By Hallie J Carl

My feet tingled as we walked the trail. It was narrow with a steep incline to my right and a steep, rocky decline on my left. My brother was much further down the trail, far away and looking small as my mom and I walked together.

We were hiking Loveland Pass in Colorado. My mom stopped and turned to face me. “I am going to let go of your hand for just a minute. Don’t move because you could fall.”

I felt her hand release and immediately my balance shifted. All I could see was how steep the mountain was. My weight propelled me forward. My feet were running without any control. I couldn’t stop. I was going faster and faster down the steep mountain. I screamed loudly. Suddenly, I tripped and tumbled, still with complete forward movement.

My seven year old body was rolling like a rag doll, bumping hard into rocks. Halfway down the mountain I stopped screaming but kept rolling. Finally, I crumpled into a heap just before a sharp drop off to the highway below. It all happened so fast. I went from stable and safe to tumbling out of control and in danger before anyone could bat an eyelash.

Photos (left to right): Me in 1st grade; Loveland Pass, Colorado Me and my siblings at our house in Colorado)

My family lived in Colorado for about a year and a half. We moved there between kindergarten and first grade into a small rental house. My brother and I attended the local elementary school and my sister the local high school.

Our house had what seemed to Little Hallie as a very large back yard with a bit of a hill in it that was good for sledding in the winter and slip and sliding in the summer. There was also a pumpkin patch in the backyard that produced a huge crop just in time for Halloween.

As an adult, when I think back to these times in Colorado, they seem dream like. A little blurry around the edges. It wasn’t the best time for my family. Grieving the loss of my mom’s father from complications during open heart surgery and my dad’s sister to cancer, a dark cloud hung over us as we moved from Nebraska to Colorado looking for a fresh start and new beginnings. Instead, there was more darkness and trial.

Now, as I ponder my life, the last season has been harder than any other. The word that I keep coming back to is disembodied. I have felt like I am in a bad dream that I will wake up from and life will resume normally. But this dream keeps on going, and I don’t wake up from it, so I have begrudgingly accepted that it is my reality (but completely willing to hope that I am experiencing the movie Inception in real life).

As I fell down that mountain, I felt disembodied. In fact, when I think back and remember it, I don’t see it from my own place in the story. Rather, I am a person observing, watching a lifeless, skinny, blonde headed girl get tossed from rock to rock. Maybe this is nothing, or maybe is my mind and body’s way of protecting me from the trauma of that moment.

I wonder if I will look back on my current season the same way. Not though my own eyes, but as an observer. That my mind will protect me from the pain, confusion and the complete feeling of being misunderstood by making me a mere spectator, rather than an active participant. I don’t know. Somehow that seems like it would hurt less.

I lost consciousness on that fall at Loveland Pass. That’s when I stopped screaming. That’s when my mom thought I had died.

My eyes fluttered open to my brother’s face over mine. His large blue eyes were furrowed with worry. He was looking my body over for injuries. My mom and our other hiking companions were still working their way down the mountain to us. I had no idea how my brother had gotten to me so fast. Once our whole party was reunited, they seemed amazed that I wasn’t dead. They looked at me cautiously, carefully. Was there an internal injury they couldn’t see? How was it possible nothing was broken? I sat up slowly, feeling scared and shaken but not hurting. I had a few odd scrapes, but seemed to be mostly unscathed.

To be clear, this is not the kind of fall that one has and doesn’t end up in the emergency room or dead. It was bad. But here I was, just fine on the outside, but very scared and confused on the inside. What had happened? How did I get here? My brother was so far away from me a moment ago and now he is right in front of my face. It is unsettling to find yourself in a totally different situation from the one that you were just in.

As I grew up, that moment at Loveland Pass would be a story that would be told at family gatherings or a good choice for the game “two truths and a lie” at a party. But in this season when I am evaluating my life, its current circumstances and the way that my mind and body is handling the trial, that moment on the mountain stands out to me.

In my adult life, I never fully understood trauma. Then I experienced it. And to be honest, I still don’t fully understand it now. But I sure know more about it than ever before. I know the feeling of electricity in my body as it courses fiercely up and down by my arms and legs, jolts up to my face, leaving my cheeks feeling like they are being shocked. My eyes twitching. My hands shaking. I know what it is to stand in Target, looking at the new Ulta section (a dangerous place to stand for the pocketbook), and see everything begin to swirl and move (which I now know is disassociation). I know the deep heaviness that accompanies the depression. How it leaves my brain thick and unable to remember simple words that I try to search for as I say something. I know how one simple conversation can leave you depleted and exhausted. I also know the feeling of uncertainty that creeps in unseen until you start wondering about who you are, what your future is, all while standing on sand that feels like it sinks below your feet. I know how places, pictures and even smells can bring the trauma right back up again, exploding in your body while you fight to get your grip so you feel safe again.

Perhaps that is why I have thought of Loveland Pass more often lately. Watching myself as a ragdoll being tossed from one sharp rock to the next only to wake up and find myself unscathed on the outside but confused and scared on the inside, parallels my recent experiences so much. You can’t tell on the outside what I am feeling, but if you could look inside you would understand.

Each day, I choose to start the hard work of healing and wholeness again. Some days I feel like I step backwards, and some days I feel like I leap forwards, but most days, I stay right where I am. You can’t rush healing, you can’t push aside trauma. You can’t just “fix it” and make it better. It is ok to not be ok.