Turkey Day Trauma

In this time of national crisis and obligatory thankfulness, it feels selfish to be caught up in something that happened 17 years ago, but here I am. Tomorrow is the 17th anniversary of the workplace shooting that resulted in two men dead, one woman in critical condition, and left me with PTSD. It happened on a Wednesday that year too, the day before Thanksgiving. That Thanksgiving was to be the start of a 10-day vacation for me, which might be why I find solace in working so much around this time. If I’m working it’s easier to not think about it, but not impossible. As soon as people start talking about the holidays, I start thinking about it.

Thanksgiving 17 years ago was an unusual one for my family, spent for the first and only time at my best friend’s parents’ house instead of our own home. Now my best friend and her parents spend Thanksgiving at our mutual friends’ home for a big get-together. I am always invited, but I struggle to attend. These are my closest friends, people I have grown up with, people whom I love, and I know care about me. But all I can think about on Thanksgiving is what happened all those years ago. I want to be with loving, understanding people, but can anyone really understand why Thanksgiving is the one day out of the year where I just want to drink alcohol and numb myself to the cheer and festivities? What am I thankful for this year? Being alive? Not being shot? I mean, yes, but it’s not exactly a cheery, festive response.

November is National Native American Heritage Month, and I keep seeing videos and pictures of indigenous women painting their hands red to place on their faces, a symbol of awareness for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. I can’t look at them. Handprints, especially red ones, remind me of a bloody handprint on a wall that day. Every time I see a handprint, even a child’s, it makes me remember what I want to forget. This is the season when children are crafting turkeys using their handprints, their thumb as the turkey’s head and their fingers as feathers. There is really no escape from it.

On my office wall hangs a piece of framed artwork my sister-in-law lovingly made for me, a page with my brother’s, hers, and my oldest nephew’s handprints layered in paint next to a poem she wrote. My brother’s handprint, the largest of the three and the bottom of the handprint stack, is in red. It hangs on the wall over my head, Monday through Friday every week, much like the memories hanging over my head. I try to find comfort in the thought of loving, gentle handprints covering an ugly, painful memory.

My nephew’s handprint appropriately in gold because he is priceless.

PTSD is a bitch, plain and simple. Maybe these are the days when I need to be surrounded by loving people the most, but it always feels like these are the days I just need to be alone with my grief. It feels wrong to celebrate holidays when you are grieving, it feels wrong to isolate during a time of togetherness and thankfulness, and it feels wrong to bring everyone else around you down with your grief. I always feel torn between the choices, my emotions warring and my energy draining until I crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep. PTSD is isolating, even amongst friends, because you are battling memories no one else can wrap their head around and you carry these memories alone.

Every year feels a little different, sometimes focusing on the memory of the big gentle man who was murdered, sometimes focusing on cursing out the quiet man with the office next to mine who murdered him before his own life ended. Sometimes I think of the woman who endured so many surgeries to survive her wounds. Sometimes I think about the CEO who had to deal with the aftermath, but who I later found on YouTube making money giving presentations about it, complete with security footage. I think about the HR director who blew off my extremely valid concerns and warning, the same person I tried to make feel better afterward when she was crying and I was escorting coroners through a crime scene. I think about the nurse who tried to use the tragedy to push his personal agenda, causing more trauma and harm. I am still angry at all of them. I still grieve the barely 24-year-old I was and the person I became after that.

When people ask what I’m doing for Thanksgiving, I say Thanksgiving isn’t my holiday. I could tell them my grandmother died the day after Thanksgiving when I was a kid, which is true. That might be a little less traumatic than explaining I watched my co-workers violently die. Instead, I say I don’t really care for Thanksgiving food, which is true. I love mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and a good roll, but I hate green beans and yams. Turkey and stuffing are okay, but is it worth socializing for?

Holidays can be tricky for a lot of people, even without a traumatic anniversary thrown in the mix. I’m estranged or have limited contact with most of my family, and on a day where people are encouraged to thank a god I don’t believe in for all the good things in their lives, I don’t feel like praying to a god who allows horrible things to happen to good people. However, I know it’s important to be thankful, if only to avoid being bitter. So, on this anniversary of trauma, yes, I am thankful to be alive. I am thankful for the seventeen years I’ve been gifted that others didn’t get to have. I am thankful to the universe for the food that is readily available to me, food many others would love to have - even the green beans. I am thankful for people who love and care for others at no benefit to themselves. I am thankful for a quiet, warm house to take refuge in. I am thankful for friends who give me a place to go when I need socialization and support. I am thankful for my therapist and how far I’ve come in the last five years.

It might not be a happy Thanksgiving, but hopefully it’s a peaceful one. May your mashed potatoes be creamy and may there always be enough for seconds.