Recovering Vibrancy after Trauma
by Naakai Addy
18/01/2021
The Colour of Resilience
{Trigger Warning: Racial Trauma reference}
I took a taxi home that night. I remember the streets being slick, but I don’t remember the sound of rain. The short rise on the lift usually turned my stomach; the smell of raw fish was perpetually baked into its cheap flooring. That night I smelled nothing.
As I entered the flat, my steps sounded muffled; my heart beat so loudly I thought I was dying. On autopilot, I pulled a towel out of my room and stepped into the shower.
The skylight above filtered the fading black night as hot water pelted my skin. It was too hot, probably, but not hot enough. I scrubbed and scrubbed at a spot on my lower back. I gave up and returned to my room. I spent hours pacing, crying, calling crisis helplines. I tried to sleep and couldn’t bear to close my eyes. The sun came up but when I opened my blinds, the sky still looked colourless to me.
The next few days, I could either feel all the worst things or nothing at all. I couldn’t sleep and I was plagued by flashbacks during the most mundane tasks. So I decided: I would file a report with the Gardai, and then I would get some space from Dublin. I was nearly finished with school and had been hoping to take some time to focus on my writing anyway. I chose the place that felt right in my gut: Norway.
Yes, Norway. I couldn’t explain it, either, so I told very few people what I planned. It did occur to me that if I was experiencing PTSD with a side of depression, how would it help to go somewhere rainier, colder, greyer? Somewhere with even fewer Black people than there were in Dublin? The trauma from that night was only compounded by the daily racial aggressions I experienced in the city, often by neighbors who made dog and monkey noises when I walked by.
I hadn’t felt safe outside for months; now I felt unsafe in my own body.
I decided to trust my gut. If there was anything I’d learned from nearly two decades of talk therapy, it was that logic alone hadn’t even come close to healing my trauma.
***
Norway does meet some of the assumptions my logical brain tried to flag in warning. This is not what I’d call an ethnically diverse country and Norwegian people sure do know how to stare. I’ve looked at this week’s forecast and every day, there will be rain. Next week, I’m sure there will be more. The days are getting shorter and greyer; the night sky commits to a depth of darkness I’ve never experienced before. I plan to return to Ireland before what I’m told is the most depressing segment of Bergen’s winter, but even in October I find myself frantically searching for sun lamps and high-concentration Vitamin D tablets.
But it turns out my gut was onto something.
That Norwegian culture is so reserved and insular means that, so far, no strangers have invaded my personal space or touched my hair. I’m sure those things happen here; they might just happen with less regularity than in more tactile cultures. That so much of this country is wild and remote means that I have all the space I could ever need to process what I need to process. I do stick out like a sore thumb, yes. One of the benefits of being so visibly ‘other’ is that fitting in feels too impossible to even be bothered with. That alone saves me a great deal of energy.
What my instincts delivered on most of all is the vibrant energy of these landscapes, an energy that has slowly been returning me back to my body.
Here, amid all of this grey and rain, I’ve started to notice colours I can’t believe I never did. There are a million different shades of green, it seems, and those tiny beige birds in the city centre, the ones I never noticed before — they are actually brown, and white, and blue, and black, and sunkissed gold. They bear intricate patterns in their feathers, as do the ducks that glide across Norway’s still waters, the fjords and lakes that abound. And these vast mountains, which I would never previously have felt a desire to climb or interact with? They are the living, breathing, geological framework of a country that seeps clear, rushing water as though abundance is a birthright.
The first few weeks I was here, I had too much adrenaline to sleep at night. Now, I’ve gotten used to the sounds of the trees swaying in the wind, the deer and cats who rustle the leaves as they run. I’ve stopped pulling the covers over my head to shield myself from the possibility of staring into — or being seen by — the unknown.
I’ve started to let my eyes drift toward the window as I fall asleep, so that I can see the night. Really see it, in all of its colour.
Notes
If you need support please contact Sexual Violence Centre Cork anytime freephone: 1800 496 496 or Jigsaw Cork: 021 245 2500 or Dublin Rape Crisis Centre who also have have a 24/7 helpline: 1 800 77 8888.
Naakai Addy recommends the meditation below for black women from the Spirit House Collective in North Carolina.
