Autumn creeps in on dusk’s shoulders

Tags

Autumn, Change, Collins St, Degraves St, enlivened art, Melbourne, sandstone, stream of conciousness, Trams

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Running east to west through the main grid of Melbourne’s CBD, the buildings here on Collins Street are quite historical. There’s lots of sandstone (I have a thing for sandstone – don’t ask) and fabulously dramatic structures that look utterly beautiful most times of the day but especially at dusk, even interspersed as they are with more modern buildings. Much of the street’s profile hasn’t changed in about 130 years (perhaps longer), with its elegant tree-scapes running the length of this wide street, home to one of the busiest tram lines in town. Collins Street is enlivened art. Leaving work yesterday around 5.30pm, waiting for a tram in the center of the street, I looked up and somehow my phone’s camera was engaged and before I had time to exhale, *snap* I took this shot. It reminds me of Autumn, with the sun beginning to vanish so early in the evening once again. Soon, those leaves will change colour and sprinkle the depth and breadth of the street with warm golden hues, as if a tiny piece of the remains of Summer were embedded in each one. Come mid-Winter I may not be working here anymore. It’s possibly-probably time for change once again, but that’s cool with me and it might just be what I need anyhow. The good thing about working as a contractor is the reminder that change is constant and necessary, as well as situating me all over the CBD (in general, most of the jobs in my line of work are in the city). But it’s a pretty city, a smallish city. You can walk Melbourne’s main grid easily. It’d take you longer though, if you spend some time searching the laneway bars, cafés and shops this city is famous for (make sure you don’t miss Degraves St). And then trams can take you further and to more interesting outlying suburbs, but sometimes just looking up like I did yesterday, shows you the most interesting things of all. In this case, not right beneath my nose, but above my head…

~Svasti

After-burn

Tags

Accident, disassociation, Emergency Essence, fury that looks like fear, passenger dominos, physiological traces, Post-traumatic stress, PTSD, Satay Chicken Dinner Box, Trams, trauma response

So I’m riding the number 64 tram home from work, just like I do any other day when I’m not cycle-commuting. It’s the end of the week and okay, it hasn’t been the best day ever, but it’s cool… and now it’s time to go home.

I’ve been on the tram for no more than five minutes when it starts breaking quite jerkily. There’s not much to grab hold of coz the tram is packed – every seat taken and those of us standing are just a few degrees off feeling like sardines. Skin touching if you move a smidge to the left or right.

Within microseconds I’m flying, almost horizontally really. So is every other standing passenger. The tram driver it seems, failed to notice a red light and at the last possible moment slammed on the brakes. The resulting game of passenger dominos roughly throws us all a couple of meters forwards.

Nothing I attempt to hold onto works out. A multitude of thoughts race by… oh no… what’s happening… I can’t stop myself from falling… is this going to hurt… there are people falling on top of me… there’s nothing to grab hold of… oh no…

It is only when the tram stops lurching that we mid-flight passengers land ungracefully and mostly on top of each other. My phone, which had been in my hand, is now on the floor and in pieces. Luckily not too many pieces and it can be put back together. When I manage to stand upright, I’m in a completely different section of the tram.

The haze of shock sets in.

The driver does not apologise. Does not check to see if anyone is okay. The tram keeps moving but much more carefully now.

I am not okay. I’m not sure if anyone else is hurt, but I’m too dazed and angry to find out. My already manky shoulder (luckily I have a physio appointment next Tuesday) is throbbing. My neck and lower back are sore.

I’m asked if I’m okay by a woman and her family. Passengers with seats, lucky things. The woman standing next to me and I are both having separate conversations about what just happened – she, on her phone (she’d helped collect the pieces of mine), and I with the family. The woman says that from her window seat she saw the red light, and how he didn’t even try to break until the last moment. It’s not as though a red light happens without warning.

Indeed.

They get off the tram a couple more stops down and I gratefully take one of their seats. I know I’m going to report this and ah… I can see the tram number, an individual identifier. I check the time… yeah, it happened just after 6pm. Along with the route number that should be enough information for the complaint I’m going to make.

Everything feels a little surreal. I make it to my stop and walk home unevenly. I feel the strain in my body – that always happens in a fall because our muscles futilely brace for impact.

It’s done. I’ve called Yarra Trams and explained very calmly. Yes please, I’d like someone to call me back and tell me what happened as a result of my complaint. No, I’m not sure if I’ll need medical treatment for the pain in my body, I’ll let you know. Okay, thanks for the reference number, I’ll write it down.

Done. And yet not.

Seems that trauma leaves physiological traces not just in the brain but also in the body. Oh…

I remember a little now. Yeah, this is what it was like. I can never remember properly afterwards, the same way you can’t quite recall how painful it was when you broke your arm. You know it wasn’t good, but the details escape you.

