A bit on edge

I cringed as the motorcycle sped by us on the crowded street. The thought that went through my mind was, “If he crashes, I hope he does it out of sight where I don't have to get involved.”

That is one of the most foreign thoughts that could have entered my head. I've spent much of my life seeking incidents I could respond to and drawing up contingency plans in my mind for every possible situation.

I'm well aware of “secondary trauma”, but felt that I was unlikely to experience it. Though I'm an empathetic person, I have a lot of control over how much empathy I feel, and can move forward or back off depending on the situation. I'd need to step back every day to recharge, but that allowed me to dive back in when needed.

Or so I thought. The last three years has brought a stream of events that have stayed with me more than most, that have stuck in my heart and made me contemplate my own tinyness. There have been dozens of such incidents, including at least 15 deaths that I've been physically close to now since I moved here, but a few incidents in particular have adhered to my soul.

The drunk man who fell off the rickshaw and was knocked unconscious at the railway station, who I helped to revive and then helped get to a hospital.

My friend's father dying in my arms as I tried to save him in the home we shared.

My friend's uncle who I donated blood to in an emergency as he fought a critical case of dengue fever, seeing him recover from that trauma only to die of possibly related issues two months later.

The baby that died thirty minutes after Rose helped to deliver her.

The man in the motorcycle accident who I carried unconscious to the hospital, who lived.

The woman we passed on the way home from Nepal who had just died in a motorcycle accident.

The man who fell off the cliff in Thailand, for whom I was the attempted first responder and was unable to reach and save.

The accident between the ambulance and the truck in Bangladesh, for which I did not know whether to do something.

The man who got knocked unconscious on the road in Cambodia, for whom I did not know whether to do something

The last three in particular, which all happened during our recent trip out of the country, have occupied my mind during the last month. I'm a person who rushes into situations, tries to do what I can. And now I'm hesitant. The fact that they were all in countries that were somewhat foreign to me and which my language was limited and my knowledge of local resources nil, was a factor.  The fact that other people were already helping in the last two scenarios was also a factor.  But the fact that I wasn't sure what to do still hit me hard.  Sometimes I don't know if I can really help, and I'm afraid to be useless and see someone die yet again.

When I had that thought as the motorcycle passed, I realized that these traumatic situations were seriously affecting me. And I need to be careful, for the good of myself and my family and my neighbors, because I could be hurtful to my community if I'm not in a healthy place myself. I'm going to continue to work on processing what I've been through and what I've seen, how I've responded and how I can respond next time.

But I know that one option I don't have is to leave and get away from the trauma. Because living here has shown me that this trauma is here, whether I observe it or not. And if nothing else, my recent trips showed me that this same pain, these same early deaths and tragic ends, are happening all over on this continent, and certainly several others besides. I can work on forgiving myself and giving myself grace and living with the occasional guilt of not being able to respond some of the time, but I will be at a loss if I put myself in a situation where I won't even be here anymore and therefore won't be able to respond any of the time. And so here I stand, remaining in the gap, praying that as the next situation comes, and it will, that I won't be responding alone because there will be others around who have made the same choice.