LY #108 Impact of Reality on Discursive Practice

So what was the impact of The Family Tragedy and The Rape on my life as a teacher?

This is a difficult question to answer.  By the time each event occurred, I was already pretty troubled due to a variety of other childhood experiences.  Thus, it's difficult to point to some of my experiences and attitudes as a teacher and say, "Oh, I am this way because of these two events."

I suppose that I am both softer and harder because of this past trauma.  I have empathy rather than merely sympathy for others who have had experiences of family tragedy and violence.  I understand the compulsion to speak these stories and am not frightened of them.  I can hear pretty much any story without turning away.  On the other hand, I'm also harder because I know that tragedy is everywhere, that it's a normal aspect of human life, and I am not seduced to lower my expectations by stories of victimage.

It's also "useful" to have PTSD and to understand the experience of hypervigilance, especially with so many others in our classrooms experiencing that disorder.  I remember the first time I realized that I wasn't "over" the rape in spite of so many years passing.  It was my first year teaching here at COCC.  My friend Lilli Ann Linford had directed and staged the play Extremities in Hitchcock Auditorium.  The play begins with a rape scene.  As I watched I became light headed and nauseous, putting my head between my knees and gasping for air as quietly as possible.  It was all I could do to stay in my seat. In the 25 years since then, I've gotten much better, though there are still scenes in plays, films and television shows I find difficult to tolerate.

Probably the most obvious impact of having my world exploded twice in that year of February 1971 - February, 1972, is that I came to value safety, stability, and predictability far more than I thought an "artistic" person should.  I am deeply risk averse.  But not about every risk.  Experiences with violence can teach us that discursive failings aren't all that important.   As a Bend police detective said in one of my classes years ago, "I used to be afraid of public speaking until I got into a firefight with a bad guy.  At least when you're giving a speech, no one is shooting at you."

Perspective.  It's a gift of the dark.