Divine Intervention at the River

Though the story is fiction, it addresses topics related to abuse, trauma, alcoholism, and other life challenges. The content may be triggering for some readers. The idea of the story is to shed light on the topic with care and respect. The information is not intended as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you or someone you know is affected by similar issues, please seek support from a trusted professional or helpline.

She could hear her alarm sounding but, the feel of the body as if it were being held firmly, is a good feeling, even if covered with the most basic of worn sheets and hand-me-down blankets. Nap time was over, she was single, alcoholic, and ready for a drink. Her roommate wasn’t around and the new rental house was feeling agonizingly lonely. in the day the house was bright and cheery, the kitchen walls were a buttercream yellow, and the house was big enough for a family, but it was nighttime and after dark. For the week the nine to five workday was over, and the weekend had arrived although personally, she’d rather be busy with work. Quiet, that’s all she heard, and then she had a thought of turning on the radio, and another thought of grabbing a beer from the refrigerator and she chose to act on both of those thoughts; then she picked up her cell phone to call her roommate (not her sponsor), but there was no answer. Heading into the weekend since her divorce, she used to do what was expected of her, now she did exactly as her thoughts suggested.

After the beer she made herself a drink, a vodka on the rocks with an added splash of cranberry and orange juice. The house began to feel agonizingly lonely and boring. She felt like dancing but not alone, so she slipped out of her khakis and slid into her too cute, don’t gain another pound, pair of “don’t you want me” blue jeans. Her ex-husband knew her well, and the habit of drinking alcohol developed from when she was only fifteen years old, a teenager. Two beers and she’s feeling relaxed, her mind was trained to ignore her most basic of needs for those of her “ready to go?” husband. She grabbed her “I’m too sexy for my purse”, mauvest of rose-pink purse, and to see a man carry it for her just brought her sheer delight. Out the door she went, with a smile on her face, a song in her heart and her American Spirit Organic cigarettes in her hand.

Even when she wasn’t alone it would happen: the night terrors. A cascade of hormones, cortisol; increasing blood sugar, enhancing brain glucose, her thoughts beginning to race, a stampede of intrusive memories, the traumatic criminal incident there like it just happened. She’s not an alcoholic, but her body is. Her body and mind developed the habit of using the alcohol to help to stop the racing thoughts, and to keep the intrusive memories at bay.

When her emotions took over, she drove like batman. She wasn’t even twenty years’ old yet, but she was angry. She was driving to get away from the anger she felt, as if a person could outrun their own anger. It had helped at other times in the past: to turn up the volume on the car radio, roll the windows down, and then she could just feel the wind in her hair and blowing against her skin and as her clothes would move about as they flowed freely with the wind; she longed for that type of freedom. If she could only be free from her anger, from her past, from her anxiety, from her own self-doubt and disbelief. The man wasn’t her husband anymore; nor did he deserve to be, an older woman had taken him, seemingly before the divorce was even final. It was probably for the best.

The river seemed calming and that’s where desire drove her to that night; the car her only friend, it seemed to take her where she wanted but only so far. She sat there at the boat ramp and listened to the river as it drifted past her. Where was it going? It had to be better than going back to the normalcies of her life. What would it be like just to become part of the river? The thoughts were too sad to entertain, so she turned up the volume on the radio and lit another American Spirit cigarette. Hip hop came to be her choice of musical style that night as it had no connection as to what she was feeling. It was too painful.

She sat alone that night at the river, memories were playing in her mind like clips of an old movie, her mind racing as if searching for a particular scene. She’d been to talk to a psychiatrist about medication for something she had recently read and discovered on her self-healing journey, “hyperarousal”. The doctor responded “that’s something you need to talk to your gynecologist about.” As she continued to try to explain to the doctor what she had recently learned about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), the doctor obviously wasn’t listening.

When a person experiences a threat to their survival, a harmful event, or an attack: the autonomic nervous system will produce any number of hormonal reactions in the body in response. The fight-or-flight or the fight-flight-or-freeze responses, also known as hyperarousal or acute stress response are the more common said responses associated with PTSD. During such said responses, adrenaline is released in reaction to the threat to increase the heart rate and respiration, causing muscles to tense- providing a surge of energy that prepares the person for action, the thinking brain then shuts down enabling the person a speedier response. Then there are also the faint and freeze responses, not to mention hypoarousal. When it is not safe for a person experiencing a threat to their survival, to fight or flee, other neurochemicals slow the heart rate and respiration of the person, leading to physical collapse, exhaustion, weakness, shaking, and or trembling, also nausea and or diarrhea, and the survival responses of freezing, total submission, or playing dead actually happen without giving it a thought.

As she sat there at the boat ramp by the river watching it drift past, I kissed her cheek ever so gently, although I could no longer be with her and my time on earth had past, God allowed me time with my daughter that night by the river. I wished that she had not felt so ashamed, mistakes sometimes happen, feeling that way was not going to solve anything. The river took her feeling of shame and sorrow as I sat there with her that night as a mother should. She sat thinking about everything she had learned and about her diagnosis, and she began to pray and thank God, and I could hear her prayer: the knowledge and all the wisdom shown to her were gifts to her survival. She now knew in order to rise above the discrimination of mental illness she would need to study and educate herself about her diagnosis-- she would need to educate herself about the miraculous design of her body: the autonomic nervous system, how the brain processes external stimuli, and how the body’s metabolism is connected.