Glimpses of trauma
Dec. 6th, 2013 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettContent notes: paranoia about death and serious illness.
My baby brother is in New Zealand, at the beginning of a four-month biking tour. Today is his birthday. He hasn't updated facebook since the 28th of November and he hasn't updated his tumblr for a bit longer than that. I know I know I know that this is because he is busy having enormous amounts of fun and hasn't been able to get online or charge his phone because he has been sleeping in fields, but - every time I stop and think about him for too long, I start convincing myself that he's actually died and my mother is going to hold off on telling me until I next see her. (She didn't tell me about Grossmutti's death for two or three days, until I saw her in person; she tried to avoid telling me about her cancer diagnosis until my first term at university was finished, i.e. to put it off several days until she next saw me in person.)
I'm kind of fascinated by the extent to which I can simultaneously recognise this as an utterly irrational conviction born of trauma, and be terrified that it's actually what's happened.
My baby brother is in New Zealand, at the beginning of a four-month biking tour. Today is his birthday. He hasn't updated facebook since the 28th of November and he hasn't updated his tumblr for a bit longer than that. I know I know I know that this is because he is busy having enormous amounts of fun and hasn't been able to get online or charge his phone because he has been sleeping in fields, but - every time I stop and think about him for too long, I start convincing myself that he's actually died and my mother is going to hold off on telling me until I next see her. (She didn't tell me about Grossmutti's death for two or three days, until I saw her in person; she tried to avoid telling me about her cancer diagnosis until my first term at university was finished, i.e. to put it off several days until she next saw me in person.)
I'm kind of fascinated by the extent to which I can simultaneously recognise this as an utterly irrational conviction born of trauma, and be terrified that it's actually what's happened.