There is a feeling of being frozen or bumped out of time when you carry trauma. For a long time, I’ve felt bumped out of time, like things are passing me fast and slow at once. Like standing in the middle of a street - one lane moving at highway speed, all rushing sound and flashes of movement too quick to recognise anything but danger, the other so choked with traffic and pedestrians that there’s nowhere to go, no way back, just a stuckness that pins you to the centre line. Superfast highway - me - utter congestion.
If you’re very lucky, you might find yourself with the family you always wished you had, all the support you never had but always wanted, held by Country – I found this here, for just a few moments. As I stood underneath the waterfall - 100,000 years and more of falling water - for just one of those moments, everything stopped. Dropped into deep time. The stuckness, the speed, the pressure crushing down, the black hole that is my depression, all of it vanished. I was just me, being pelted with the last of the wet season’s water. A sigh, and a scream. And a tiny bit of hope for what’s to come.
Then back to the bustling tourists, the overwhelming noise of it all, and noise drowning out all that feeling of deep time.