Trauma Work Summer Part Seven: I Might Be a Villain

 

Last week, I had my last Trauma Work session! Now back to my regularly scheduled OCD! Since then, I've been having freaky dreams, but also bursts of back-to-school joy! There's a sadness hangover from all my Laura Palmer-ing,  but in general I've been feeling more empowered and proactive, a little more like an adult among adults. I'm really excited about that part, I want to live in today instead of finishing the story of Summer Princess, but here we go, back to the day of the Fire Prevention Play.

After my head-on-shoulder moment with Summer Princess, I felt brave enough to go back inside and finish my project, but I stayed overwhelmed. I ended up with my hand over my heart, gasping in front of the assembled cast. "I can't do it," I said. BossPal took over for me while I found a not-next-to-the-playground bench on which to sob. 

I called BFF Formerly Sweetie and cried it out to her. BossPal came out and checked on me too. I wanted and needed this moment of care, but I felt so embarrassed--I felt like I was letting camp and the friends down.

BossPal sent Summer Princess out to sit with me, and I'm not sure why, but I decided it was time to tell her about my crush. I thought she must know already! I'm about as subtle as The Substance! But this was part of what had made the morning so overwhelming, I felt like I "had" to tell her.

In the moment, it didn't feel fraught to tell her, it just felt like I was confiding in someone I trusted. In my love and panic, I lost track of all the power imbalances! Cis/Trans! Black/white! She's twenty-six and I'll be fifty-one next week! AND I'm longtime friends with our boss! Still, it really felt like we were just two friends talking, and I hope it felt like that a little for her as well.

Friends, I really ran my mouth that morning. I told her everything--how I was having feelings for her, how my last two crushes had been on Barbie doll beautiful transwomen so maybe I have a new/additional type. I told her how old I felt and that I was sure I would fuck it up if I someday have a chance with a nice trans lady. 

I said I was sorry that I was making her do this emotional labor, I know it wasn't her job! How do you know whether you're just having friendship or you're taking advantage of someone's kindness? That's what would obsess me out of my mind for the rest of the week and still a little bit, even weeks later.

"If ________ and I were still poly," Summer Princess said, "I'd date you--you're cute!"

That was so sweet, maybe definitely sweeter than I deserved. I don't know if she meant it or if she was just kind of managing me, but it helped.

Trauma Work Summer Part Six: Fire Prevention

IT'S A MAP!

Camp Overshare was supposed to create a Fire Prevention Play. There was a contest. It's one of my boss's most dreaded tasks. She assigned it to me, ostensibly because of my teaching artist background, but also maybe because nobody else wanted to deal with it. I tried to conscript Summer Princess to be my play buddy, but she demurred.

I was in a pretty scary house fire in the Nineties, but that was far from my mind as I helped kids create characters and compose a few lines for themselves. They already were pretty expert on fire safety, at least a few sentences worth! The table read went so smoothly! I was so proud.

When it came time to film the play, everything turned to chaos. Something about opening the Fire Prevention Play costume box made everybody a little nuts, and EVERYONE was coming to me for help. And YELLING.

And, horror of horrors, my Squishmallow had gone missing! Holly, the little purple owl with flowers on her head! I'd made her her own (Bi colors!) friendship bracelet at the beginning of camp. She was my comfort object and helped the kids sometimes, too! 

So in the midst of the swirling Fire Prevention Play chaos, Summer Princess and one of the campers were looking for Holly. I found this unbearably touching and ended up crying in Summer Princess's arms. About a misplaced toy! I was not okay.

Holly was eventually found, under a bookshelf. I asked my boss to cover me and went outside to sit on my favorite bench (OMG I loved that bench! I already miss it so!) and do some breathing. What I actually did was cry and be overwhelmed. Summer Princess came out to sit with me. I asked her if I could put my head on her shoulder, and she said I could.

<3 <3 <3

I just want to pause here and say I appreciate this connection so much. I know it was just a summer camp friendship that my own love and attraction blew wildly out of proportion, but it was also real and special.

For me, it was an affection as much as it was an obsession. There was wholesome love there, even as my desire for her made me want to dismantle the inner structures of myself. There was something beautiful between us, even as it descended into what a friend (obviously a friend around my age) described as a "Jerry Springer situation."

