I’ve written a lot about trauma, especially the trauma that accompanies a premature birth. I think a lot of the post secondary trauma I’ve experienced in the girls’ lifetime is related to their birth; more so than the NICU stay. Maybe it was the suddenness of the delivery versus the time I had to adjust to the NICU life, or maybe it was the feeling of loneliness involved with the delivery, the feeling of being stuck in a tunnel and just having to wait and see when and where you would exit.

For the last two and a half years, I’ve had a hernia. Not really a super big deal, it just kind of became like my annoying pet that would sometimes get obnoxious before simmering down again. I didn’t think too much of it until it was my time for surgery. Then, it wasn’t just routine day surgery, but more of a return to the same hospital, the same hallways, the same loneliness that accompanied the girls’ delivery, and truth be told, it was those things that made me anxious, that filled me with a coldness and a dread that was so hard to explain to others. The responses of oh but it’s routine and you’ll be fine and won’t it be nice to have it dealt with made me feel more anxious, and slightly crazy. Of course it’s routine. Of course I’ll be fine. Of course it’ll be nice to get rid of that nagging pet. But you’re speaking logic to a woman whose heart is trapped in a moment three and a half years ago and who can’t catch a breath.

The morning of the surgery I went alone to the hospital, checked in and changed into my oh so fashionable gown. I was asked at least seven times who was there with me. The nurses couldn’t understand how I could be alone, their looks of pity almost rendering me to tears. The seconds dragged and then I was being wheeled through the hospital, peeking out over my feet, just like when I was moved to the operating room to birth the girls. The porter talking to me and me tying to catch my breath to answer him, to not be rude. And then after a years of this annoying little pest, it was as if time zoomed forward and I was in an operating room again. The coldness the same as last time, chilling to the bone. Laying on the table, then the arm rest, the same as my c section. I was given oxygen except it felt like I was suffocating, the ceiling and walls closing in on me, a tear streaming down my left cheek as I tried to remember to breathe, a reflex touch to my belly, except, no that isn’t now, that was then, and instead of waiting to see two tiny dark haired girls appear above me on a screen, my eyes fixed on the surgical lights. Then, nothing.

That moment, the moment when the walls were closing in on me, the ceiling feeling inches away, was the loneliest I have ever felt. With no hand to hold or comforting voice and a room full of people unaware of how major this was-I felt utterly alone, not just physically, but in my soul. I awoke, dizzy, feeling that there should be a face I would see, but instead just the time blazing at me in red.

I’m not sure that the physical healing has been as hard as the emotional. I have wallowed this week in that sadness, and forgot about my suit of armour, my warrior queen status. How easy I find it is to forget that I walk through life every day with a god damn crown on. How we have survived as a family through the ugliest and darkest of days because I’m leading us forward. How sometimes wearing that crown is lonely and the weight is hard to manage, yet I still remain the queen; a queen with all her faults. And so, as a reminder to always put on my crown and armour, I got the simplest of tattoos in a place I will always see, a place to always remember my warrior queen status.