After several attempts at processing the trauma from the combination of the two incidents of bullying on the bus, I might be experiencing the start of an opening. First, the word "bullying" came to me from reading a New York Times report on the high incidence (c 45%) of bullying in the workplace in the U.S. so now I had a word, a label to pin on the behavior of the people that seems more accurate than harassment. I also signed up for a writing workshop series for six Saturdays at the local Environmental Education center. People there mostly wanted to talk rather than write but one person suggested I write something about the incident from the perspectives of the different people involved. That appealed to me at first. I had focused on the idea of transforming the incident into a short story. But I still seemed stuck, unable to write. Yesterday, I went to the first of another writing workshop of four Saturdays, with a focus on memoir writing, run by a local poet and creative writing journal founder. I knew I would get more professional guidance there. He asked us to think about the place in our body and the place outside the body where the memory of the event lies. I wrote and revised repeatedly in the short 20 minutes. He remarked that he knows I write poetry and what I wrote seemed clinical. . . something like that. Then it hit me. The place in the body is my throat, being unable to scream. the place outside the body is a vehicle whether it be the bus or my car from long ago when it's possible I was caught in a riot. Then I came home and worked on the drawing above, the first in many months of not being able to draw, in fact since the bus bullying. Poetry seems the more proper medium here to express the linkages between recent and long buried trauma.
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