I did want to possess Summer Princess. I would have loved to live out my imagination's Ma'am scenarios with her. But also, I got to know her heart a little, and I hope, even amid the panic and OCD and misunderstandings, she knew my heart a little too.

 

Trauma Work Summer Has Actually Been Kinda Lovely, Part Five

One time I was reaching back to the shelf to get my lunch and I spilled her flowers on my head.


    

Summer Princess was hard to read, emotionswise, and I put my foot in my mouth almost constantly. Once, trying to change the subject from her gently food-shaming the campers at lunch, I said "We've gotta get you some kids." She sulked and said that sounded like I was making her a mammy figure. 

Very understandable chips on very beautiful shoulders!

One day in maybe the third week of camp, she came in late because she had a special errand. She said she would share the news at lunch! It was an official-looking sealed envelope and I thought it might be her name-change paperwork. I was right! We all celebrated for a moment before I stupidly said that I'd guessed what was in the envelope. The celebration went right out of her, and she asked "How did you know I was trans?"

Her mood shifted and I was desperate to get in her good graces. We bickered about other things and everything seemed impossible. The next day, I brought flowers to celebrate her milestone and some gentle weed gummies for me. Our bonding (and my enmeshing) resumed.

In the hot glaring middle of the summer, we walked the kids to the pool. Summer Princess had gotten a brand new bathing suit! This was her first time in a pool post-transition, and it made me dizzy with happiness. We played in the pool together. "Make sure nothing bad happens, she said before diving under. We did handstands and flips, I hadn't gotten that much pool water up my nose since I was a kid.

The sky was so blue and the clouds were so perfectly fluffy that they looked painted on. The city skyline rose hazy in the distance. Though it wasn't romance for her, to me it was one of the most romantic afternoons of my life, even if it did involve walking the kids back to camp down the blazing city streets. In my bathing suit and sneakers, carrying everybody's towels and water bottles and whatever, with tall and careful Summer Princess at the front of the line--dazzling.

I've often found my trans friends beautiful and sexy, but aside from a quick makeout with Angel Face before we decided to be friends, I've never gotten around to acting on those attractions. After that day, I knew I wanted to. I wanted to devour her, but knew I would just have to open up to other possibilities, to pay attention more. I forgot the word "chaser" and I wanted to chase her.

I felt the world and my heart exploding with hope and possibility, but I wholeheartedly wish I had kept this epiphany to myself. I could have just added some porn search terms to my life and expanded my horizons when looking at Feeld.

But I was overwhelmed with loving her and wanting to please her, and this was Camp Overshare! So the friendship didn't get to last long.

Trauma Work Summer Was Actually Kinda Lovely, Part Four

I couldn't get her to come make art very often, but she sat by me the morning we did August Valentines! This is one of mine though.    

Today Update: As soon as I extricated myself from the impossible situation I helped create, the warmth of just a few weeks ago came back to me. 

*****

For the past couple summers, I've worked in a summer camp across town. It almost always felt like a paradise, the kids running to-and-fro making up weird games while my friends and I overshared out of earshot. Some mornings,  I sat outside with my ice coffee and my emotional support Squishmallow and just enjoyed the trees. We made art almost constantly and Karaoke day was practically a religious experience. 

The campers' emotions were always in flux, big to small, melting down to happily flying a literal kite. My emotions moved with theirs sometimes, and the quick shifts could get overwhelming.

On the bench at the side of the playground is where I got to know Summer Princess. Tall, dark-skinned and soft-cheeked, she was instantly endearing to me. She was new but jumped into the camp tradition of the overshare right away. For me, it was probably love at first overshare. A thunderclap of a bond, but playful. Easy most of the time.

I liked the very quick moment when we showed off the lacy tops of our bras to each other. She was kind to my spectrumness, listened patiently to the story of how I became a collector of lingerie and how I need bras with more structure these days because of gravity.

We talked about relationships, of course--pretty sure I'm the one that started down that road. I loved hearing about her adorable fiancee and their poly misadventures. Within three days of working together, Summer Princess was inviting me to their wedding.

Pretty soon, we were hugging hello, goodbye, and as needed. 

"You're soft," she said one of the first times we hugged.

Once I said "Wait I think I already told you this story." and she said

"Tell me again." *dies of swooning*

When I complained about guys, she said "You should try a princess instead."