Until something happens to open the floodgates. I’m teary. But I don’t realise this, until I’ve been sitting in the dark for about three hours. Tears yes… and fury that looks like fear. I haven’t eaten. I haven’t done anything. Oh right, that disassociation thing… I stop feeling normal at all.

But I am okay. I know that. I know I didn’t die, I didn’t hit my head. I am not seriously injured, but it was close. Another half a meter and I might’ve hit my head on something upright and made of metal. But I am safe now.

And yet I start to hate everything. My body leads the revolt with memories of how it used to respond. Ah… the after-burn of PTSD thanks very much.

Mostly, my mind is not engaged at all in what’s going on. There’s so many reactions and responses going on. Things that make me wary of loud noises. Things that make me move very slowly. Things that keep the tears coming even though there’s nothing to cry about, really.

But it doesn’t stop. I take some homeopathic Emergency Essence (designed for treating shock). Actually I take several times the dose. And I head out on my bike to double check that the world isn’t still trying to kill me.

It’s late, but I find food and I wander around in an attempt to recalibrate my mind. But even once I’m back home eating my Satay Chicken Dinner Box, I’m not okay. See, these things always take time. More Emergency Essence before bed.

Sleep was fragmented and awful at best. And today I am all aches and pains with a side dish of trembling like a leaf.

It shouldn’t be that hard. Yes, the tram driver was a dickhead and I’ve done all I can in that regard. And I am okay, really.

And it’s been almost a year since the worst of my PTSD symptoms vamoosed. Yet a small and relatively harmless incident like this breathes life into the trace elements of my trauma response.

Luckily, I live with a yoga teacher and I hear she’s kinda okay at sorting out physical aches and pains. I’ll find some time for all of that later. Right now I have to go and do family stuff for my sister’s birthday. I’m bringing the cake. And there will be niece cuddles.

And I will be okay eventually…

~Svasti

Circles of samsara

Tags

Apologies, Christmas, Friday night, I'm sorry, Love, Misunderstanding, Samsara, Suffering, Trams

Out and about Friday night after a relatively serious drinking session with friends (for me, more than three glasses is serious!)… I waited at the tram stop outside the Arts Centre.

A handful of minutes pass and a young girl approaches, crying. Lost and upset, she doesn’t have a jacket – always a bad idea in Melbourne unless it’s the middle of a heat wave (the saying goes: Melbourne – if you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes).

She wanted to use my mobile to call her boyfriend. I obliged. They had a brief, catty and drunken conversation before she hung up on him.

Eventually, she told me her name and what’d happened. She’d jumped on a tram to find out where it was going – but it took off. And her boyfriend’s crime was that he hadn’t followed her.

So they were separated. He had her phone and money and she was stranded. Also, she didn’t know the way to his house exactly, where she was staying.

She was crying and swearing at her boyfriend, utterly furious with him.

I called him back and asked what I could do to help her. He asked if I could put her in a cab and he’d pay for it at the other end.

Easier said than done at one in the morning this close to Christmas.

But we tried. We went to the side of the road (trams run down the center) and I put my arm around her to keep her warm.

The cab didn’t materialise but a tram arrived going the right way… so we both got on – luckily there was a female tram driver, who helped me figure out where this young thing (just twenty-three) needed to go.

Still really pissed at her boyfriend, she was calling him every name under the sun. But when I questioned her about things, it was clear she was just mad at herself and blamed him. Because she could.

As we talked she finally agreed, several times, that it wasn’t her boyfriend’s fault, what’d happened.

I kept her talking until my stop. The lady tram driver said she’d call a cab for the girl from the terminal to get her the last leg home. Other passengers were also really lovely, looking out for her. I gave her a hug and said goodnight.

A little later her boyfriend called me – she hadn’t arrived at his place yet. He sounded really concerned and upset. I explained where she was and that she was okay.

Funny thing is… they were both so mad at each other over a silly drunken Friday night misunderstanding.

And what did I learn from all of this? Despite the late hour and being rather sozzled… I saw how easy it is to blame people for stuff that isn’t their fault, especially when we’re already hurting in some way. And make them the object of our anger…

One person reacts. The next person reacts to that person’s reaction – or what they’ve understood of it anyway… a snowball begins, picking up speed.

Just another way in which the human malaise of general delusion and madness strikes… and we have a choice every single time:

To let the momentum build, grow larger, and become overblown. And cause pain to another for no damn good reason – potentially damaging that relationship.

Or… stop.

Call a spade, a spade. Laugh at yourself for your own madness. And pull it apart. The whole stupid thing.

With love.

~Svasti