I picked up this one phrase from a conversation with a fellow writer – nowadays, many young creators ride the trauma horse. Escalating one’s dark depths and wounds has become trendy. Perhaps you can point fingers at me as well: I cannot escape the inner world of trauma. Neither in life nor in poetry.
I feel the impact of darkness most strongly when everything in my personal life is going smoothly and favourably. I dream of thieves threatening me with a knife, an old Soviet apartment block where several colonies of cockroaches bask in the warmth of the radiator, and of my mother’s dilapidated house with only the armchairs of my childhood left. But the most frightening and frequent dreams are about all sorts of horned devils. I am haunted by them; I start to sweat and grimace. Finally, overcome with horror, I realised that not even neuroleptics could banish these visions.
Often, I simply must solve the devil’s puzzle without fail. Otherwise, unpleasant consequences await or, according to Lithuanian folk tales, if you manage to outsmart the Evil One, you may be rewarded. The demonic trickster seizes our dreams, revels in them, and turns everything upside down. It’s so frightening that I chant prayers, the eternal “Our Father.”
After nights like this, I read the book The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, by the clinical psychologist Donald Kalsched, and try to understand what’s happening to me. The malignant self-protection system encroaches on my life. Kalsched claims:
“What was intended to be a defence against further trauma becomes a major resistance to all unguarded spontaneous expressions of self in the world. The person survives but cannot live creatively. Psychotherapy becomes necessary” (p. 4).
The purpose of self-protection systems is to protect the subject from the repetition of trauma. However, such protection yields opposite results because “the traumatized psyche is self-traumatizing” (p. 5).
When I remember my grandmother’s words, that our family was cursed by the czar and that’s why my great-grandfather was given the surname Brudnys, when I hear a relative’s conviction that his long-standing addiction is caused by the demons within, and when my obsessive-compulsive disorder flares up again – I remember the inner saboteur. According to Kalsched,
“the victim of psychological trauma continually finds himself or herself in life situations where he or she is re-traumatized. As much as he or she wants to change, as hard as he or she tries to improve life or relationships, something more powerful than the ego continually undermines progress and destroys hope. It is as though the persecutory inner world somehow finds its outer mirror in self-defeating ‘re-enactments’ — almost as if the individual were possessed by some diabolical power or pursued by a malignant fate” (p. 5).
For a long time, I thought that the thieves, cockroaches, and devils in my dreams were equivalents of external danger, real counterparts of traumatized subjects… Until one day I heard the following question from my therapist: why do I persecute myself? Then the analysis of “Bluebeard” from Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ book Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype particularly resonated with me. Explaining this tale, the author employs the concept of the inner bandit.
Bluebeard is an internal terror, a hidden complex lurking in the soul. If we let him rule, our joy in life will diminish, and our creativity and passion will fade. The youngest sister is a naive and inexperienced victim: “The youngest sister represents a creative potential within the psyche. A something that is going toward exuberant and fashioning life. But there is a detour as she agrees to become the prize of a vicious man because her instincts to notice and do otherwise are not intact” (p. 37). Symbolically, Bluebeard’s young bride is warned neither by her mother nor her sisters, who all have more experience and have avoided Bluebeard’s traps. Only after experiencing the temptations of the “bloody groom” can she cultivate self-awareness, mature, and resist the inner bandit.
Estés emphasises that not unlocking the door to the secret room for the young woman would mean spiritual death. By unlocking the door, the woman chooses life. Prohibition acts as a stimulant – empty curiosity is replaced by the thirst for knowledge, which is necessary for creativity.
Opening the sealed room’s door, a woman encounters the desolation of her inner life. Estés says: “When women open the doors of their own lives and survey the carnage there in those out-of-the-way places, they most often find they have been allowing summary assassinations of their most crucial dreams, goals, and hope” (p. 41).
The bleeding key – experiences hidden from us by the self-protection system so that the subject does not experience the darkest events of the past once more.
This is not menstruation but the blood of the soul. Only by extracting it from the subconscious, by processing trauma and experiencing all the agony, is it possible to integrate these past events and place them on certain shelves of consciousness. The youngest sister tries to remove the blood and wipe the key but fails.
After the secret door is opened, Bluebeard becomes enraged and decides that the woman must die. But here the youngest sister calls on her brothers for help – the strongest and most aggressive forces of the soul: “The brothers represent the blessing of strength and action. With them, in the end, several things occur, one is that the vast and disabling ability of the predator is neutralized in a woman’s psyche. And second, the blueberry-eyed maiden is replaced by one with eyes awake, and third, a warrior to each side of her if she but calls for them.” (p. 47-48). The fairy tale ends happily for the youngest sister. However, we mourn for the murdered brides and the wonders that the inner bandit mercilessly crushed.
I still haven’t solved the devil’s puzzle and haven’t fully opened the doors to the secret chamber. Recognisable inner figures somewhat soothe me – the beginning is made. I feel that I will not escape from the inner world of trauma for a long time, although I want to write different texts. I believe that someday we will actualise a positive phenomenon instead of trauma – post-traumatic growth. But before that, the doors must be opened and the devil’s puzzle solved.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
LINA BUIVIDAVIČIŪTĖ
Lina Buividavičiūtė was born on May 14, 1986. She is a poet and literary critic. Lina is an author of two poetry books in Lithuanian language.Aside from "Matter", "Masters", and “Proverse poetry prize" contest anthologies, her poetry is published in the following magazines: Drunk Monkeys, Beyond Words, The Dewdrop, The Limit Experience Magazine, Poet's Choice, HOW, Beyond Queer Words, Maudlin House Press, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Versopolis Review.Upcoming publications will appear in New Millennium Writings, Cathexis Northwest Press, Quillkeepers Press, The Stardust Review and Beyond Words Literary Magazine.
TRANSLATOR'S BIO
GABRIELLA ŽIČKIENÉ
Gabriella Žičkienė is a translator and editor born and raised in the United States, and currently living in Lithuania. With over a decade of experience, her work covers a wide range of texts, with a focus on ethnic culture and literature. Passionate about bridging cultural gaps through language, Gabriella brings diverse voices to new audiences through her translations and editorial work.
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