Last updated on November 26, 2023
I constantly stumble over the past in may daily life. A sound, an image, or even a smell might trigger a traumatic memory. The memories might be external, things that weren’t personal to me — national or global events that continue to bother me.
I live in a comfortable, safe, Central Texas suburb now. Yet, I don’t feel safe, which is absurd. I should feel great. All is good. What’s wrong with me? The past certainly cannot hurt me, but it’s the images, sounds, and other sensations from the past that haunt me.
We’re only into the first full week of 2021 and I’m feeling traumatized and exhausted.
Welcome to 2021, a year that has already started too much like 2020. Technically, you could argue that the start of this year is worse. The coronavirus epidemic has entered a third wave in the United States. President Donald Trump continues to question the 2020 election results. The economy continues to sputter along.
When 2020 started, Pres. Trump had been impeached. Surely, he was going to learn a lesson. The economy was performing okay after a record-long period of growth. Few people were paying attention to COVID-19.
February is when the Senate voted against the Articles of Impeachment. Things quickly went downhill for the rest of 2020. COVID-19 struck New York City like an invading force or deadly storm, with 24-hour news coverage.
Our daughters’ last day of school was Friday, March 13, 2020. They’re still learning at home.
Along came civil unrest, during the pandemic. Black Lives Matter reminds us that the progress of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement has been undone in too many communities.
And then, there were the primary elections and the general election. So much crammed into one year that 2020 could be its own decade.
Already, 2021 feels overwhelming. We all need a break.
My mind cannot let go of the past when it’s vivid.
Between 1968 and 1972, 130 American airplanes were hijacked. There were at least 2,500 bombings in the United Stated during 1971 and 1972. The Vietnam War dragged on, and then the Fall of Saigon was televised. I still see helicopters being pushed from carrier decks. Oddly enough, the memories are in black and white, like the small televisions on which I probably saw them.
I remember bits of the 1972 Olympic terrorist attacks, the voice of Jim McKay telling us the Israeli team had been targeted. I couldn’t understand what was happening. The Olympics were a much bigger deal back then. Maybe that’s because we were all watching those few television channels.
My family watched the pitiful last White House exit of President Richard Nixon in 1974. The 1970s were awful.
The Rodney King riots shape my perception of current protests. I lived in Los Angeles and did some of my student teaching at a school on Martin Luther King Blvd. The events of 2020 brought back those memories. Watching familiar places in Minneapolis burn, I saw Los Angele from the past.
I still think about the 1986 Challenger disaster. Watching Space X dock with the International Space Station, I see the doomed shuttles. I was sitting in biology class when the department head rushed in to deliver the news. I recall Columbia’s disastrous re-entry in 2003.
For me, September 11, 2001, might as well be last week.
Like most people, I have gaps in my memory. I don’t have a photographic memory. But what I do remember stays with me. Unfortunately, most of what I keep reliving aren’t the good days.
We are stuck with our traumas. Often, we’re stuck with the world’s, too.