The Day I Started Making Peace with My Tragic Past

Not hiding or denying it anymore: it was traumatic!

During the path of my life journey, the years between 1994 and 1999 have been put in a box hidden far away. I had promised myself not to ever touch it and keep it buried where it belonged: in the past while only focusing on the gift of the present and building a promising future. But you know how the brain/life can be tricky: it recently started throwing it back to my face in order to deal with it. Because hiding it in a box did not help assimilate nor understanding it. I notice that it only grew bigger in my mind, thus creating few collateral damages in the present.

But why does all of a sudden all resurface now? It has been 20 years since life in refugee camps is over. A lot has happened mostly memorable positive events. I thought that by balancing with positive events that tragic past would evaporates at some point, but it didn’t.

My thoughts of why this is reopening now is that there must have been some triggers or maybe it was just the right timing to deal with it.. who knows?

About the triggers, there has been quite some recently... The recent major one being me experiencing discrimination and racism in Norway. This reminded me how tiny minds still exist and the wickedness of some humans. It brought back negative memories that I had put behind me on purpose. Experiencing racism especially in health care environments had a deep negative impact resurrecting old sad memories and the feeling of insecurity in general.

The other trigger is my son turning 4 years in 3 months. I have been experiencing anxiety because that is the age I had when the Rwandese genocide happened. I am concerned for him, because I now perceive the world to be more “battlefield” than I wanted to believe. I know this is a bit odd but I can’t help but wonder “what if somethings awful happens..”? (well, the pandemic gave me partly an answer to this).

From nightmares, flashbacks, to muscle pain followed by a constant feeling of insecurity.. Professionals called it symptoms related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

So I understand that as long as I don’t deal with that marking past it will still hunt me for whichever triggers may…

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