Boxing Day 2014 will be the 10th anniversary of the biggest natural disaster ever recorded; the Boxing Day Tsunami. Not that I knew it was this when I was running as fast as I could to get away from it.
I was in the first week of a 3-month trip through South East Asia starting with the breathtakingly beautiful Koh Phi Phi, Thailand.
I was sitting in a beachside restaurant gazing out in to the bay when I began to notice that the water was receding further than it usually did, receding to the point that boats anchored out in the bay were tipping to the side as they were no longer floating and fish were flipping around on the sand as the water had left them behind in its hurry to disappear.
Some Thai locals who were working the morning shift came and stood next to me and watched. After a few seconds, the locals turned and ran and I followed, instinctively knowing this was their home so their reaction was the right one.
The thought that I might die flashed in my mind
I ran not knowing what I was running from or where I was going but desperately wanting to get higher; I saw some stairs and aimed for them. I looked over my shoulder and saw a mass of black, churning water moving at incredible speed just metres away from where I had been sitting; the edge of this mass was now at my feet.
I realised I would not make it to the stairs and the thought that I might die flashed in my mind. I ran to the right and aimed for a rocky cliff hurling myself at it with the water surging beneath me.
I knew that many people were dead and that many would be badly hurt as I could already see that the village had been completely destroyed, I still did not know what it was that had happened. I remained on the island for two nights and two days doing what I could to help others.
I could feel blood gushing out of me as I ran
Just over two years later in May 2007, I was in my final year of a Behavioural Science degree, when one day while I was studying in the university library, a fellow student attacked me in the bathroom and stabbed me twice in the back.
My initial response was utter confusion and indignation “How could you do this to me?” I wanted to jump on my attacker and grab the knife out of her hands. Instead I ran down the stairs to the reception area while another student ran ahead of me yelling “someone’s been stabbed, someone’s been stabbed!!” I could feel blood gushing out of me as I ran; I knew I was in big trouble, again.
As I waited for the paramedics, I remember wondering if a person could actually be ok again after experiencing this and the tsunami.
I was in hospital for 5 days with a collapsed lung and some damage to my diaphragm. I remember feeling strangely lucky as I had signed a consent form allowing the surgeons to remove my spleen and a portion of my bowel if necessary, thankfully it was not.
The stabbing was all over the news, university violence was a hot topic at the time due to the recent shootings at Monash. It was an extremely surreal experience seeing myself all over the nightly news and on the front page of the newspaper alongside Carl Williams.
I was so desperate go back to ‘normal’
I remember each of these events clearly; there are no blank spots at all. I was determined to remember them as I realised how incredible they both were, an international disaster of epic proportions and a particularly violent, random crime perpetrated by a young woman on another young woman on a university campus.
I’ve not had a lot of professional support to deal with painful memories. I saw a naturopath after the tsunami as I was having difficulty sleeping; she provided me with some homeopathic treatment and cast an ancient Hawaiian spell on me to dispel any negative energy.
I distinctly remember feeling lighter after this treatment and for a while my sleep pattern improved. I received counseling after I was stabbed; it was not particularly helpful, in hindsight it was too soon.
I was so desperate go back to ‘normal’ that I did not want to focus on it at all.
I had (still have) an amazing network of friends and family who allowed me to talk about how I was feeling and what had happened to me any time I needed to, I took advantage of this and I know it was integral to me recovering.
I was careful to not put pressure on myself to “get over it” and in my opinion there is no such thing as “getting closure.”
Slowly I let go of the old me and got to know the person that I now was as a result of experiencing these events. This was a long and exhausting process and at times I did want to give up thinking things weren’t going to get better.
I still think about both events almost daily but the memories are not always painful.
For a long time I felt like these events defined me, that I didn’t belong anywhere as no one could really understand. But time is an amazing healer and I now know that there are lots of other things that make up who I am.
This week, Insight looks at how our brains process painful memories, and whether talking about them makes them better or worse.
