my therapist said, that sounds like trauma

Memory:

I'm 22 years old. I'm in Wuhan, China, sitting on a plasticky faux leather couch in my apartment on the campus of the teacher's college where I am a Foreign Teacher. I'm listening to a man in his 50's, a fellow American missionary, tell a girl of 16 or so why she isn't a Real Christian yet, while she cries but gamely tries to hold her own during his theological interrogation. I am seething. I try to interrupt, ask critical questions of my own, point out the inconsistencies and the absurd hermeneutics at work in his shoddy argumentation. I'm shut down, and finally, simply ignored. It's like my voice makes no sound. I invited this man. I let him into my apartment, and introduced my friend to him. He's now theologically terrorizing her in my living room. Later, after he has forced her, all of us, into submission, he will baptize her in a hotel swimming pool, laying his hands on her in a mockery of a sacred ritual. I stand by and witness. This is my fault.

When I described this event to my first therapist years ago, I wasn't trying to process feelings, I was just trying to convey what being from my church tradition was like. When she responded that this memory sounded like trauma, I laughed. That's just what it's like, I said. That's what I need you to understand.