This post contains graphic information that may be triggering to survivors of abuse.
Yesterday, I taught a virtual trauma-informed yoga class for a local college as part of their sexual assault awareness month programming. 45 minutes into the class, a man entered the meeting, masturbated for a few minutes, and then disappeared.
The mind is not linear. It does not follow a middle school language arts plot diagram. There is no beginning, middle, or end. No rising action nor denouement. People talk about out of body experiences, but it’s rare for someone to get to see, as I did, their own reactions to trauma up-close, minute-by-minute, recorded for replay out there in the ether.
Here’s what happened: I’m teaching the final seated forward fold of class. Feet together, knees apart. On this video platform, my screen is spotlighted. None of the other participants’, including the school’s counselor, is shared. I look up to see a chat alert flickering on my screen. Sometimes people leave class early and offer a thanks before their exit. I didn’t think much of it. Another one comes and then another. I get up from the floor and open the chat, squinting to read. Message from student: “a man was masturbating in here!”
Sharp gasp. Hand over mouth. Hand to chest. Hard swallow of heart from throat. I see myself shake my head for a moment in disgusted disbelief, then rub my temples as I walk back to my mat and sit down. I watch myself stare blankly for a few seconds, a yawning chasm of time in retrospect. And then, as if a switch flipped, I see myself go back to teaching the class as if nothing had happened. (O, Arjuna! Granted the luxury of spiritual reflection before going into battle!) I know why soldiers perform drills. In unspeakable moments, mind splits from body. Don’t think. Just do. It’s your duty. Perform.
I’m reminded of the butler in Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. Because his profession requires complete unflappability, he has to suppress his own feelings. The ultimate illustration in the book of imperturbable service, even in the face of existential danger, is the story of a butler who encounters a tiger in the dining room while the master of the house is entertaining guests in the drawing room. After discreetly shooting the tiger, removing its carcass, and cleaning up the mess, he returns to calmly inform the guests that "dinner will be served at the usual time.” He conveys with pride that there are “no discernible traces” of the event.
At this moment, there is a tiger in the dining room. The man is now gone, but I have no idea how many people saw, so I guide them out of the fold and into savasana. Another message pops up. This time from the counselor: “did you see anything?” No. I stay at the screen and helplessly click one icon after the next: participants, security, chat. At the time, I couldn’t see a thing. My brain could not process anything in my visual field. Watching afterwards, I see myself blinking wildly, all the while reciting a relaxation script. Had I heard only audio, there would have been no beat missed. It was terrifying.
I watch myself place my hand on my heart and breathe, self-soothing. I reopen my eyes, and I see the realization set in that in the room it is just me, the counselor, and the student who messaged. Why did no one unmute and tell me to stop the class? Why were they just watching me trapped in a charade of suffering? Everyone had frozen. I drop pretense and cautiously suggest that we discuss what just happened. The woman does not speak but agrees to communicate through email. I apologize by default though I did nothing wrong and then watch myself end the meeting.
My initial reaction was anger. Righteous indignation. How dare someone do something like this to these women who came to my class seeking a safe space! It was only after the student emailed me a screenshot that she had taken, that I began to realize that I was one of the women. I see the photo. It’s me. Unaware, vulnerable, folding over an outstretched leg, surrounded by a void of black boxes, faceless names. And him. I feel his gaze on me. It’s as if he’s there, in my home, an invasion. I then remembered a detail in the student’s initial message that sounded odd to me at the time. She said, “I thought this class was supposed to be for sexual assault awareness?!?” As if there were any other type of class where it would be appropriate for a man to whip out his dick. This was not a college prank. The targeting of this class was intentional, pathological. Seeing one too many Criminal Minds episodes, I wondered, is this the behavior of someone who’s escalating, or has this predator already harmed women, now adapting to the new restraints of social distancing? Either thought is sickening. Coronavirus is dangerous, but what’s equally as dangerous is the pandemic of abuse and degradation suffered by women. The student signed off her email to me saying, “There is NO justice.” I hear you, sister. Me, too.
Once the initial shock wore off after hours of replaying in my mind and on my computer screen what had happened, debating whether I was making too big of a deal out of this, wondering why I was reacting so viscerally to this, practicing tools of self-regulation but still precariously close to panic, I realized what I needed to do. I had to write. I had to give it voice. Get it out of me. Get it off of me. The power of storytelling is that the mind can make sense of the senseless. There are many stories of trauma. This one, however messy, is my own.
Today I’m looking into the same screen to type this as was the site of yesterday’s violation. In this new world, how will police detect the digital traces of trauma? The zeros and ones, a few keystrokes, the log out, the shut down, the restart.