My Struggle to Heal as an Aceh Tsunami Survivor

After twenty years, I am still struggling to cope with the pain of losing my family members in the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami.

I was transiting at Istanbul Airport on my way to Tromso, Norway, in November 2019, to attend the 19th Informal ASEM Seminar on Human Rights: “Human Rights Education and Training”.

I stood underneath giant screens, to look for information about my departure gate for my flight to Oslo. It was early morning, 6 AM local time. Among the passengers, I saw someone whose physical appearance resembled my Papa. I got hit by a feeling that I didn’t have a word to describe. I felt pain in my heart. I felt deeply sad.

I remembered that when I lost my Papa, I had not finished my undergraduate yet. Let alone have an income that would allow me to book a tour for my Papa. I remembered the only flying abroad he made was to Saudi Arabia, to perform Hajj, back in 1994.

I held my tears, feeling how unfair it was that I never had a chance to take my Papa for any traveling abroad with me. I was extremely sad, that he even could not be there, on my commencement day, when my name was called as one of the best graduates. I graduated cum laude, GPA of 3.82. And became the fastest graduate in the department of Political Science by completing my study in 3.5 years. I keep my hope high, even today, after twenty years of the tsunami, that I would get an answer from Almighty Allah about his whereabouts, and also my older sister and two younger brothers. Maybe it is a denial that I have felt comfortable to live with.

I Just Want the Pain to Stop

For more than a decade, I was struggling to deal with the pain of losing my family members in the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. The pain was so severe during my birthday (January 20); their birthdays (February 3; March 13; April 5; and May 5); and the tsunami anniversary (December 26). Life was so different to go on living without the opportunity to see them, to talk to them, to spend time with them, to share father-daughter bonding and sibling bonding anymore. I read about the Ball and the Box Analogy described by Lauren Herschel. But no, my (grief) ball had not shrunk after all these years. I longed for their company during important moments. 

When I was reminded of my trauma through internal or external triggers, my fear structure was activated and I was reliving the traumatic experience over again -starting from the time I saw the news about the wave until I started searching for my family members for two weeks – I began panicking and crying uncontrollably. My heart was in so much pain that I gasped for air to breathe to relieve the pain. Getting triggered is genuinely terrifying.

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Somehow at the end of January 2021, I started having technical issues with my MacBook Air 13” -it experienced blackouts. What I didn’t realize was that this incident triggered another trauma from when my MacBook Air 11” was stolen in mid-2019. I was unable to work, as I didn’t have any other means to deliver work. So, I applied for leave during those days of blackout. I saw this as a fair arrangement, as my office at that time didn’t provide me with a laptop that I was entitled to, while my supervisor casually told me to get a new laptop after days of being on leave – what an ignorant remark coming out of him! 

The two traumas turned into a devastating face: I was unable to sleep for 17 straight days! I spoke to someone who was like a sister to me, suggesting that I should see a psychiatrist as the trouble sleeping needed immediate intervention. 

The First Attempt at the Healing Journey

I had an appointment with a psychiatrist at RSCM Kencana on February 16, 2021. I was scheduled for an 11:45 WIB’ appointment but I couldn’t remember exactly when I came to her room and how long the session was. Later, I was prescribed the following medications:

  • Ativan 0.5 mg, contained Lorazepam, to be taken once in the evening, for 10 days
  • Cipralex 5 mg, contained Escitalopram, to be taken once during breakfast, for 20 days

The first evening when I started my medication, I went to bed at 22:10 WIB. I woke up once in my sleep, feeling cold like when I had period flu. The following day, I woke up at 06:40 WIB. I took the second medication during breakfast, which I didn’t record at what time. I didn’t like the effect the morning med had on my body. First, I felt nauseous. Second, I had difficulty concentrating on my work. Third, I felt that my energy level was so low that I was struggling to finish circling Monas – a routine that I had adopted since December 2020.

Later that evening, despite taking the medication, my sleep was disturbed three times. By 06:11 WIB the following morning, I was fully awake and got less sleep than yesterday. The third day on the medication, I still had difficulty concentrating and was sleepy but no longer nauseous. I switched to Body Balance exercise for that day, to check my energy level. And I still felt a lack of energy: doing Body Balance was supposed to be so much fun. Yet the med made me not enjoy it to the fullest.

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Later that day, I spoke to two close confidantes and told them that I would stop taking the medication because the medication had a reverse effect on my brain and my body. According to the psychiatrist, the evening medication should help make me sleep tightly, while the morning medication should facilitate me to be able to work. I also mentioned to them that I would not continue my session with the psychiatrist.

Based on my discussion with some friends who were on the same journey before, I knew it was wrong to stop the medication without consulting the psychiatrist. But truth be told, I didn’t really consent to be on medication. The psychiatrist diagnosed that I was suffering from PTSD and mild depression. But I didn’t experience any depression symptoms. So, I didn’t think that part of the diagnosis was accurate. 

Also, she asked me to start journaling about why I was so much against marriage. I could not believe myself that from what I told her how much losing my family members in the 2004 tsunami put me in unbearable pain for years, she was interested in other things instead.