Once I was sitting on the employees couch near the end of a long day and she brought me a chair so I could put up my feet. I didn't ask her to, she just did!

Once, she offered to carry one of my bags to the car even though none of my bags were heavy. I think she just wanted to be with me a little longer, like I was an emotional support human. "Goodbye loves," said a coworker from across the street.

We spent part of one afternoon trying to sneak my Squishmallow over to each other undetected, my heart got all unlatched from all the silliness and giggles.

The day before she turned 26, I had the kids all make her cards and little crafty gifts. One girl made her a 3-D present box just out of regular paper and tape! Craft supplies were never limited to their intended use!

Oh my goodness, I loved this girl so much, and it was hard to keep my imagination from dreaming up lots of knotty Ma'am scenarios for her. I wanted to take care of her, to take her to the beach, to give her whatever she ever wanted.

Now, today, she's probably wigged out by me and her fiancee definitely has threatened to hunt me down. So I'm surprised to find so much warmth, joy, affection, and innocence in these paragraphs. I'm glowing with it, even though she's gone.

Trauma Work Summer Part Three

 

Me at 16. That Deee-Lite-esque print top was my absolute favorite. Mom even got all the blood out after the Main Trauma!

Things got decidedly unlovely with the Summer Princess since I last wrote. I don't know how much I'll share about that, but it's part of a pattern. My pattern is, every couple years I burn out, need lots of rest, and want to flee whatever job I'm in at the time. The fleeing is generally for good reason, (The current one definitely is!) but I've never had this happen with two jobs at almost the same time!

The burnout cycle is partly just because of being really sensitive and spotting too many patterns, and maybe inadequate autism support. But also it's a chime of an old, rotten memory, the source of the intrusive thoughts that I've harmed myself and others with so much over the years: 

"I don't belong here. I have to get out of here before I get hurt." 

But, can intrusive thoughts sometimes just be intuition? Because sometimes, a lot of the time, I leave because a place isn't safe. 

I already wrote to you about my Worst Trauma, it's here if you dare. The one I'm working on this summer and telling to my therapist over and over ever Wednesday morning and then listening to recordings of on most other days, happened a few weeks after The Main Trauma. It's kind of worse because instead of violent near-strangers assaulting and berating me, it was my own dad.

I was sixteen and trying to let myself heal, but I couldn't find quiet or space to heal because at the same time, my parents' fights ramped up to new levels. On the night in question, my dad kicked my mom down the stairs, and I got in his face about it, like "Stop hurting my mom!" 

He was like "She kicked me in the balls so I kicked her down the stairs!"

Totally normal sentence to just keep living in my brain.

I kept yelling at him, and then he lifted his fists above my head and started pounding on me--head, shoulders. Ears. I crouched down on the floor and made myself as small as I could get, but he just kept pounding, and kicking too.

"You brought this into our house," meaning that I had caused my parents violence (with us my whole life long) by getting raped and assaulted.

That's the moment that I'm stuck in, and it translates to:

I'm bad.

I'm worthless.

I have to stay away from everybody or I'll bring this upon them, too.

When I called my friend B. for help, I was scared of scaring her, I tried to sound as calm as possible while I told her what was happening. I was afraid of her coming to get me because I thought dad might hurt her too, but I'm so, so grateful that she came.

At her place, I got those moments of peace that I needed. I don't remember talking too much or anything, but it felt good to be near her. She was a new friend, an art pal from school I was really excited to be getting to know! 

Though I wasn't out yet and wouldn't have put into words, I was attracted to this pal! Even in the hollow tunnel of trauma my brain was in, I felt giddy to be close to her, sleeping on her floor, floating free of my nightmare of a life. 

B's mom said I could stay longer, but my mom wanted me at home. When I got in the car, I saw that she had two black eyes to match my own. She wanted to stop for concealer, but I wanted her to let it show, so someone would see and help us. We were stranded on an island of terror together, and I was mad about having to go back to that terrible, haunty house, but here in 2025 I'm glad she wanted me with her.

I couldn't see how I could have a life after that night, I still don't see how I can make a life even though I've been making a life ever since.

I hate that the bad memories sometimes Godzilla through and help me sabotage my life. I hate this story and all the other trauma stories. Today, I kinda hate myself. I'm at a loss to imagine what my life will be like from here.

