The Bridge Over Troubled Water

A young woman is raped and silenced forever

engrained into 8-year-old me, clinging to life by a tether.

Shocking announcement, upheaval in the city.

Her face on the news, she was young and pretty

Where did she go? Who did she see?

No one knows, except for me.

The steel bridge stood tall and proud like a sentinel watching the murky fast-flowing river below. I watched the water rush under it. My stomach was in knots as we walked towards the bridge.

I stared at the forceful, rapid surface movements. Its torrents surging over stones and anything in its path. Reeds lay flat and limp, swirling in the brown current.

The closer we got, the more frightened and tense I felt. I didn’t want to cross that bridge because it was too close to “that place”. I knew that Mother would force me to cross, no matter how many times I whined, yelled and cried to go the long way to the city.

I sucked in a deep breath knowing the bridge drew nearer with every reluctant footstep.

"Why do we have to cross here and not further up near downtown?" I whined.

Mother hated when I whined.

"It's a shortcut Lizzy, you know it's the way we always go." She took my hand in hers as if I was a flight risk and would bail on her to catch the train.

The thought had crossed my mind.

My heart was pounding inside my chest, drowning out the traffic around me.

I don't want to be here!

The familiar panic started setting in, as my vision blurred with the sound of the traffic. We stopped at the crossing and waited for the cars to stop. We crossed the street and Mother’s grip on my little hand tightened further. She almost dragged me to the bridge.

As soon as we got to the first big wooden floor plank, I froze and looked down at my little white canvas shoes with pink flowers on them. My focus shifted to just in front of them; into the gap between the dark wooden planks at the swirling brown water deep below.

My eyes scaled the surface. Looking.

She wasn’t swimming down there, but I figured she could be further up. It had been a week. Wouldn't she be tired of swimming by now? My eight-year-old brain reasoned.

The newspapers had her face plastered on the front pages pleading for information of her whereabouts. I thought it a strange question for an adult who was swimming in the river.

I started questioning myself. Was she really swimming... Down there?

My gaze looked up and across the bridge. The wooden planks lying horizontally in front of me created a path across the wild river.

Mother was shouting at me.

I tuned her out. I needed a minute.

I trembled and bit my front lip. I didn't want to end up in the river like the woman. I couldn't swim. There was no way that I could float in that brown yuck for over a week.

The water's gurgling current freaked me out.

I took a tentative step forward as the abusive words rained on me in torrents of threats.

"Lizzy, I swear to you, if you don't fXXXing move it, I will leave you here to rot!"

I tuned her out, and kept a steady gaze at the swirling river below through every slit in between the wooden floor.

Dark wooden plank.

Gap

The current was surging below my feet in a menacing fizz.

Dark plank

Gap.

Every step was agony.

I knew she was down there, in that murky water. I couldn’t help her. I didn’t know how to swim yet.

Mother came up to me and tried to drag me away, but the fear made me stiffen like a robot, and I heard a distant noise.

It came from me, a deep howl of visceral fear as I was half carried across the bridge to the other side of the river bank.

Mother was furious, but I could barely hear her over my heart galloping so hard, it was almost out of my chest. I turned around and saw the bridge behind me. Shaking violently and willing my sobs to go away before Mother implodes with anger at my stupidity.

Why couldn’t she understand that I was frightened?

Grief and guilt changes a trauma survivor on a cellular level. There is no shame in accepting it. Recovery and healing are not a straight line and nor is the grief process.

Flashbacks can happen anytime and anywhere. Sometimes a memory is triggered that has not been thought of since it happened, maybe decades previously. It's how you deal with and move on from these traumatic memories that is the true test of your healing.

I'm a survivor of sexual abuse and several horrific events that changed my life completely. I'm used to having flashbacks at the worst possible time. I mean, no time is a good time to be reminded of traumatic events.

This was a horrific trauma flashback which happened decades ago. There was no trigger and no warning. It happened suddenly and BAM, I was back in my eight-year-old self, in my hell reality.

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

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For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

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