When I Woke Up Friday

When individuals are affected by traumatic events, their minds internalize these experiences due to the impact that such incidents have on them. When dealing with the effects of the trauma, these individuals must confront the issues they face as a result of the trauma and manage the effects on their daily lives, or the trauma will act as a barrier that prevents them from finding a sense of self. In her essay “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday,” Martha Stout focuses on detailing her interactions with Julia, one of Stout’s patients who experienced severe trauma during her childhood, and in doing so makes the point that Julia’s mind was not present for most of her childhood as a result of the trauma, preventing her from accessing the

majority of her childhood history and having a complete understanding of who she is. On the other hand, in Leslie Bell’s essay “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” Bell describes the experiences of Jayanthi and Alicia, two women in their late twenties, and the way that their histories and traumatic experiences have negatively impacted their perception of men and the manner with which they approach their sexual activities and relationships, which constitute a significant part of their identities. Thus, as understood from the experiences of Julia, Jayanthi, and Alicia, when individuals are unable to face the traumatic events they have experienced, the trauma acts as a barrier that prevents them from being able to take full possession of their identities.
When Stout describes Julia for the first time, she portrays Julia as a woman who is comfortable with her identity, pointing out Julia’s remarkable intellect, her tendency to make humorous remarks, and her inherent ability to charm others (424).

These qualities seem to be completely at odds with Julia’s attempts to commit suicide. However, Stout implies that there is a great disparity between how others see Julia and who she truly is when she states, “[Julia’s] psyche was mangled by profound trauma in her past … and the consequent suffering in her adult life has been nearly unsurvivable. Should one meet her on the street … she would seem quite normal. In fact, one might easily view her as enviable. Certainly, when looking on from a distance, nothing at all would appear to be wrong and much would be conspicuously right” (423). Although others may see Julia as “quite normal” or even “enviable,” it is important to note that while she may be perceived in this manner, the reality of who she is differs from this immensely. It may seem that “nothing at all [is] wrong and much [is] conspicuously right” with Julia and her life, but in actuality, her “psyche was mangled” by the trauma she had experienced at the hands of her parents, and this significantly impacted her mind and her perception of the world, and by extension, her conception of her

