In fact, very few Capitol Police officers can.
Sometimes we hold it to our chests, letting it weigh us down. Sometimes we forget for one moment that it happened, and we feel like ourselves again.
Until someone brings it up.
And then it physically hurts to talk about it.
That day, we held our fellow officers’ hands as they got medical treatment and held vigil beside their hospital beds. We performed CPR on strangers and friends. We went home and washed blood, chemicals and bodily fluids off ourselves. We told our loved ones that we were all right.
For the most part, we were. In an outstanding show of resiliency, officers got a few hours of sleep and then showed up, battered and bruised, to work the next day. Not only that, they showed up to the very places they had just been traumatized. They stood post in the crime scenes where, just hours before, they were battling for their lives. Day after day, officers came to work with the knowledge that not all of us had made it out alive.
But months later, I was still struggling to process what had happened. Many of us were.
On June 9, I was in the waiting room off the main hearing chamber, about to testify before the committee investigating the attack. There was a TV playing the hearing; I remember the noise leaking out from the chamber and then hearing it again, two seconds later, from the TV, as if the sound had been echoing through the halls. If I just focused on the echo, I rationalized, I wouldn’t have to hear what was being said. The truth is, I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t wait for the ordeal to be over.
And then I heard the noise that haunts me to this day: the roar of the crowd at the riot. It instantly transported me back to Jan. 6. I started shaking and sweating. “I’m not there. I’m not there,” I chanted to myself. “It’s over. I’m not there.” But nothing was working. I could feel sweat trickling down my back. I tried to take deep breaths. From my training with the Capitol Police’s peer support program, I knew I was in real danger. I took off my shoes to feel the carpet underneath my feet, and I put my hands on a wooden desk — anything to tell my body that it wasn’t back on the West Front of the Capitol that January. I must have looked insane.