AN INJECTION TRAUMA.

Okay, that title is a little dramatic, lol.

Long story short, I have been my sister’s personal nurse for a while, and one of my job descriptions is administering her medications. Something I had been doing flawlessly, until one day, I got distracted and mistakenly broke an injection bottle wrongly, spilling its entire content.

It was awful.

It was her last available dose, at an ungodly hour when there was no way to replace it, and she needed it. I felt so bad ehn, i was genuinely pained. I had never made such a mistake before, and apparently, it was an expensive one.

Anyways, after that day, something strange happened, I became unable to break injection bottles. It sounds funny, but I genuinely couldn’t do it. I would pick up a bottle to open it, and suddenly, my heart would start racing. My mind would immediately take me back to that moment when I spilled the medication everywhere. I could remember the mistake so vividly that I had already convinced myself, “I can’t do this.”

And then today happened.

My sister handed me an injection bottle to open. Before I could even collect it properly, I had already started with my usual, “You know I can’t do this.”

And she said, “Try. I have spares.” So I tried and guess what?

I did it.

Not once,not twice, four times in a row.

I was so proud of myself, only to find out later that she didn’t actually have any spares. She had just said that because she wanted me to get over my phobia.

But honestly, beyond the comedy of the situation, that experience taught me something about trauma.

Sometimes, trauma is not just the event itself. Sometimes, it is the conclusion we draw from the event.

One mistake happened, and my brain quietly turned it into a rule: You cannot do this.

And because I believed that conclusion, my body responded accordingly. My heart raced, i became afraid, I avoided the very thing I had previously done effortlessly.

But today reminded me that one bad experience does not have to become a permanent definition of what I am capable of.

Sometimes, you have to try again.

Sometimes, you need someone to remind you that you are capable of trying again. And sometimes, you just need someone to lie to you about having spare injection bottles. 

Dear reader, maybe there is something you stopped doing because of one bad experience. Maybe you failed once, got rejected once, embarrassed yourself once, trusted the wrong person once, and somewhere along the line, you turned that experience into an identity.

"I can't" "I’m not good at this" "It will happen again"

Maybe it is time to question that conclusion.

@favvy_Okwans🖤.