All I know is that tomorrow, I'll go to Summer Job and pick up a few things. I'll rest a little before my main job starts next week. I'll keep doing my trauma work assignments, including visiting my high school home town next week as a culmination of all my exposure therapy. I have no idea if I'm doing the right things, if I'm making it worse, but all I can do for now is the next thing, and keep writing.

Trauma Work Summer Has Actually Been Kinda Lovely, Part Two

In case you didn't know! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNWZoZnRFhA

So I was in a Living-In-RFK's-America mood, trying not to think about the wellness camps, when one of my coworkers, obsessed with her own Noom journey, started doing a thing she does--listing off all the "obese" people she knows and cataloguing what she thinks what they are/shouldn't be eating. This included her own husband, from whom she hides food. She also begs her husband not to take GLP1s for his diabetes, because "Those are like giving drugs to a drug addict."

All  year long, I'd avoided any disagreement with The Work Ladies, leaving the room whenever I was tempted to argue. Being good about practicing my codependency recovery. But this time I didn't feel like leaving the room or even putting my headphones in--I just wanted to be in a workplace where my body-size wasn't seen as shameful, where, OMG, body size wasn't my coworkers' business. So I spoke up, tried to explain why "obese" feels like a slur to me, why this conversation felt bad to overhear. She continued her hiding-food-from-her-husband story, so I again asked her to stop, less nicely but still pretty civil.

There were three or four weeks of meetings about how "confrontational" I had been. My colleagues had been having a "normal conversation," said the HR director. The HR director was only a little bit smaller than me, and said she never experienced any anti-fat bias. Her boss reserved the right to enjoy talking about her South Beach Diet journey and ask anyone and everyone how they are eating.

I might write more about the scary meetings someday, but for now, that's enough to see why I landed in a profound burnout afterwards. I'd spent the year making myself as unobtrusive as possible, and I'd still ended up feeling like I was a threat to be contained and a problem to be solved. This is about the time my OCD therapist suggested a round of PTSD treatment.

The pattern of trying to stand up for myself and being treated as the problem is deep in my trauma bones, and I knew just the memory I wanted to work on. It was nothing directly about food or fatness, but about fighting for what's right and getting (literally, in the memory's case) kicked around and blamed for it. I was about to live in a nightmare over and over all summer in the name of healing. I'm almost done now, and I think it's working.
 

Trauma Work Summer Has Actually Been Kinda Lovely, Part One

(Except I'm not dead! Nor am I wrapped in plastic!)

I want to say livid with desire, though that isn't the right word at all. Radiant. Radiant with love and joy--there's a day like that, many paragraphs from now. Dizzy with love and sunshine for someone who's not a match, but a friend. No one wasever so crushworthy. She cracked open my heart with her openheartedness and generous spirit, and of course her pretty face. So many sentences before Summer Princess (The first princess to steal my heart!) but this story is grim so I wanted you to have something to look forward to. I'll try to make some pretty art along the way too, we'll see.

The Trauma Work Summer sprung from fatphobia (the world's) and codependency (mine). It starts one late spring morning when Rachel Maddow's podcast broke my faith and ruined my day--she said she felt "ooky" for talking about the president's obesity treatments, and I really wish she would have followed that "ook" and not DEVOTED LIKE TWENTY MINUTES OF THE ACTUAL NEWS TO A DIET BOOK.

I don't like admitting I depended on a newscaster to keep me sane  during the start of evil 47's evil second term, but I like the way she focuses on the protest movements and her sense of humor is a balm. It's mortifying to say I felt abandoned and betrayed, that someone I looked up to and who gave me so much strength over the years could be part of the "obesity epidemic" assumptions that bodies like mine need to be solved, done away with, disappeared. I don't want to be disappeared.

Ever since Lizzo slimmed down (Which is her right! Nobody's business, least of all some middle aged lady who doesn't have to get on stage for anything!) I've been grieving the body positivity era--hot, fat Lizzo! Regular Maintenance Phase episodes! Shrill the TV show! Fat Girls Dance Movement! She's All Fat! Danny Lavery as Dear Prudence, giving fatphobes the what-for at every opportunity! It seemed like Maddow's diet book moment was the final death knell of my hopes for Fat Liberation.

So that's the mood I went into work with that morning, and it was about to get worse.