How I Integrated My Trauma
and why knights should tame dragons
The little boy stepped onto the boat with one foot while he left the other foot on the muddy bank. While the adults were distracted, the boat started to move away from the shore. A sense of panic developed in the boy as the accident slowly unfolded.
Little kids don’t have strong adductor muscles, apparently, nor the ability to achieve a Jean Claude Van Damme style split. A sense of hopelessness and impending failure gave way to a sudden immersion in chilly, dark-green water and a moment of respectful silence to allow the shafts of green-tinged sunlight from above to sear themselves into his young memory, along with the verdant, fishy taste of decay.
After pulling him from the water, the boat’s owner took the boy away from the group, into a semi-private space created by the branches of a willow tree. As the shafts of sunlight again partially illuminated the scene, the captain punished him for his transgression.
I don’t even remember what he did to me. Did he spank me? Did he yell at me? I don’t fully remember, but I do know he did something that didn’t feel good, something that made that little boy a bit less trusting of adults; something that made him feel secretly angry and resentful.
