who are prejudiced. In Cuba it’s known as S anteria , a syncretic religion comprising Catholicism and Yoruba beliefs brought to the island with slaves from West Africa in colonial times. Prohibited from practicing their own religion, slaves fused it with the Catholicism of their masters. These beliefs, under the guise of Christianity, evolved in the harsh conditions of the sugar and tobacco plantations, and beyond. Today Santeria is ...

  Imagine having a heavy ball and chain fettered to your ankle shortly after you reach your 24 th birthday and then slowly realising that nothing you do, or indeed nothing that anyone else does, will free you from that ball and chain. With this realisation, a sense of doom and absolute despair weighs on you every waking hour and it gets worse with each new defeat in your attempts to break free. Such is the nature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It can be a living hell, as I can personally attest to. It all started in Bournemouth after I had an accident on my bike that knocked me unconscious. Back then I thought I had made a full recovery after the stitches were removed from my chin and the bruises faded. Years later, I learned from one of the top trauma experts in the world that such an accident can open the gate behind which trauma lies dormant. But I wasn’t aware of that when I walked out of the casualty department of my local hospital. I felt a bit shaken but otherwi...