PTSD, Anxiety and Depression on the TTC (feat. domestic violence, self-harm)

I was trapped between the back seat of a Toronto streetcar and two angry men, a couple of weeks ago.

They initially sat beside each other, quietly, until fare inspectors checked passengers for proof of payment.

One pulled out a transfer and the other presented a ticket, before the first began mumbling, asking why the inspector is giving him a hard time. The inspector calmly explained this wasn’t the case, as he was only checking for proof of payment.

After the inspector left, the mumbling man shuffled in his seat and irritated the one beside him.

“Don’t touch me!” the second man exclaimed. The first continued mumbling, angrily, swearing in broken English until the second repeated himself. “I said don’t touch me!”

The first man struggled to stand and step aside, while holding a half-empty 750 mL. glass bottle of rum. He was drunk… and he didn’t like having the other guy put him in his place.

He swayed and clutched his bottle for support, while the ride continued, making irritated comments about Canadians, slurring swear words and adding disparaging remarks about Jewish people.

The second man reprimanded him for drinking, swearing – something that he remembered would bother his own mother – and taking offence at the racist remarks, saying that he is Jewish.

Both men moved around in front of me, raising their voices, standing, moving aside, sitting back down across from each other and making threatening advances toward one another.

The first man aggressively waved his alcohol bottle in the air and the second made comments about getting off the streetcar to settle their differences, but a moment of distraction occurred, while the streetcar stopped in an underground tunnel, right before reaching the station.

One other woman sitting beside me, in the centre last row, watched, in horror, the unfolding event within arms reach of us and could no longer bear to wait another moment. She spoke to me in a different language, with urgency, stood up to move across the tight space and took the risk of squeezing her way around the men in an effort to get away. She looked back, checking for her safety and drawing the attention of the second man.

“Lady, why are you staring at me?!” he asked. “Why are you walking away? Yeah, keep walking! I’m doing this for you!”

The men looked like they were about to break into a physical fight at any second. In the close proximity, they would have undoubtedly collided into us and the glass bottle could easily break against support handles or any other surface. We could become collateral damage by getting hit, stabbed or lacerated, especially if sharp edges of glass stemmed from the bottle neck.

I understand why she would walk away. I wanted to run away, myself, but I knew better from experience. God, I wish I didn’t… but I do. I know that you want to be still and quiet, avoid eye contact, blend into the background and wait until the storm passes; otherwise, you draw unnecessary attention and aggro to yourself – and it is very wise to avoid such confrontations.

People are unpredictable in general, especially when they are both angry and under the influence of substances, such as drugs and alcohol. You don’t want to jeopardize your safety by attracting their (often negative) attention.

Over two years ago, I sat on a train observing a couple where an abusive woman continuously slapped a man’s face. No one dared intervene, including me. I usually would have, but I felt blocked by something that I couldn’t properly understand at the time – later identified as PTSD by my therapist – and the desire to reach home safely to continue caring for my puppy, who needed me. She has kept me going and is the reason I am alive today; my girl is also emotional support certified.

Seeing that couple brought back flashbacks from my past and I felt sick to my stomach. I had similar and greater pronounced reactions both on and off the TTC, Toronto’s public transport system, over the past two years. The strongest reaction occurred while I was on my way to work, one morning.

I recognized a very familiar, pungent odour while standing next to a man. It was a powerful combination of alcohol, cigarettes and vomit. He smelled like they were sweating out of his skin.

Scientists have studied and determined there is a very strong connection between smell, memory and emotion.

“One of the most characteristic features of odor memory in humans is the rather unique ability of odors to vividly trigger the evocation of emotional experiences,” neuroscientists Anne-Marie Mouly and Regina Sullivan wrote in their book, The Neurology of Olfaction (2009.) “In addition, the feeling of being brought back in time to the occurrence of the event is experienced.”

In 2018, ScienceDaily reported that neurobiologists at the University of Toronto identified a mechanism allowing the brain to recreate vivid sensory experiences from memory, where a PhD candidate in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Afif Aqrabawi, along with graduate supervisor Professor Junchul Kim in the Department of Psychology at U of T “found that information about space and time integrate within a region of the brain… known as the anterior olfactory nucleus (AON.)”

