In my experience, when someone is met with a traumatic situation (physical, mental, or emotional), healing from it tends to hurt worse.  For example, falling off your bike might hurt in the moment, it’s days later that you have bruises and a visible limp when you really feel it.  The same can be applied to mental and emotional trauma.  It may not dawn on you until days or years later that you’ve been carrying around an emotional or mental bruise that you need to heal from. Of course, there are those cross over incidents that may also hurt physically and mentally.  I have a crossover event, and it involves a fork.   

The scene opens with me in a relationship.  At this point in the relationship, it’s very toxic.  There’s more yelling, tension and distance than there is care, love and affection for one another.  It’s the middle of the night and we are in the living room.  We are sitting on separate adjacent couches.  We are arguing about yet another topic that we shouldn’t be arguing about.  We are splitting hairs and the volume of the conversation is beginning to increase.  There comes a point where I don’t feel heard, so I begin talking over her.  This quickly rises the total volume of the conversation, and we are now yelling at each other.  It all comes to a head.  She quickly stands up, grabs a nearby fork, and is standing over me.  The threat of violence wasn’t uncommon.  I’m thinking, “Here we are again.”  With a steely look and holding the fork in my face, she yells, “Where do you want me to put this!!!” To call her bluff, I hold my right arm out.  She wasn’t bluffing.

There are moments in life when you say to yourself, “Yep! This is going to hurt.” When I was a teenager, flying down a hill on my bike, hit a rock and KNEW I was going to fall.  As I was beginning to fall, I remember saying that to myself.  That incident left me with plenty of road rash.  Another time, I was jumping out of a swing that was way too high (thankfully, no broken bones).  In this moment, as she reared back with the fork in her hand, I was thinking this, and I wasn’t wrong.  With an electric jolt, the fork dove into my upper bicep.  I could feel the prongs of the fork fight through the muscle fibers.  It reminded me of putting a fork into a steak.  And for the non-steak eaters, plunging a fork into a mushroom.  It only took seconds but felt much longer.  I remember hearing a, “Pop!” as she pulled the fork out.  After pulling the fork out, she throws the fork across the room and screams, “That’s how you make me feel!”

I look at her with disbelief and look at four square holes in my arm.  She sits back on the couch, and I sigh.  I stand up to find a paper towel for my arm.  Within the 5 footsteps it took me to get a paper towel, I feel a warmth running down my arm.  I’m bleeding and bleeding a lot.  She tells me again, “That’s how you make me feel.” I’m suddenly hit by the gravity of the moment:  I was just stabbed with a fork by someone who claims to care about me in order to prove a point.  I break down crying and feel completely alone.  How can she justify doing this? I continue weeping and she begins to be concerned.  She suggests we go to bed.  I take a shower and cry myself to sleep.  Over the next few days I’m unable to flex my arm or carry much of anything. 

It would take about a month to heal physically, but I didn’t account for the mental and emotional damage a moment like that can produce.  I continued to carry those wounds around for many years.  I didn’t realize it in the moment, but I was a victim of domestic violence.  If you’re noticing the signs, get out of that situation.  There’s never a need to stay with that person.  Healing always seems to take much longer, but fighting to get past it is more than worth it.  Thanks for reading!