The First Mental Breakdown and the Journey Forward

From January to May 2021, it was a very demanding situation at work, in which I hardly recovered from one deadline to another deadline. During that time, some people left the organization, such as the Communications Specialist, whose replacement also left after two months, while some people got excused for not doing their jobs so I had to clean up for them. I recalled that one of the documents that I had to deliver during those months was called a Governance Handbook. I had to read 19 reference documents, which amounted to 251 pages, to author a 40-page document (before Annexes). 

It was on May 3, 2021, that I had my first mental breakdown. On that particular evening, I looked at the calendar after performing the Maghrib prayer. And I suddenly realized that tomorrow would be my father’s birthday. Then I was hit by enormous pain, which felt so deadly! It was so painful that I kept crying and gasping for air to breathe. I never experienced such pain before. It was that person, who felt like a sister to me who rescued me and told me, “You could not keep going on like this. You need to seek professional help.”

I became suicidal again afterward. Every time I got triggered, the pain was so unbearable that I contemplating to kill myself so the pain could stop. But I listened to that friend of mine: I sought help! This time, I tried to access counseling from Yayasan Pulih, which I started on July 6, 2021. My new psychologist confirmed that I was suffering from PTSD but not mild depression. Somehow, I trusted her and believed that I would be in good hands from now on. She helped me to make sense of what I felt the whole time.      

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I remembered that early in our counseling session, we talked about how much I held into the thought that one day all of my missing family members would come home. This reminded me of the situation described perfectly in the following dialogue from Crash Landing on You Episode 10

“Yoon Se-ri: If I await desperately with prayers, will I be able to see someone I miss?

Ri Jeong-hyeok: You do it to live. If you give up on waiting, the pain of loss will kill you. That’s why you wait”

My psychologist helped me to deal with my loss, and my grief-related PTSD, which made me realize that I no longer wanted the pain to stop. Because my grief is a reminder that the love I had for my father and my siblings was real. The love was great. And I want the love to never end. But in terms of preserving the never-ending love, I understood the nature of unfinished businesses I had with the persons who had died: lost plans! I could no longer attain higher education with my father’s financial support – I had to seek a scholarship instead. I could no longer substitute my father to give both of my younger brothers a better education through studying abroad; and many other plans.   

My psychologist helped me to deal with getting triggered, which could not be avoided. Part of my healing happened when I was triggered, I was able to move through the pain, the pattern, and the story. I could walk my way to different endings every time I got triggered, not to contemplate suicide as I wanted the pain to stop.

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My psychologist further told me that they apparently won’t come back. And I should learn to let the thought go as it would help me a lot in shrinking the bouncing ball. Also, she taught me the tools to allow the ball to shrink further and fill the spaces in between. It was an intensive moment, where I had sessions every other week.

At one point in my life, I was grateful that I listened to a friend of mine seek help from an experienced mental health professional to support me during that prolonged grief, which had helped to turn my grief into a ball with an escape valve. The pain of loss is no longer killing me. And I could continue living by acknowledging the loss and feeling gratitude for what they meant in my life. I am thankful for my psychologist help with coping strategies, offering a non-judgmental space for expression, and has been guiding me through the journey of healing from mid-2021 onwards.

Now that I look at my current mental well-being, I would like to encourage everyone who is experiencing prolonged grief to reach out for help from an experienced mental health professional as they would facilitate you in developing tools that would allow you to shrink the ball and fill the spaces in between. Lastly, I would like to share an old guy’s incredible comment to someone on Reddit’s heartfelt plea online:

“You’ll discover that grief comes in waves. You’re drowning as the ship first breaks apart, and debris is all around you. Everything that floats around you serves as a constant reminder of the elegance and grandeur of the ship that once existed but is now gone.

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And your only option is to float. You manage to salvage a fragment of the debris, and you cling on for some time. For a period of time, all you can do is float to stay alive. 

At first, the waves are ten meters tall and smash down on you mercilessly. They come 10 seconds apart, leaving you with hardly enough time to catch your breath. Hanging on and floating is all you can do. The waves will still be 10 meters tall after a few weeks or months, but they will start to space out more. Sometimes the waves only reach a height of eight meters somewhere along the line. Most of the time, you can see the waves coming and brace yourself. And they wipe you out and crash all over you when they arrive. However, you can still breathe and operate in between. 

You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It could be a birthday, an anniversary, religious celebrations, a song, a picture, a crosswalk, or the aroma of your preferred dish, or when arriving at the airport in your hometown. It could be almost anything, and then the wave smashes in. But life exists between the waves. And even as it sweeps over you, you know that you will emerge stronger on the other side. You may be drenched, gasping for air, and clinging to a small fragment of the debris, but you will emerge.” 

Note: reader might want to read “Coping with Grief: How the Ball and the Box Analogy May Help”. Available from https://psychcentral.com/blog/coping-with-grief-ball-and-box-analogy

Mirisa Hasfaria

Lulusan S2 Ilmu Politik dari University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Amerika Serikat. Dia memiliki ketertarikan yang mendalam terhadap kesetaraan gender. Kisah dalam tulisan ini merupakan pergolakan personal religiusitas keislaman dari penulis berdasarkan teks dan konteks realitas sosial yang melibatkannya secara intensif.
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