The report continues saying the researchers discovered a previously unknown neural pathway between the AON and the hippocampus, a structure in the brain’s temporal lobe that plays a major role for memory, learning and contextual representation. It quotes Aqrabawi, who explains that “when these elements combine, a what-when-where memory is formed.”

When I smelled that man on the streetcar, I remembered and was transported back to my past. A time where I stood in my home, surrounded by that smell and everything it represented. A painful time filled with fear, sorrow and despair.

Once I reached work, the sensation continued building and I couldn’t concentrate. My body started entering panic mode, feeling helplessly trapped, becoming cold, shaking, stomach clenching and tying in a knot. Seeking refuge in a washroom, at first, then in a storage room, afterward, I began sobbing uncontrollably, soon becoming physically and mentally depleted for the rest of the day.

It’s difficult to write about living with an abusive alcoholic. Both my physical and mental self block up and I have to push with all my strength to get a few words out. There are intertwined physiological and psychological reasons and explanations for that, but I will write a detailed post on PTSD another time.

Memories of confrontation, anger, self-harm, violence and the nauseating feeling that everything is out of control, rush back to me. I stop feeling like I am in the present – years away from that time – and it suddenly feels like it’s happening now and I am experiencing it all over again. I couldn’t stop it then and I can’t stop it now.

During that time, I was stressed about preventing someone from inflicting self-harm and also stressed about my own safety. When my ex drank, past a certain point, he was inclined to self-harm. I wrestled a knife out of his hands on several occasions, sometimes getting my hands or fingers nicked by the blade in the process.

I was once cornered in the kitchen with my back against the wall and a knife pointed at me, from above. My hands tightly held his, which were wrapped around the knife and pushing down. Using the wall for support and struggling to push back with all the force I could muster, in the most frightening moment of my life, I eventually managed to overpower, push him away and survive.

Giving up and stumbling his way to bed, he passed out drunk shortly afterward.

On my birthday, turning 30, I got to ride in both an ambulance and the back of a police car. My ex got drunk, stabbed himself in the stomach and we were rushed to the hospital. I was temporarily considered a suspect and interviewed in the back of a police car, right outside the hospital, before I was driven back to our apartment. I brought him home the next morning after he received stitches and was dismissed from the hospital.

I’ve been slapped, punched, bruised, strangled and shoved across a room, falling down to the floor. I was held at knifepoint… twice. I experienced narcissistic pathological lies, gaslighting, insults, shouts, threats, dismissive remarks and an entire collection of manipulative apologies and affection, thereafter, in a nutshell.

I am one of many people who experienced this and there are many others who continue living through such circumstances – and worse – today.

According to The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, on average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men. On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide. Intimate partner violence accounts for 15 per cent of all violent crime. 19 per cent of domestic violence involves a weapon.

The UK National Centre for Domestic Violence reports that one in five adults experience domestic abuse during their lifetime: one in four of those are women and one in six-to-seven are men. A domestic abuse related call is made to the police every 30 seconds. It is estimated that less than 24 per cent of domestic abuse crime is reported to the police.

My situation isn’t unique, I am one of many who are part of those statistics. The numbers are staggering to consider and our stories need to be told.

The conversation is difficult, as it’s hard enough admitting it to ourselves when this happens. Bringing this up to another person, however, feels unbearable, because our reality becomes officially acknowledged and we are hit by a new wave of pain, fraught with vulnerable feelings of shame, self-blame and the fear of social judgment.

After all, why don’t we just get out of that situation? Why did we stay? Oh, if it were only that simple… there are many reasons why and not all mine to tell.

I used to sit on a subway train, thinking about leaving, while surrounded by a ‘sea of people,’ in the same city, many of whom were reflecting on the same subject. Thankfully, one day arrived when my puppy helped me leave the apartment and return to my parental home.

Tears flowed down my face again, on my ride home, following my encounter with the angry streetcar men. Except this time, they were ‘tears of freedom;’ and yet I wonder, that very day, how many others rode the train while still held by ‘captive tears?’

Look around and smile at people, for it will sometimes give them hope to make it through another day. I know, because I remember a time when the smiles of strangers lit up the end of my tunnel… a reminder it existed and that if I continue my steps through darkness, I may one day find it.

“There is life after abuse. This is mine.”

– Lindsay Fischer