Trauma in emerging adulthood

I mentioned in an earlier post wondering about the time period between 18 years old (the cut off for Adverse Childhood Experiences) and 25 years old (when your brain should finish maturing).

It turns out that the difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old is mostly societal. There is additional growth and experience that happens all along until full brain maturity, but that is mostly what society allows and expects.

That changes. People in their mid-teens might already be working in previous times. There are concerns about millennials now because they have not hit the same milestones as previous generations at their ages, like marriage, parenthood, steady jobs, and home purchases. Different people blame different aspects, including the parents of millennials. 

If there are ways in which it is harder to feel like financial security is possible, so that increasing responsibility seems like a bad idea, that is going to affect many groups, and is worth looking at. Now, while much of the stability that existed before 2020 has evaporated... there's a lot to be looked at, though that is not the purpose of today's post.

I am mainly interested in the time period -- sometimes referred to as emerging adulthood -- because of two things that happened a long time ago.

One of them was Nancy Kerrigan getting clubbed in an effort to damage her Olympic hopes, which was in itself an effort to boost the chances of Tonya Harding.

(I have always believed she was hit in the knee, but Wikipedia says it was her lower right thigh. My guess is that the knee was intended, but missed, as a knee injury would have been much more devastating.)

The attack happened while I was on my mission, so I didn't really get the news at the time. I may have heard something, but my memories of it are something that happened later, probably relating to the legal proceedings. I remember people looking down on Kerrigan, criticizing her behavior after the attack and endlessly repeating two things she said that made her look nasty.

I might not even have remembered that, except that not long after -- when I was back home -- a friend of mine got hit by a car as he was boarding a bus. He had a full recovery, but his injuries were severe. 

There were emotional injuries too. He'd always had a pretty sunny disposition, but it took him a while to get over some bitterness. It is very possible that some of that was physical pain, but I strongly felt that it was mainly his sense of safety being taken away. 

He didn't have a car, so he rode the bus everywhere. I relate to that. It had been a safe and reliable form of transportation, and then suddenly it was all disrupted. It wasn't his fault or Tri-Met's fault, but one stranger who was being careless meant that all of that didn't matter. 

I remember it making me think of Nancy Kerrigan, and how much of a violation it must have seemed. She would have had so many skating practice sessions; finishing up and leaving practice would be so routine that you don't even think about it. Suddenly there is pain and doubts about your future and it would take a while to get over that. Maybe it would have been harder for being personal in her case.

What I decided at the time (so late 1994 or early 1995) is that when bad things happen to an adult, where you are pretty set in your ways, it throws you for a loop but you can recover. If it happens to a child -- still figuring out how the world works -- then there is a lot more danger in terms of how they will mature.

Kerrigan was 24 when it happened. I think my friend was 23. They survived, but they were not their best selves for a bit. I don't blame them.

It bothered me then that people were so quick to hold everything against Kerrigan, because, you know, if you have sympathy for her, that would mean she was milking it, I guess. Therefore, it is Harding who gets the movie where she is played by Margot Robbie.

Otherwise, without exploring that much further right now, it seems to me that society does an awful lot to maintain the ability of various people to inflict trauma while putting obstacles to healing in the path of traumatized people. 

If for some young adults, something that happens is the way they learn that life isn't fair, there are others who have always known, and don't have the option of not knowing.

And if we are ever going to address that, now as we try and recover from a global pandemic and a Trump presidency that is not a complete outlier in terms of global turns toward fascism and authoritarianism... 

I don't know when there is going to be a better time.