Can a grown man learn?

2022-07-13

Dear reader,

Can a grown man learn?

I’ve accumulated evidence that I can’t.

The old saying, “Wherever you go, there you are,” doesn’t care if you’re on vacation in Myrtle Beach.

Writing about my faults here on my blog isn’t anything new. It gives me a path forward on my hardest experiences. I’m often able to tie off the story with a bow, a tourniquet showing what I learned today. I cultivate an image of humility, yet I also pull out a “W” by showing progress.

Is it all an act?

It was morning. Alison and I had just brought our family’s beach chairs, towels, and toys out for the day to the sandy beach. Now we were walking back to the hotel elevator through the South Carolina sun, 90-degree heat, and 98% relative humidity. Like my dad, I tend to wilt in the sun.

Both the break and PTSD can cause chain reactions.

I noticed an older man going the same direction. His t-shirt said “My Favorite People Call Me Papa.” He and the two women he was with hesitated at the elevator, as if unsure of their direction. I knew where I was going. I was on a beeline for the elevator, an icebox on the way to our icebox of a room on the 9th floor. I reached past them to press the “up” button. I didn’t do it to help them. I did it to get where I was going faster.

Ding. The elevator door opened. “Call Me Papa” and his crew hesitated. I hustled past them into the cab. They followed.

“That move you pulled was very rude. I can’t believe you did that,” he said, looking me in the eye as the door closed. As the elevator moved upward I never broke eye contact with him. But I also never found words to unlock my lips. I wanted to tell him I didn’t mean it, but I knew that my intent didn’t matter. My behavior had been rude.

I wanted to apologize on the spot, but I couldn’t. Why I blew past them and then couldn’t open my mouth is hard to explain, even to myself. It wasn’t rational. I felt Papa’s attitude was harsh, but I would have lost nothing by saying I was sorry. I also felt that if I did speak words in that moment, they would come across as defensive. I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.

But saying nothing was not my “best self.” With my girlfriend as a witness, and now everyone reading this, I acted like a jerk.

My big brother and I both withstood hours of screaming, yelling, and worse early in our lives. The same stimulus for both of us developed into different responses. Whenever he talked back, his little brother noticed that he only got more yelling in return.

I went a different way. I froze, went quiet. I waited out the storm, feeling some safety in not giving my caregiver any more material to feed off. I don’t remember choosing this, but I survived. Survived with nothing worse than a shy demeanor, a mumble, and a bevy of life-threatening symptoms later clustered in a life-saving diagnosis of childhood PTSD.

I’ve healed a lot. My “healed self” knows that a guy in the elevator isn’t a threat. But my healed self hasn’t always shown up on command. We have neurons and other cells in that don’t know the danger is over. The popular imagination of PTSD is that a firecracker on the 4th of July triggers a veteran to think that he or she is back in combat. 

My war zone wasn’t like that so my triggers aren’t like that. My firecracker that day was withering heat and a guy who in somewhere in my body reminded me of my Grandpa, a guy whose favorite people call him “Papa.” 

Ding. The door opened to Level 4, parking. “You have no respect for your elders,” Call Me Papa said as they got off. One of the women apologized. “It’s ok,” she said. I disagreed with her in my mind but I didn’t have words for that, either.

I’m glad that I know all that stuff about PTSD. A few years ago I would have thought I was a flawed person and a jerk. Now I just think I’m a flawed person who can act like a jerk. But I wish I didn’t. Can I learn?

I couldn’t stop thinking about the elevator. The next morning I started writing this essay. But I couldn’t remember details. Freezing like I did is dissociation—I removed my attention from the scene. For help, I asked Alison what floor they got off at. Her sister was listening. Adaire asked, “Why would you write about that?”

A couple weeks ago I was getting ready to mow around the pasture fence. I noticed a long piece of wire sticking out of the grass and ferns.

It’s a remnant from installing the woven-wire fencing 10 years ago, and it could cause havoc. Lurking in the grass, it could destroy a mower engine or pop a tractor tire. It could pierce the bottom of your foot or even the stomach of your livestock. I knew of this hazard back then. We took care to clean up every loose end, or tried to. But a dull gray wire can disappear into the forest floor fast.

Cutting fencing 10 years ago.

It would have been easy to leave the wire behind, to take my chances with the mower. I could have stashed it out of the way on a stone wall or in the crotch of the nearby pear tree. But in my experience, those options aren’t good enough. Loose pieces of metal have a way of finding you again when you least expect it. Maybe a generation later my son’s chainsaw will find it in the tree.

I picked it up and I pledged to myself not to put it down until I put it down in the scrap metal bin. You’d do the same thing if you saw a nail in your driveway. 

“I write about the things that are hardest for me,” I told Adaire. “It’s what I do.”

I looked for Papa later around the pool to apologize. I believe in self-awareness and disarming my triggers as a practice. I believe in facing my fears and apologizing. I asked for help at the front desk, but to no avail. I didn’t see him again.

It’s fitting. An apology would repair my self-image. It would make me feel like I had learned or healed. But only more living, more exposure to firecrackers of all shapes and sizes, will show me if any of this works.

Putting it in the bin,

Tristan

Quill Nook Farm