A review by maises
Post-traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson

3.5

“Vivian was the center of it all, she had created this experience for the group and she could feel everyone in the room loving her, except for the people who were jealous of her, but they also loved her, they just blocked that love from consciousness.”

It was painful to be in Vivian’s head. I think of all the books I’ve read so far this month, this one actually activated something inside of me in a visceral way. I don’t know if I would say that Vivian and I ever had the same thought processes, but I found that a lot of her selfishness and fears and overreactions were things that either I or other people I know have experienced. The world isn’t made up of people “in recovery” who are actively healing versus others who are not; Post-Traumatic is a novel that underlines this fact. The worst thing that could ever happen could happen to you, and how you cope with it heavily involves what you are surrounded by and if you are supported. Vivian’s path towards wanting better for herself begins because she has that support, at least eventually.

They were all okay embarrassing each other, which irritated Vivian because she had organized her life in such a way as to avoid embarrassment. No roommates. No long-term companionship. No fam-ily. Elective relationships only. Yet, they had all done it. Traveled together and annoyed one another. Seen each other through sickness and broken hearts, witnessed each other's worst mistakes and failures, met each other's dysfunctional families. And none of them had stopped loving the other or at the very least hanging out.

Another huge part of this story was shame of the self, and especially of the body. A lot of it is societal, and Vivian’s true goal is to be her own ideal self, which is a practice done seemingly to preclude herself from rejection. My actual favorite scene, albeit pretty on-the-nose, was the very last:

re-potting a plant to give it more room to loosen its roots, and eventually to grow

. It is an apt metaphor for recovery; hitting the wall doesn’t mean the end. You just need the patience and care and space, even when it gets messy.