identity.
Moreover, because the trauma Julia experienced as a child prevented her from accessing a substantial portion of her history, by extension, this also caused her to lose a considerable part of her identity. Stout alludes to this when she states, “The part of [Julia’s] consciousness that she thinks of as her self was not there; it was split off, put aside, and therefore in some sense protected. And because her self had not been there, her self could not remember what had happened to her during much of her childhood” (428). In other words, when Julia experienced abuse at the hands of her parents, “her self was not there” because it had divided from the rest of her consciousness. Thus, because Julia’s self “had not been there” for the abuse and was “protected” from the pain of the experience, Julia’s self did not have the ability to access her memories of her childhood later in her life. Because people’s identities are so closely tied to their histories and their experiences, which shape how they view and interact with the world around them, if they are unable to access their histories, their identities will be incomplete. Julia herself acknowledges this when she states, “What’s the use of living if I can’t feel anything? Why should I even be alive when I lose big parts of my life? I mean, really, how can you care about anything if you can’t even know the truth about yourself? If you keep losing yourself?” (437). Because Julia “lose[s] big parts of [her] life” and herself, Julia recognizes that as a result she does not “know the truth about [her]self” and therefore cannot take full possession of her identity. Thus, because Julia is not able to understand the entirety of her history as a result of the trauma she had experienced during her childhood, her identity is only partially conceived, and she cannot fully comprehend who she is.
Similarly, Bell describes the experiences of Jayanthi, a woman whose traumatic history prevents her from cultivating a solid sense of identity that allows her to have healthy relationships with men. Jayanthi is described as an Indian woman who deals with the negative effects of her traumatic early sexual history by switching between employing a “good girl” strategy to distance herself from men, both physically and emotionally, and rebelling against the rigid standards set by her Hindu family by having meaningless casual sex with men (31). Both of these unhealthy patterns of behavior are created as a result of Jayanthi’s experiences as a young woman, whose parents stripped her of her control over her romantic and sexual life (34), and as a woman in her twenties who wants to regain control over her identity after several men took advantage of her (36). Because Jayanthi’s conception of herself depends on her control of her sexual activities and relationships, she is unable to have healthy relationships with men. Bell points out that Jayanthi believes that “being a bad girl allow[s] [her] to control her identity, rather than having it controlled by either her family or the men she encounter[s]” (34). In making this comment, Bell implies that Jayanthi thinks that her adoption of a “bad girl” strategy when she interacts with men allows her “to control her identity.” However, her early sexual history and lack thereof are what control her identity. Jayanthi’s entire perception of her sexual identity is driven by an attempt to avoid the painful experiences of her sexual history, and this trauma acts as a barrier that prevents her from taking full ownership of her identity, history and all.
On the other hand, Bell also gives insight into the experiences of Alicia, a Hispanic woman in her late twenties whose traumatic early sexual encounters and unconventional family dynamic result in her attempts to escape them and their impact on her conception of her identity. Bell herself alludes to this when she states, “Alicia seem[s] determined to convey, to others and to herself, the degree to which she had gotten over her family’s impact on her. She want[s] to have a sense of control over her life, and minimizing her family’s … influence on her was one strategy to do so” (39). Because Alicia wants “to have a sense of control over her life,” she makes a deliberate effort to demonstrate “the degree to which she had gotten over her family’s impact on her” not only to other individuals, but also “to herself.” This implies that Alicia has to consciously convince herself that her childhood trauma had not significantly affected her. However, in actuality, Alicia’s trauma significantly impacted the way she interacted with men and approached relationships, and her inability to accept this fact prevented her from fully accepting her identity.
Stout and Bell both allude to the fact trauma significantly impacts how people conceive their identities by preventing them from accepting their identities in their entirety, including their traumatic histories and the resulting effects on their lives. Stout first describes Julia’s mental dissociation from her childhood abuse, emphasizing that the reason that she is unable to remember most of her childhood is that she was not mentally present to fully experience it (426). Later in the essay, Stout also brings up the point that triggers from Julia’s childhood force her to psychologically dissociate in the present as well (432). According to Stout, the sheer magnitude of these experiences has resulted in “Julia’s knowledge of her own life, both past and present, [assuming] the airy structure of Swiss cheese” (432). Because Julia has such little knowledge of her history as a result of the traumatic experiences of her childhood, she is unable to comprehend her identity in its entirety because such a large portion of it is inaccessible to her. Likewise, Bell explains that both Jayanthi’s and Alicia’s earlier sexual experiences shape the way they view men and relationships. Because Jayanthi wants control in her sexual identity, she adopts a “bad girl” approach in her sexual experiences, allowing herself to stay emotionally distant from men (32). Although she believes that this approach empowers her and allows her to take control of her identity, by doing so she only gives her traumatic experiences the power to define her self-conception, which prevents her from taking full possession of her identity. Similarly, Alicia attempts to take “control over her life” by attempting to “minimiz[e] her family’s… influence on her” (39). However, because she is forced to make a conscious effort to falsely convince herself that her childhood trauma did not impact her perception of the world and her identity, she is unable to accept her identity as a whole, which includes the trauma and its impact on her perception of herself and the world. In all three of these cases, unresolved trauma prevents these individuals from completely accepting and claiming full ownership of their identities.
Because individuals’ histories have such a large impact on their identities, it is inevitable that traumatic experiences will also affect their self-conception. In many cases, unresolved trauma prevents individuals from fully accepting their identities, which include the full set of their experiences and these traumatic events. This may occur when trauma prevents individuals from accessing entire parts of their histories, which comprise a significant part of people’s identities, as seen in the case of Julia. Additionally, Jayanthi’s story demonstrates that it is also possible that trauma may cause individuals to allow the traumatic experiences they have encountered to control their identities, keeping them from accepting their identities in full. On the other hand, Alicia’s experiences show that an inability to accept trauma and its impact can prevent a person from understanding and taking complete ownership of their identities as well. Thus, although trauma can prevent individuals from accepting their identities in full in a number of different ways, its impact on people’s self-conception should not be overlooked.