The Flap of a Wing
On the invisible aftermath of trauma, the loss of a familiar self, and learning to make space for who we are becoming.
10/21/20264 min read
Almost two months ago, I had emergency surgery.
The surgery itself was something doctors do routinely. But it wasn’t diagnosed easily or on time, and because of a few other health parameters, things became more complicated and risky.
We have all heard of the butterfly effect. A flap of wings here can, theoretically, set off a chain of events that becomes a tornado somewhere else.
But have you ever wondered what that means for one person? What does it mean for you and me? For me, the flap of wings wasn’t one moment.
It was years of stress, and years of ignoring the pain my body kept telling me about.
Small things.
Easy to dismiss.
Easy to postpone.
The emergency was the tornado everyone could see. What it left inside me is one no one could see. Not even me. I can only feel its effect.
I am recovering now. Physically, I am much better. But perhaps that is only one kind of recovery.
Every day, something small happens.
A conversation we ignore.
A feeling we push aside.
A compromise we make.
A boundary we don’t hold.
Something we tell ourselves we will deal with later.
We let it go because it doesn’t seem big enough to matter. But perhaps that is the extra flap of wings—the one that becomes something much bigger somewhere down the road. I have manuals, medicines, precautions and instructions to recover from what happened to my body.
But there is no manual for what it did to me inside. Because it changed me. Those years had been changing me too.
Not always for the better. But I was stubborn. I was a fighter.
I didn’t give up easily, not on myself, not on my choices, not on the person I thought I was.
Maybe that stubbornness was holding on to the last little bit of who I had always been. And then the emergency happened.
While I lay unconscious, weak, in pain and wondering whether I would ever go home, something inside me shifted.
The last bit of fight became tired. And changes I had resisted for years no longer needed my permission.
I used to love driving. Now I sit behind the wheel and my legs shiver. My hands ache, as if I’m not holding a steering wheel but 100 kilos of weight. My heart pounds. I sweat with the AC on.
My mind has no explanation for it. My body seems to have found one. And it isn’t only driving.
Everything I used to do without thinking now gets the same response. Everyone around me expects me to take some time, recover and eventually become my old self again.
They meet me and say, “You look a little off.”
They don’t know how much energy it takes to look almost okay. They don’t see the effort behind doing things that still come naturally to me. They don’t see that sometimes I don’t like those things anymore.
And sometimes, even the thought of them scares me to the core. I dread things I once looked forward to. I am constantly scared of something I cannot even name.
And yet, I am changing. I am grateful, truly, to everyone who carried me through this.
But somewhere in all of this, I keep asking:
What happened to my passions?
My ambitions?
My likes?
My hobbies?
My strengths?
Who am I now? Should I try to go back to who I was? Or accept who I am becoming?
And the bigger question:
How?
How do you live as this new version of yourself when you don’t even know who she is yet?
This wasn’t hidden.
It was a trauma that happened in plain sight, while I lay fragile in a hospital bed wondering if I would ever go home.
Maybe that sounds dramatic. But it is true. I had that thought.
And so did the people who loved me. They may never say it, but I could see the fear in their eyes.
A lot has changed. And a lot is still changing.
I don’t know exactly how.
I don’t know where it will take me.
And for once, perhaps I don’t need to know.
Maybe I don’t have to rush to become my old self again.
Maybe I don’t have to understand the new me either.
Maybe, for now, I just need to give her some space.
To breathe. To feel. To be confused. To be afraid. To discover what is still there.
And what is no longer there. Maybe the flap of wings wasn’t meant to tell me who I should become. Maybe it simply gave me a reason to stop long enough to find out.
So I am giving myself time. I am giving myself space. I am letting myself settle into whatever this is becoming, even if everyone around me is waiting for the old me to return.
One day at a time.
And if you are going through your own invisible tornado, perhaps you don’t have to have all the answers either.
Be gentle with yourself.
You may not know what changed.
You may not know why.
You may not even recognise the person you are becoming.
That’s okay. And if the fear doesn’t ease with time, being gentle with yourself can also mean asking for help. That isn’t weakness. It is part of healing.
Sometimes the first step isn’t finding yourself again.
Sometimes it is simply making enough space to meet yourself where you are.