Everyday Experiences Are Everyday Trauma

“Hell is empty. The devils are all here.”

As much as I respect a man who wielded such a majestic wit that it has made him legendary and a cornerstone in the English language and immortalized him in the annals of history, I must say that I disagree with this sentiment.

Now, I more than some understand the complexity of attempting to explain fictional context to those who choose to be willfully unknowledgeable and I do not maintain that I believe this single quotation from “The Tempest” was the basis of Bill Shakespeare’s outlook on life or society in general. However this line from that play is one that I have been drawn to because sometimes in life it does very much feel as if the devils have vacated hell and chosen to live their life on earth to interact and harass us as they see fit.

If this were to be the actual case, or if this were to be our perspective on our everyday lives, then would that not make our present day in our current life our own living hell? If Bill is right, and hell is empty and the devils are living among us then, kids, this would indeed be hell and we would all be in it together.

Even for the briefest of moments I am sure that many of us have felt this way. As we live our lives we will experience moments of unhappiness. We will experience moments of sadness. There will be times when we feel as if things could not get any worse. Unhappiness is a state of mind and although we rarely will choose to be in that state often our state of mind can decide how long we stay in that position. We choose how we react based on previous experiences.

I had a theory several years ago and tried to translate the idea into a story. A child is like a block of clay. When that child is born they are an undeveloped perfect mold of that block of clay. They have had no experiences, they have had no interaction with world, they know nothing of what life is going to be like other than a biological and instinctual drive to live. As that child gains experience, each and everything that they come into contact with will leave a dent in their mold and shape who they become. These dents are traumas. Not all traumas are bad, but each interaction that the child has, each experience that they gain, will shape and dent the mold that is ultimately and inevitably who they are.

Bad times in life are unavoidable. Why was the dark created? To make the light seem brighter? Or to create balance? No matter how hard we try, we will experience a fair share of trauma throughout our lifetime. How we choose to cope and deal with these traumas will define what type of person that we become. How we choose to deal with trauma and what type of person we will become will then translate into what kind of parents we are and how our children will be able to deal and cope with their own traumas.

I am a young parent of two small children and already it puts me in mind of being severely intoxicated. It is all consuming and goes by so fast that it can only be experienced and remembered in pieces and fragments of blurred memory. As one begins to lose her baby teeth I am caught trying to remember her cutting those same teeth that we are now losing forever. The memory comes in joyous tear jerking shards.

As she grows and continues to develop into the gorgeous young lady that she will become I wonder about the trauma that she has already experienced. I am curious to see how it will play a role in how she develops into an adult. Was I as a father able to provide her with enough support, leadership, and care to teach her how to properly deal with them? Will she be able to handle them on her own as she grows further and inches out from under my wing? These are scary thoughts for any parent.

I was rehearsing for a film in a building that was separate from a house that we were renting last year. Before, I had lain down beside my oldest daughter on the couch until she had fallen asleep up, informed my gorgeous wife that she was snoozing, and made my way down to the building to start my practice. I had been working hard at a character for nearly an hour when the door creaked open. Enter my oldest daughter, sleep still across her face, eyes still partially glazed, hair everywhere, “You left me,” she croaked.

“I did, my lady,” I said. “You were asleep.”

She was quiet. Sleep still had a grip on her. “Why did you leave me?”

“I have to practice, sunshine,” I said. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want to be with you.”

She wipes the wild strands of golden red hair from her face and accepts my justification. Trauma dealt with and adverse affects averted.

“Can I watch?” She asks.

“Of course,” I say. “If I get loud and you get scared let me know and I will stop.”

She nods and begins to listen and within a few minutes of me flubbing lines in front of my newly acquired unenthused audience she begins to rummage through the boxes in the building.

She finds a tent and as she begins to pull this tent from its box I see in her eyes that this was a big deal and I stop my reading. I wait to hear her response to her find and as she turns to look at me I see it in her glorious face.

The sleep has dissipated. Her eyes are vibrant blue. Her mouth is forming an inward barely contained smile of shear excitement. Her small hands are trying to raise this heavy tent to stretch it out across the concrete floor.

“Daddy!” She breathes.

“What did you find, Cloey Monster?” I ask knowing full well what she had discovered.

“A tent!” She exclaims.

“What do you think about that?” I ask.

She drops the tent to the floor and lets it fall at her feet. She turns to me with hands clasped at her chest. Her eyes locked on mine, sincere, and genuine and full of a desire that only a child can muster. This was not a desire that a child exhibits on impulse when they see something and instantly feel the need to tell you that they want it, this was a desire that made this tent seem something so unimaginably unobtainable to her young mind that it was something so exciting that she truly and genuinely wanted to use it.

“Can we please go camping?” She asks.

“We sure can,” I say.

“Tonight?!” She nearly screams.

The problem with this was that it was November. It was cold. I knew that we could have camped out and it would have been uncomfortable but it was possible. The prospect of sleeping outside on the cold ground was not very appealing to me however. On my face I believe she recognized my distaste and before my eyes I saw her face began to droop. The excitement slowly began to fade. Her childish wonder began to melt before my very eyes. A realization that this magical tent that she had just found would not be magical at all, it would just be a tent in a box in a dusty old building and her joy was only momentary was revealed to me in a single descending expression.

It was more than I could handle. It was a trauma for me as a father that I was not prepared for. Like a drunkard having a moment of clarity I began to think of the trauma that this may cause her little personality as she developed. I saw in her face how important this single frozen camping excursion could be to the Monster and the opportunity I had to leave an impression on the mold that was her childhood. This could be one of the moments that she remembers forever. The time Daddy took me camping in our backyard when I found the tent in cold November or the time I found the tent and Daddy never took me.

It wasn’t an option. I walk to the Monster, lean down on my knees, pick her chin up so she can look me in the eyes, and ask her if she would like to go camping with me tonight. Her reaction in a single word: Joyous.

Our camping trip lasted roughly an hour. Who would have thought that camping outside would mean that you had to miss out on such luxuries as electricity and technology? The Monster asked to go up to the house and I agreed.

This could have been a moment in her life in which a single event could be remembered forever. I tried to make it a moment that she would remember positively. I know that as she grows older she will experience bad times in her life. I know at times she will be unhappy and I know that not everything in her life will be as perfect as our hour long camping trip. What I do know is that the trauma she will experience as she continues to develop will be met by a child that has a support system around her that is built to protect her. Our goal is not to avoid trauma. We know that she will experience trauma and this is inevitable. Our goal is to teach her how to deal with the trauma that she encounters in a way that is beneficial to her as she develops and grows into the person that she will eventually become. My Cloey Monster is growing more and more everyday and as she does I want her to be able to deal with the negative experiences in her life in a way that is healthy. My job as a Daddy is not to protect her from everything it is to prepare her to be able to deal with what I can’t protect her from.

Bill, if the devils have chosen our current plain of existence over hell, then it is because we’ve molded them, not taught them better, and allowed them to stay.


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