searching for trauma to justify our pain

In the dream I have cancer. I’m laying in a hospital room, an extra blanket like an anvil on my feet, anchoring me to the bed while my head floats away. Beeping lights and a blinking heart rate monitor disturb the peace with their rhythms.

I turn to find my grandpa sitting in the only chair hospital rooms have for visitors. I’ll need more seats. Plenty more loved ones are supposed to check in on me. I’m not surprised grandpa’s here, despite his death years ago — inconvenient constraints of reality don’t matter in dreams.

He’s reading me a bedtime story from when I was a kid. All the fairy tales I liked growing up had an obvious antagonist. They had clear enemies to defeat and villains to vanquish, whether it was a wicked stepmother grounding Cinderella or gravity grounding Humpty.

The villain of this tale is a dragon, soon to be vanquished by the forces of good and justice. A white blood cell is riding in to save the day. The story is a safe retreat into childhood, where bad guys announced themselves and good guys always rose to the challenge.

But my grandpa isn’t telling the story right. He’s going off track. The dragon starts winning. Grandpa is nearly unrecognizable now, sitting in the hospital chair all wrapped in wires connected to his very own blinking machines thrumming to keep him alive. I don’t remember him like this because I was kept away when he got this bad.

He says the dragon has progressed to stage 4, spreading past his stomach into other organs. Any minute now.

I don’t understand, I say. He asks to say hi to the family for him. They should be here any minute, I say. He closes the book. He has the ending all wrong, I say. But he’s gone.

The whiteboard across from me reads out family medical history. [Cancer: Grandfather - adenocarcinoma] I wasn’t told at the time how my grandpa died, and unhelpfully, the fairy tales hadn’t shown how to overcome unseen villains. The conflicts were external — a hero’s body and mind would never turn against him. But simple storybook evils wear out as adulthood batters its way in. Maybe that’s why I’m dreaming of cancer again — it provides a more realistic, mature threat than dragons.

I can’t actually remember how it felt when I was told they found the source of my damage. I should remember that, I think: I’ve never wanted to be hurt, never wanted to be sick and dying. I don’t want to be here. Then I remember the years of things going wrong, of little injuries self-inflicted or otherwise. Growing older alchemizes youth into caution, certainty into scars, dragons into illness.

And this illness is paired with a treatment. The doctor recommended poisoning myself to kill off the danger within, that left alone would rob me of living. Chemotherapy rends my body while pristine white sheets cover up what unpleasantness they can. Toxins thin me out and remove traces of well-being, visualizing the hidden battle inside. It’s horrible laying there, nearly crushed in the dragon’s maw. At least visitors bring the grim comfort of noticing my misery.

I’ve tried to keep the hurt to myself over the years, hiding it away where only I can see — a salve of cool darkness. Yet my only achievement was that others hadn’t noticed. The pain was exacerbated by not having proof. Maybe that’s why my brain is taking revenge through a cancer dream — an overt malady that’s left me crumpled in a hospital bed. There’s no trouble justifying your pain when it’s on display during hospital visiting hours.

My doctor walks in with an update for me, but it’s my mom in the white lab coat. She brought coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other, handing me the coffee and grabbing my wrist for inspection. She says the nurse reported scars on my arm when he took my blood, but she can’t see any marks now. There must’ve been a mistake. She scans the clipboard and asks about my mental health.

I tell her I’ve never wanted to cut myself, but I do understand one reason why people do it. Emotions are fickle tricksters — one second they’re there, and the next, worse still. When we’re happy we laugh, when we’re sad we cry, when we’re embarrassed we get red. But it’s less clear how we hurt. So we find a ritual to provide evidence — the search for trauma to justify our pain. My mom used to kiss away a scrape on my knee and make it better. So now if there’s a scrape on my arm she could love that away too.

Maybe that’s why people do it, I tell her. To prove their suffering is real. To materialize their pain. First for themselves, then letting other people notice. To drag out what’s inside and splay it to the universe. An impulse that we can’t heal what we can’t see. Then maybe people will take the suffering seriously. Now at least there’s proof, symptoms to form a diagnosis.

At least, that’s why I’d do it, I tell my mom. Honesty in a dream is so easily non-committal, laying there in an unmarred body — apart from the cancer.

My coffee’s empty. I don’t know how, since I was talking to my mom the entire time. She checks off a box on the page. [Mental health: passable] She says a nurse will be in to get my heart rate later. And she’s gone. I think she was upset, but I can’t see past the door. Maybe it wasn’t fair to say all that.

A new guest sits in my hospital chair, exactly where my grandpa was. Except now it’s James Baldwin, the 20th century writer and another impossible visitor. He’s in a chastising mood. He says, it wasn’t fair to say all that.

I use James’ writing to defend myself. I’m well equipped with quotes of his brilliance to pester naysayers and friends alike. He wrote that we must be corralled into using our pain and hurt to connect us with others and their pain. He wrote by doing that, we can be released from our own torments. He wrote that it works in reverse too, by sharing our pain we can hopefully help others suffer less. I tell him that’s all I was trying to do — follow his advice.

It might not always work that way, he says. The laws of physics don’t govern human suffering. Pain isn’t matter, it can be both created and destroyed. When I share my pain with another, there’s no guarantee my load will be lightened. Or even if I do find relief, I might burden them with more than I unloaded. They’re left to carry whatever knowledge I dump at their feet. That only leaves the world hurting more. Such is the folly of a naive heart, he warns.

I don’t have the chance to respond before the chair vanishes, and James with it. I needed that. I’m expecting more visitors.

A nurse walks in. It’s Mr. Fir, my old elementary school principal. He’s there to check for my heartbeat like the doctor said. He pulls out a stethoscope and places the cold end on my shoulder over the hospital gown.

That’s not where my heart is, I say. He says it should be if I listened to him. I remember in 4th grade I cried in his office after being scolded about some delinquent behavior. Mr. Fir told me I wear my heart on my sleeve, and he hoped I never lost that quality. But he also warned me — it’s tough to live when my heart is splayed out for everyone to see.

I try to explain before he hears. I had to. He doesn’t understand what it’s been like. This is no bedtime story. In 4th grade it was easy enough. I was a child too young to see my grandpa was sick. But I’m an adult now, injured through the years. He hasn’t seen the dragons I faced, the battles I’ve lost. No white knights have ridden in to save me, and my white blood cell count is dangerously low. A sleeve is hardly a safe spot to keep such a vulnerable piece of myself. I’m too fragile.

The cold pressure disappears and Mr. Fir is disappointed — no heartbeat.

I’ve never died in a dream and not woken up.

— Regards, a mending cicatrix