Trauma

I’m a fan of the journalism aggregator website, Longform.  This morning I read this piece linked to the site from the Washington Post about the recovery of a wounded survivor of October’s mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.

Before I go on, I should tell you a couple of things about myself.  The first, which you might know already if you’ve read anything else on this site, is that I’m a community college instructor.  For this reason I closely follow news of campus shootings silently praying that neither my students nor I ever fall victim to one.

The second thing, which I have only alluded to in passing in earlier posts, is that I am a trauma survivor.  I was impaled through the chest in a peacetime training accident while serving overseas with the military.  The injury left me permanently disabled.  I was hospitalized for two months, most of the first spent in the ICU.  It took me more than three years to fully adjust and find my “new normal” before I could begin to rebuild my life.

I don’t discuss this much.  While I suspect that the people who know me casually are aware I’m different I’m able to conceal much of the extent of my disability.  I wear long sleeved shirts year round to cover my withered right arm and few people, even family members, have seen the numerous wound and surgical scars that cover my body from my neck to my knees.  When I meet people for the first time they’re mildly surprised when I offer my left hand to shake but they don’t seem to notice much else.  I must say I’m pleased with my ability to pass as a normal, whole person most of the time.  I live alone without help, I’ve travelled the world by myself despite my disability, and I work at a job from which I derive great satisfaction.  Things could be much worse.

Which brings me to the 16 year old girl profiled in the Washington Post.  Eight weeks are a very short time to recover from the severe injuries she experienced and it is not reasonable to expect her to be her best self.  Nevertheless, the article paints a portrait of a very unappealing individual.  She is verbally abusive to everyone around her including her chronically ill mother.  She is demanding yet ungrateful.  Aside from a brief remark that she did nothing to help during the attack she seems devoid of sympathy for or even awareness of the other victims.  Her family members must explain every routine movement about the house lest they startle her unnecessarily.  It’s all about her.

I suspect she was a godawful brat well before the shooting, self-centered, narcissistic, and rude.  I strongly suspect her family insisted on treating her as exceptional throughout her young life.  To a degree it’s a characteristic of her generation.  It’s also true that illness makes most of us short tempered. 

But there are limits.  This girl has a lot going for her if she would just stop a moment and realize it.  She has the full support of her mom and brothers and the concern of her community.  I wish I had had a fraction of the support she enjoys.  My marriage collapsed during my own recovery while my mother and sisters used a power of attorney granted to manage my affairs to help themselves to my assets.  

Once home I was left unattended for long periods of time, during which I had to shift for myself.  I spent the many hours alone reliving the accident in my mind, memories which continue to surface years later.  Naturally I had my irritable moments, but for the most part I was my normal, polite self, with “please” this and “thank you” that in the face of the indifference of those entrusted with my care.  Most importantly I resolved to carry on even though it meant starting over with nothing.

My takeaway from the article was the lack of resiliency in our current crop of youth.  Over the past year or so articles in academic journals and “trade” periodicals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education have commented on counselors and administrators who warn faculty not to discuss things which might “trigger” bad memories or negative emotions in students.  I’ve received similar warnings from the institutions where I teach, as if I’m supposed to know the full personal history of each individual in my classes.  The subject I teach requires discussing controversial topics from time to time, so it’s not a matter of if but when a student will bring a complaint regardless of how carefully or circumspectly I present the material.  I am not sure which is worse, the potentially violent student or the prospect of having students like Umpqua Girl in my classroom.

The girl’s physical injuries will heal.  She can learn to cope with the emotional pain, which will dull though not disappear with the passage of time.  She has every opportunity to lead a normal life.  But from what I read, I think she will wring the shooting for all it’s worth for as long as she can.   She will mope, she will malinger, she will gradually leach the very life from those around her.  Rather than fulfill her responsibility to the dead to live a productive life to the best of her ability, the young woman profiled in the Post article shows every sign of spending her many remaining days draining the energy of those around her while producing nothing of value in return.

I am truly sorry for all those harmed in the Umpqua Community College shooting.  No one deserves such suffering.  But survivors have a choice.  They can move forward, pain be damned, or they can mire themselves along with their family and friends in the misery of a moment irrevocably past. 

It’s too bad that this young person has chosen the latter.

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar